The article explains that Brazilian Portuguese is great because “If you speak Spanish, French or Italian, you’ll find half the work is already done.” This is actually fairly accurate. I have never taken a Portuguese class. The most “studying” I have done is completing the first disc of Rosetta Stone. However, because of my Spanish skills I find that I can understand a lot of what people say. People here say they speak “portoñol,” a combination of Portuguese and Spanish. Right now mine is pretty heavy on the “ñol” and not so much on the “porto,” but hey it’s all a process. Reading tends to be the easiest for me, though there are, of course, certain traps one must be careful to avoid. For instance, at the airport I saw plastered on the side of a plane “No Brasil, No Mundo.” Which to a Spanish speaker makes Brazilians appear rather conceited, translating in Spanish to “No Brazil, No world.” In reality the advertisement says “In Brazil, In The World,” referring to the company for which it was advertising.
If you want to fake your way through the language rather than adding an “o” to the end of a word like most people do with Spanglish in Portoñol you add a hard “e.” It’s funny because many of the stores and bars here have English names but they are pronounced in Portuguese. For example there is a bar here called Coconut. They pronounce this “coco-nutch-eee.” Why they don’t simply name the bar Coco which is coconut in Portuguese, I am not sure. Perhaps places appear more chic when given a name in a foreign language, though the names rarely make sense. I was walking the other day and I saw a store called Container underneath the name it claimed it was an “Ecology Store.” This is apparently a clothing store; the mannequins in the window were sporting overpriced Abercrombie & Fitch shirts. I walked away very confused and wishing I had had my camera.
Additionally, the article in The Economist made me laugh when it claimed that Brazilians “are friendly, and shameless white liars. You’ll be told ‘Your Portuguese is wonderful!’ many times before it is true.” I’ll keep you updated as to whether I find this to be true.
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