Words

In dealing both with the visitors from LASA and then my parents' visit the following week, I realized how much my friends and I use Portuguese words, even when we're talking in English. Some words, usually nouns, are just easier not to translate, and since everyone knows what they mean anyway, there's really no reason to do so. A rather over-emphasized version would sound something like this: "Yesterday as I was heading to the rodoviária (1), the taxi driver took the shorter route around the lagoa (2), and I got to see some people doing capoeira (3) in a park. We passed a place selling pão de queijo (4) and pão francês (5), but it wasn't busy because it was Saturday and most people were eating feijoada (6) instead." Nobody living in Rio would have any difficulty understanding any of those words, but they go untranslated for at least three different reasons. Bus station (1) and lagoon (2) are such commonly-used words in Rio (there's a big lagoon in the middle of the city) that it's actually the English translations that sound foreign to my ear. Nobody calls them by those names. Cheese bread (4) and French bread (5) need to go by their Portuguese names because the English versions of those foods are entirely different from the Brazilian versions. The final category remains untranslated because there are no easy English translations for these elements of Brazilian culture. (3) is a Brazilian martial art (detailed in the entry on Casa Rosa) and (6) is a typical Brazilian dish made with rice, beans, meat, kale, and an orange. Trying to translate them into English is too complicated in everyday conversation. All of those words, among others, have been incorporated into my English vocabulary, and because of that hardly even seem like Portuguese to me anymore. From time to time one of those words would get thrown in when I was talking to one of my American visitors, and it always took me slightly by surprise when someone would stop me and ask for clarification.

Another thing I noticed was how sometimes I accidentally slip into Portuguese now when speaking English. My friends and I go back and forth between English and Portuguese all the time. It's not at all uncommon for someone to ask something in one language and have the other person reply in the other, or to switch back and forth multiple times within a single conversation. With us it's almost always a combination of some sort. That, however, does not work so well when the person I'm talking to doesn't speak Portuguese. Obviously I have a much easier time separting out Portuguese from English than I do keeping Portuguese and Spanish straight, but sometimes the most insignificant words seem to slip through my filter. "Because" is one of my most common slip-ups, as well as things I say almost without thinking, like "okay." I guess it's kind of cool to think that they've gotten so entrenched in my consciousness that they come out when I'm not even expecting them, but I still find it a little strange.

I also think it's interesting to look at the region-specific vocabulary I've picked up here, words I wouldn't necessarily have expected to learn. One can tell a decent amount about a culture by the words that are emphasized, and I'm sure I've learned a very different set of vocabulary here than I would've learned in, say, Norway. Unfortunately, a lot of the surprising words I've learned here have to do with Rio's crime and violence. In addition to the word for "bandit" that I've mentioned in the past, it doesn't take long in Rio for a person to learn the words for drug trafficking, cocaine, gun, assault, "to rob," thief, shootout, kidnapping, lost bullet (the ones from shootouts that end up killing innocent people), something that translates roughly as "smooth criminal," and the name of the most notorious drug gang. Others have to do with Rio's poverty, like the words for slums, street children, and giving alms. In my Portuguese class we even learned the word for the illegal contraption people set up in poor communities to siphon off electricity from power lines.

Not all the unexpected words I've learned reference such serious things, though. I've also picked up some soccer vocabulary, like the words for goal, ball, and soccer cleat, as well as the names of Rio's soccer teams. Last summer when I was here we even did a whole lesson on soccer terms that have been incorporated into everyday speech. I also have certainly learned my fair share of beach words, like the ones for wave, shore, sand, sunscreen, and ice-cold coconut (a delicious form of beachside refreshment). And to think, if I were in Norway, I'd probably be learning the words for snowshoeing and long underwear instead!