Language difficulties

After a few days in Rio, we have now moved on to Buenos Aires before heading down south and onto Antarctica. It´s nice to be back in a Spanish speaking country, as I must say I find Portuguese to be one of the most frustrating languages. Why? Because understanding it seems so close yet so far away. It´s extremely similar to Spanish in grammar, vocab, etc. I can read about 70% of the stuff I see in Portuguese, but my aural comprehesion of the language is only around 5%. At least when we were in places like India or Thailand I knew that I was never going to understand the language, either written or spoken. But to have a language that´s so accessible in the written form yet so inaccessible in the spoken form is extremely frustrating. I knew Portuguese (especially the Brazilian version which is even trickier than the European version) was going to be difficult after watching movies like Central Station and City of God (both great movies, by the way) and understanding about 5 words each movie. I was hoping, though, that after a few days immersed in the place I would pick up a bit more, but so far it seems to be a lost cause. We´ll be heading back to Brazil again in about a month so I can try again then.

Fortunately the Treaty of Tordesillas (high school history paying off finally) gave most of the good stuff in South America to Spain so we´ll be spending most of our 4 months in South America in Spanish speaking rather than Portuguese speaking countries.

Some other linguistically derived entertainment came in Tahiti, aka French Polynesia. We were at a pub where Karen wanted more water to drink. I told her to ask the bar staff for ´plus d´eau´ (plu doh) so Karen did so. She came back to the table and said the bar staff didn´t understand what she wanted (native Francophones never seem to understand anything foreigners say in French) so she just asked in English. I asked her what she asked for and she told me she said what I said, ´plus dur´. Well, that explained why the bar staff didn´t understand what she wanted. Fortunately Karen asked a female bar staff for her request, because it could have been a bit more awkward if she had said ´plus dur´ to a male - ´plus dur´ meaning ´harder´ in French.

And speaking of French bar staff, you have to be careful when thanking females in French, as ´merci beaucoup´ (´many thanks´) sounds very much like, ´merci, beau cul´ (i.e., ´thanks, nice bum´) when prouncounced by an Anglophone. A colleague of mine once found that out the hard way.