Everyone laughed and he told me, "Aprende Português (Learn Portuguese)!" In a mix of languages, I yelled back that I was trying but that they all speak really f*@%ing fast!
Yes, learning a language is always hilarious at the beginning and I've had no shortage of funny language issues to keep me entertained.
The very first day I got to Brasilia, Alessandra's wonderful mother came to pick me up from the bus stop and take me to her house. Alessandra had already warned her that I don't really speak Portuguese so she was expecting language problems. The funny thing, though, was that she didn't even attempt to use words at first. She just went about miming everything to me...where the car was, the fact that she wasn't sure about how to exit the parking lot and how she felt about the traffic. Gestures certainly do come in handy when talking to someone who doesn't fluently speak your language, but that was the first time anyone had tried to speak to me with gestures only. We were both cracking up and she soon found that, as long as she spoke to me slowly, we could communicate with words, as well.
We had a lovely meal together at her house, and then Vere came by later. By the time she got there, my brain was shot from traveling and Portuguese and I could barely pay attention to what the two of them were saying. Every once in a while, I'd join in the conversation but I mostly just listened. At one point, I tried to ask Alessandra's mom what something was, asking, "Isso, o que é?" but it came out "이고 o que é?" instead. I wouldn't even have noticed if it weren't for Vere who died laughing and pointed out that I'd said a word in Korean. This just goes to show how the brain organizes languages; I have English in my native section, Spanish in my fluent section and Italian/Korean/Portuguese in my "I know some words and understand a bit but certainly don't speak it fluently" section. When I attempt to speak any one of these three, it gets completely mixed up with the other two.
This isn't to say, though, that English and Spanish don't confuse me sometimes as well. The sign on the door of Vere's apartment threw me for a huge loop the first few days I was here. It says "Puxe" (which sounds a lot like the word push in English) on one side and "Empurre" (which sounds like the Spanish word, empuje, which means push) on the other. So to my brain, both signs mean "push" before they mean anything else but, in reality, puxe in Portuguese actually means 'pull'. Confusing.
I also learned toward the end of my stay in Peru that if I tell a story with the word crocodile in Spanish and then try to tell the same story later in English, I will most certainly say "cocodrile" and there's really no way around it (it happened multiple times).
There was a pretty hilarious language mishap on one of my last nights salsa dancing in Lima, as well. I was talking to someone about my time in Cuzco and how there hadn't been many people to dance with. I said something like, "Hasta los maestros en Cuzco bailan peores que la gente de acá." The guy I was talking to looked shocked and we both burst out laughing. I'd been meaning to say something like "The teachers in Cuzco aren't even as good as the regular dancers here" but it actually came out more like "The teachers in Cuzco are even worse than the regular dancers here." There's kind of a big difference there since I was talking to one of these 'regular dancers'.
Linguistics are half the fun of my travels so bring on more hilarity, brain!!
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