Regina's Rants

The Portuguese female nurse on the other end of the phone was clear, “How come these people, who have been here for a dozen years, do not speak Portuguese? And you speak Brazilian!” I stopped my translation of a friend’s questions about her husband to the hospital nurse and her answers, and took a deep breath. While my friend was grateful for my efforts and provided an ever increasing number of questions, the nurse was outraged that these people, my English friends, had to rely on my Brazilian to get news about a loved one.  To the Portuguese nurse, it sounded like a double affront. To me, the nurse seemed to live in or fantasize about the time of Marques de Pombal, who, in 1758, decreed European Portuguese to be the official language in Brazil.

With my hospitalised friend in mind, I decided to overlook the fact that Brazilian, the language an overwhelming number of Portuguese nationals say I speak, does not exist:  as far as I know, the correct expression is Brazilian Portuguese, as opposed to European Portuguese or any type of Portuguese spoken by eight other countries around Africa and Asia, and a few special territories.  Some call my original language South American Portuguese, but I think it is a tad pompous. Brazilian Portuguese is the language of sugar, coffee, rare woods; of gold nuggets, silver veins, vivid gems.  It’s a rich pudding with huge dollops of several Native Brazilian languages, and sprinklings of slaves’ and immigrants’ languages:  Banto (a group of 200 similar languages from Africa), Italian, Japanese, German, French, Arabic… Yet, in Portugal, it is a disdained Brazilian, and in my experience, to insist that I speak a form of Portuguese is a mortal sin. Never mind there are 215 million Brazilians and just over 10.5 million Portuguese.

I have done several written and verbal translations for friends (some of whom have become enemies, but that’s another story) and in the process I have heard countless Portuguese nationals recriminating English people for not speaking the local language, “Tell them to learn Portuguese.  Is it always us that have to speak their language?” These invectives remain unanswered, as translating them to my friends would achieve nothing when the situation was already emotionally charged, but I do feel annoyed when I think how the Portuguese language was imposed on Native Brazilians, all the slaves and immigrants that followed. So I prepare my best Brazilian accent, for sometimes I refuse to adopt the Portuguese pronunciation, and plod on to get the information my friends need. 

Only on a few occasions, when I relax on my balcony and glimpse at a winter sun setting in the southwest, over that imaginary cardinal point where the south Atlantic kisses the land I was born in, do I think about my foreign friends’ lack of Portuguese speaking skills.  I place them in assorted groups depending on their reasoning, and try to understand them. 

A few people I know have tried to learn the language and have confessed that they attended free Portuguese classes at the local university “for the social part, just to get to know more foreigners.” Their interest in Portuguese dwindled as their social activities, performed in English, increased.

Another group includes English speakers who don’t stay here all the time, as they still have a house and family in the UK, and it´s difficult for them to develop Portuguese speaking skills without daily practice.  By the time they return to Portugal, they have forgotten the meagre vocabulary they knew. They have also forgotten that, these days, there is no barrier to learning if they have a computer and know how to navigate a search engine. The process is much easier than what Portuguese crews and ships faced when navigating unknown oceans centuries ago.

A group of people, understandably, claim that they are not born linguists, and that is understandable.  Even when there is willingness and they devote a great amount of time and effort to the Portuguese language, results can be disappointing.  So they give up on Portuguese.

Besides personal inclinations, it seems the majority camp here have no desire to spend their well-earned retirement days twisting their tongues and producing guttural sounds around new vocabulary and complex verb tenses.  Their synapses allow them to play golf or croquet, rest by the pool, prepare the BBQ, attend a charity dinner, garden, entertain friends and family arriving from cold climes, and keep the wine fridge well stocked.  This is the life they always wanted, and things hop on happily without the Portuguese language.  Why bother?

A smaller group have mentioned to me that they feel no need to learn Portuguese.  This is because they can always find Portuguese people who speak English, and the local populace needs to practice their English. So, they believe they’re doing the locals a favour by always interacting in English at the bank, restaurant, building centre, or anywhere else.

An English couple, let´s call them W and S, show a modicum of linguistic acumen as they are proud to speak fluent Restaurant Portuguese, a language variation that we could add to the list of Portuguese spoken in other countries.  The couple have also memorised the names of their favourite wines, even if their pronunciation makes them unrecognizable or undrinkable. 

Regarding pronunciation, it’s a free for all, depending on people’s country of origin.  But town name pronunciation is my pet peeve.  I probably show my impatience when I hear Loulé pronounced LOO-ley;  Évora as Ee-VOH-ra;  Olhão as Oh-HOW.  There are many other examples, but I understand their plight:  it took me a lot of practice and attention to learn to pronounce Worcester (WOOS-ter) or Leicester (LES-ter). I am sure British people cringed when they heard my first, weird attempts at pronunciation. (Mr. Walker, one of my excellent English teachers, used to blink and shake his hands as if he were being electrocuted when students mispronounced. Of course I was the cause of most of his near-death experiences.)

I am sensitive to the fact that a group of British people here barely speak or write their own language well.  To think that they might have to learn another language seems quite intimidating. They come here to enjoy the 300 days of sunshine, to forget the UK and its foggy problems, and to thrive as they develop their businesses aimed at foreigners.

I encounter a minority among the British, those who say, like M, “If they want my money, they gotta talk English.” M seems, like the nurse I talked with, to live in imperial times. Luckily, M and some like them have returned to England, where I am sure they will do their best to undermine the King’s English.

Regardless of the reasons, complaints against non-lusophone people will persist, as will those against my Brazilian Portuguese. Next time a Portuguese national asks me, “How come you haven’t learned our language?”  I’ll blink, shake my hands, and say, “Because I don’t want to, or don’t need to, and it’s time you learned Brazilian.”