PORTO, Portugal \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Why can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t all countries agree on their currency? Why must travelers take along an MBA or at least a banking expert any time they wish to go beyond San Miguel County, or in our case, the U.S?<\/p>\n
We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re preparing for a boat tour of Portugal, the last leg of a trip to Copenhagen where we will visit our son Stan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s family. The tour is a round trip, from Porto, in northern Portugal, back to Porto. It was my friend Pedro Carrico who encouraged me to travel to his homeland.<\/p>\n
Pedro, a 2009 graduate of Robertson High School, spent a year in Las Vegas as an exchange student. When he learned of our plans to cross the Atlantic, naturally he wrote, with the hope that his family could meet mine. I brought a copy of a Portuguese-English dictionary, hoping it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll help.<\/p>\n
People who speak Spanish invariably say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Oh, Portuguese is a piece of cake; if you can speak Spanish, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll get along fine in Portugal.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Not quite. Though there are strong similarities between Spanish and Portuguese, the difference \u00e2\u20ac\u201d especially with the false cognates \u00e2\u20ac\u201d can be glaring.<\/p>\n
The toughest thing about learning a language is simply \u00e2\u20ac\u0153knowing\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that words that look like something in English (or another language) just have to mean the same thing. For example, one of the Spanish words for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153pregnant\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201d embarazada \u00e2\u20ac\u201d is taken by many in English to mean \u00e2\u20ac\u0153embarrassed.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d As a child, I often heard people muttering, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Me da coraje,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which I just assumed had to mean, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It gives me courage.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d But the situation in which people used that expression never seemed to fit.<\/p>\n
Then I learned that in this context, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153it makes me mad\u00e2\u20ac\u009d comes closer to the original expression. When Pedro was in the states, patiently he tried to teach me some of the basic expressions and nuances of Portuguese and was polite not to be too critical of my nascent understanding of the language and culture.<\/p>\n
Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s start with money. The Portuguese unit of currency is the Euro, a denomination adopted by some 20 countries, including Spain, France, Germany and Italy. It makes perfect sense; once you learn what it translates to in dollars, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re set. We got along fine on our trip to Spain in 2002; then, a Euro was worth about one American dollar (the rate today is about $1.27) and most things were conveniently rounded off. Things were simpler then, as burgers, cokes, candy, fruits, bread, etc., generally went for one, two, three or four euros. But a matter of articulation, or lack thereof, almost cost us.<\/p>\n
Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what happened: My wife had a plate of paella, the national dish of Spain. Instead of being served a steaming plate of spicy chile with a large helping of sopaipillas, we got a mixture of rice, fish, vegetables and even snails. When it came time to pay the bill, the waiter announced it would be \u00e2\u20ac\u0153doce euros.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
It sounded like a stutter, as the last syllable of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153doce\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is similar to the first one in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153euros.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d So what I heard was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153dos euros,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which is close to two American dollars. It took a bit of explaining that the tab actually ran 12 euros, or dollars. And when we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d order sodas in the Plaza Mayor, our tab would be simply dos euros, or two dollars. You see, most of us Americans didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t enunciate well and often elided the first syllable of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153euros,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d pronouncing it \u00e2\u20ac\u0153yuros.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Complicating the money exchange in Portugal was the difficulty in getting the money-changers at the Portugal airport to accept American currency. You see, in the states, just about every time someone pays with a new twenty, fifty or hundred bill, the cashier runs a broad marker over it to make sure it isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t counterfeit. Well, that action makes it \u00e2\u20ac\u0153marked money\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to the Portuguese, which they won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t accept.<\/p>\n
Fortunately, some of our own American dollars were unmarked, and we got enough to manage on. But let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s leave the money and discuss the language.<\/p>\n
By far the largest of four vocabularies literate people have is reading. We can take the time to ponder, parse, analyze and look up unfamiliar expressions. For most people, the second largest lexicon is for listening, then writing, then speaking. Given time, I might be able to decipher Portuguese messages, instructions and menus while on this tour.<\/p>\n
How will we do when it comes to understanding what the natives say? True, many Portuguese can and will speak English and Spanish for our benefit, but what of the ones who don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t?<\/p>\n
On a tour of the Rhine recently, I crammed for finals. I studied German a number of years ago and am currently learning French. So, as our ship reached a city equally divided between the German- and French-speaking natives, I was ready.<\/p>\n
At the port cities, as we disembarked to explore the city, we visited a number of stands operated by local venders. I was ready to bargain with them, on their terms. But none of it was necessary. I quickly sensed that their English was better than mine. That happens in tourist towns where there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s considerable linguistic intercourse. And after I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d practiced for so long …<\/p>\n
Many Europeans are fluent in two, sometimes three, languages, and the tendency is more apparent where people live close to another country\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s border. That makes me wonder about the attitude of many Americans who constantly favor \u00e2\u20ac\u201d even demand \u00e2\u20ac\u201d a one-language nation. When it comes to arrivals from other lands, typically Mexico, people demand they \u00e2\u20ac\u0153learn English or go back where you came from.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard to deny the importance of English, not to mention the hurdles you cross by acquiring it. But why do so many remain obstinate when it comes to acquiring Spanish?<\/p>\n
Spanish, as an important member of the family of Romance languages, has been around a long time. It would be great if more people embraced it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PORTO, Portugal \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Why can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t all countries agree on their currency? Why must travelers take along an MBA or at least a banking expert any time they wish to go beyond San Miguel County, or in our case, the U.S? We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re preparing for a boat tour of Portugal, the last leg of a trip to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=634"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":636,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634\/revisions\/636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}