Whatever ceis want! (Engilsh)
June 12th 2009 01:41
To be bilingual is an adventure; trilingual and multilingual must be even better.
It is common to hear Brazilians that live in Australia for some time complain that their English is not getting any better and the Portuguese is getting worse all the time. It’s inevitable to start creating mixtures of both languages.
The first victims are the verbs:
The most abundant and regular verbs in Portuguese are ended in “ar” such as: “amar” (to love), “andar” (to walk), “falar” (to speak), etc.
That is how you start to “bookar” courses (to book), “spellar” words (s-p-e-l-l-a-r), “helpar” friends (to help), “googar” info on the net. You even happen to “snoozear” your clock in the morning...
The false cognates make the meaning on the phrases run amok, impossible to translate but it would be the same as saying that “the insurance was very ‘understanding’ " by mixing the languages and saying: “it was a very 'compreensivo' insurance”. Because “compreensivo” in Portuguese means ‘understanding’, while you actually wanted to say that the insurance was comprehensive...
The other thing that happens is that your family start to think you are either going crazy or extremely formal when you translate expressions that really sound funny.
To end the language assassination you incorporate some English words to your daily Portuguese, you never more translate “day off”, “whatever”, “anyway” and “sorry”.
During my last trip to Brazil I must have said “sorry” 435 thousand 352 times!
In the bus I wouldn’t say the huge phrase:
- “Ahhhhh... por favor me desculpe?”
Nooooo, much easier to use:
- Sorry!
Got many funny looks with that.
The accent also gets all loony, you can say things in a more British/American accent, in the Aussie way, or the Brazilian reading English...
A good example: “I don’t know”
British/American: I don now
Aussie: I doin noirrr
Brazilian reading: I dontchi kinow
In a way like that we created in our last joint trip this great phrase using a Brazilian slang: “ceis = vocês = you”:
- What are we doing today?
- Ah! Whatever ceis wantchi!
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