Day 86 - Você fala português?

Truth be told, I am not a big fan of the Portuguese language. It is way too nasal for me. Strange - I do love this very nasality in French very much, but somehow, in my opinion, it is not fitting for Portuguese. Too many situaçãos ("ã" is nasal), estações, bancos ("a" before "n" is nasal, too) - every other word in any sentence seems to produce some nasal sound, and it sounds strange to my ear, maybe because a lot of words are very similar to Spanish in writing, but this pronunciation makes them almost unrecognizable and that is frustrating to me?

In fact, there is a common misconception that if you know Spanish, you will be understood in Portuguese. Well, in my experience, this is not the case. At least, not in Brazil. Some words are very similar in writing, so I can understand whatever is written reasonably well, but the pronunciation is SO different, that it makes any Spanish-Portuguese communication in my case impossible. Which I don't particularly get. For example, "eight" in Spanish is "ocho" and in Portuguese is "oito". Pretty similar, right? Yet, if I say "ocho" to anybody here, they would look at me with their eyes wide open, having absolutely no clue what I am trying to say. Bizarre, no? Of course, now I say "oito"... when in Rome:).

Some people speak what they call "Portunol" though - a mixture of Portuguese and Spanish, much more understandable to me than just Portuguese, so I appreciate the effort when it's made.

Not many people speak English. I like this, actually. On one hand, of course, English is the language of the world now, but on the other hand, why does everybody have to submit to this monopoly?

Of course, I am talking only about people "in the streets": vendors, waiters, store assistants, etc. There are many cosmopolitan people here, and of course they all speak a bunch of languages. My hosts, for example, speak perfect English, Spanish, French.

Objectively speaking, Portuguese is very melodic. People talk as if they are singing a song or reciting a poem. Portuguese in different parts of the country is very different. The Rio language has Italian intonations and has a very "clean" pronunciation - I understand it the most.

It is extremely interesting to have this challenge of trying to be understood. A lot of body language is now involved, a lot of gestures, a lot of new facial expressions, a lot of newly invented words drawn from all the languages you know. This game is fun! It is part of the experience to get a totally unexpected dish in a restaurant, to end up in a totally different store, to buy an apple instead of an apple pie... As Melanie put it right before her departure, "It will be so boring in NYC, where everybody can understand me."

And to conclude, here are some Portuguese funnies (at least, to my ear):

• Oi is "hello". Sounds funny to me, because in Russian it means "ouch". Would also sound funny to a Korean, because it means "cucumber" in Korean.
• Oba is "hi", too. Sometimes pronounced opa. In Russian it's an expression of mild desbelief.
• Sexta is "Friday". In calendars, abbreviated as sex. No comment.