Bat woman

I have a couple of funny stories to share.

First, on Sunday a big group of friends went to the movies and we ended up seeing "Open Season", I think it´s called in English... in Portuguese it´s "O Bichu Vai Pegar." It´s a movie about a bear and a deer being hunted. I wasn´t very impressed. Anyhoo, after the movie our group went to eat dinner. We were all at a big table and I wasn´t paying much attention, but I heard people talking about how something was normal in the US and they were surprised by it, so I asked what they were talking about. Jéssica turned to me and said, "É normal nos Estados Unidos pra gente caçar animais?" What I heard was "É normal nos Estados Unidos pra gente casar animais?" Slight difference in pronunciation, big difference in meaning... She asked me if it was normal for people to hunt animals in America and I thought she said is it normal for people to marry animals in America. Oh my goodness, after the initial shock then understanding, I died laughing. Easy mistake, but funny mistake. :)


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Second, yesterday some friends were here at my house. One friend said, "I think you have a bat in the house. I said, "Oh no, you always hear that sound. They´re outside the house." He said, "I´m going to open the door to let the bat out." So he opened the door and a few minutes later I saw a bat FLY OUT OF MY HOUSE into the night. I screamed like a girl! I´m not scared of bats, but I sure don´t want them in my house!!!!!!! Oh my goodness... all day long I´ve been looking at my ceilings to check for more bats. :-/ But let this be a lesson. If you have bats in your house, just open the door and let them out.

Dirty Words

In good essay writing you generally start with a broad statement then work your way own to a more concise point, so here goes.

Learning a second language is hard.

:)

Okay now for my real point. Before I came to Brazil, I really worked hard studying books and such to learn Portuguese. Hence, I was a good writer and reader but listening and speaking were hard. Since I´ve been here my primary method of learning has been through what I hear around me. This is good because I can hear how people actually use the language and correct pronunciation and all, but it has it´s downfalls, too.

First of all there is the human error factor. As you know in English as well, some people use language correctly and some people do not. The problem is here I don´t know exactly which are which, so I have to be careful who I model myself after.

Next is the slang factor, which is somewhat related to the above issue. Most slang is fine, I think, but sometimes it´s just wrong and I don´t want to learn ghetto Portuguese.

Closely linked to the slang factor is the dirty word factor. Let me give you an example. I have a dear friend here who I spend a good deal of time with, yet this person has a... ahem... colorful vocabulary in Portugese. So, although I adore this person, I have to be careful and not repeat what they say. Which is really difficult, because I´m realizing how infantile I´m becoming in my language learning here (which is natural). I am sort of like a parrot, and I have started talking like my friends and saying what they say. But the problem comes when they´re saying things that I don´t need to repeat, and I don´t realize it.

The complicating factor is that "dirty words" are so subjective. You all know, of course, that we have varying degrees of dirty words in English. There are the boogers, butts, freakin´s, craps, and the list goes on. So one day a couple of weeks ago I sat down with a good friend of mine here who I trust in judgment and Christian wisdom (and she´s my age, so my generation speaking), and I kind of went through the list of questionable words I know in Portuguese to get her opinion on whether I should say them or not. I think that was a good move.

I´m not a language prude. Language is my business, I´m a fairly artsy person, so I have a sort of liberal attitude about this issue. I don´t run around shooting my mouth off, but sometimes I think a "dirty word" is a extremely appropriate, more so than other words. But the root of this issue is that I want and need to know exactly what I´m saying. Words are powerful, and can be used for great good and evil. Proverbs says they´re like arrows-- so I want to be sure I´m shooting straight.