Não compreendo (I don't understand)

Porto in Portugal where we did our two weeks language training is a lovely seaside town and a great place for a weekend vacation.  Lots of lovely bars and restaurants, shopping, the port houses on the quayside, old baroque churches with crypts and other touristy type stuff.   Unfortunately we were there to work – six hours a day intensive language training with lots of trabalho para casa (homework). 

Porto, Porto, wonderful town

Portuguese is a bloody impossible language.  I got quite stressed by it all and my confidence took a severe knock.   Everything is masculine or feminine, the grammar is complex and the pronunciation needs to be exact and requires you to able to stick your tongue up your left nostril.  After two weeks I was still unable to hold a basic conversation. 

The three tutors we had were lovely and mostly very patient, although one who I christened Professor f*****t was I think glad to see the back of me.  It didn’t help that he insisted  on explaining complex grammer points in Portuguese and having a gastric attack every time I left off one of those little çurly things. I could see his mouth moving and hear sounds coming out but he might as well have been speaking Klingon.  I began to wonder if I was slightly autistic – the tutors would ask an imaginary question such as have you got a green hat or a red hat and I would think I can’t answer it because my hat is white and I don’t have it with me – and who the hell is this third person they kept talking about.  They taught us to say the pen or cup is on the table when in real life you need the Portuguese for "Oh shit that rhino is charging us" (oh merda, que o rinoceronte está nos cobrando).

Problem solved

     

Anyway I know the essentials to survive.  I can ask where the toilet is, (onde é a casa de banho?) order up to 1,000 beers (Queria mil cervajas por favor), ask for another beer, (outro vez por favor) and ask for the bill  (A conta por favour).  Further language lessons in Mozambique have helped but I am still struggling.  However language lessons with Mozambican tutors have given me a few insights into the Mozambican mindset. One tutor was astounded that I didn’t have a casa dois (literally House two or second house – in other words a mistress). This possibly also explains the local custom for nieces and nephews to call their uncle "Pai" or father.  He also taught me the phrase “So um galo canto no caporeia” (only one cockerel sings in the hen house) but I have not yet managed to drop this into causal conversation.

Wake me up before you go go

Porto wasn’t all hard work.  We did a bus tour, some sightseeing, went to the cinema (english with Portuguese subtitles) and went out a few evenings for meals.  Portions were generally huge and meat or seafood orientated – vegetarianism is a notifiable disease in Portugal.   Being slightly nervous about the language barrier when eating out the first restaurant we tried was a quiet local Portuguese restaurant recommended by the apartment manager.  It seemed very quiet and we took a table at the back out of harm’s way.   The waiters didn’t speak any English but were friendly and welcoming .  We managed to order only to see the waiters looking at us while having a huddled conversation in the corner – something was clearly wrong and they appeared to be drawing lots for whose turn it was to use sign language.  One of them came back and eventually managed to make us understand we had ordered double portions and enough food to feed an army.  We halved our order and still couldn’t finish it.  

As the evening progressed the restaurant suddenly started to fill up and disconcertingly all the customers were sitting on the same side of the tables facing us.  Had word had got round about the greedy foreign couple and they had all come to stare at us?  The mystery was solved when the TV on the back wall was turned on to show the Porto versus Ben Fica football march.  

You really can buy Porto v Ben Fica table football