O Dia Abufado

I am tired of people apologizing to me because they don't speak English. I am living in Brazil, the language here is Portuguese, not English. And yet I am constantly running into people who feel badly - inept, even - because they don't speak English.

As one friend pointed out, you have no hope of really advancing to any meaningful level in any kind of career or work place without speaking English. Look, said another friend, you need English to understand half of the signs on shops these days, or to understand most of the gadgets in the marketplace.

I know this is true. I know that in the increasingly interdependant global market, global culture, global environment where English - and the United States - reigns most powerful, speaking English is a very good skill to have.

Marco didn't understand when I told him the thousands of English courses on every street corner, the compulsion to speak English, embarrasses me. Even makes me sad. I explained that the reverse is not true in the United States. Quite the opposite. Most folks expect everyone else to speak English and don't bother to learn other languages, unless they have to. He still didn't understand when I explained that I don't like the power differential - we can be lazy, you have to apply yourself to succeed. He mostly laughed and said, but that's just the way it is. You're just lucky that English is the language you learned first.

I get so many strokes from strangers here because I speak any Portuguese at all. "But you're American. No one from the US ever speaks Portuguese," they say. I explain that after ten years of being partnered to a Brazilian, I am ashamed that I don't speak better Portuguese. I should be able to communicate far more than I do. "But you speak some Portuguese, that's amazing." they say, "No one from the US ever speaks Portuguese."

It's true - the more privilege or power that you have, the more that just gathers around your body. It's like a man who gets applauded because he takes his kid to the playground - oh, you're so special, such a good daddy, I wish I had a husband like you - when mommy dearest takes the kid to the playground every other day. Daddy has an unfair advantage in child-rearing (my brother always talks about how annoyed he gets when he gets all of this glowing praise for just loving his son and caring for him) just like English-speaking American has an unfair advantage in the world of multilingualism.

Oh well, lest I ever start believing it when people tell me I'm awesome because I can order coffee in Portuguese, I only have to remember the countless times I've screwed up. Like when we first arrived on this trip and we went to eat in a restaurant. It was a rodizio which means, among other things, the staff walk around with plates of food and you select the things you want to eat. I was getting some spaghetti alho olho. He put some on my plate and I said, "Bastante" which literally means, "enough." So he gave me some more. "Bastante," I said again. He put more on my plate. "Bastante" and then more and back and forth until I was desperate to stop this growing mountain of pasta. Finally I said, "para, por favor," stop please, and he did.

In explaining this to a friend, she started laughing crazily. While "bastante" literally means "enough," you use it here to mean enough like it was a lot and that's a pleasurable thing. Repeating "bastante" to the waiter made him think that I was reveling in my gluttony, wanting a whole mountain of spaghetti, that gobs of food would be enough for me.

I have a long way to go towards fluency.