Portuguese Mishap
March 18, 2010 11 Comments***Warning: Adult language in this post!***
While I am proud to report I speak Portuguese fluently after living here for 3 years, it hasn’t always been that way.
It’s been a long road and I am still not perfect in my Portuguese. I have had many mishaps speaking the language. One in particular comes to mind, upon first moving here.
I had been here only a few months. I will save the extra writing and write this story only in English. But first let me note an important detail. In Portuguese the ão sound is a deep nasal sound {like ouw-ng, through the nose} and it’s a hard one to master for the English speaker. In the beginning I always had trouble with it and avoided it as much as possible while speaking.
So enter Tanya in the bakery. {If you already speak Portuguese, or are learning the language, you probably know where I am going with this!}
At this time I didn’t know the plural word for bread, which is pães. The singular version being pão.
I walk up to the counter and ask the young kid, about 16, for 6 hard, french breads. {I wanted the crustier ones, and not the soft ones.} Only when I asked, I asked for 6 hard, french pãos, instead of pães. Him and his co-workers, 2 other young boys of about 16, started hysterically laughing. I mean laughing soo hard they couldn’t even continue to help me.
I was very confused, and going over what I had just said to them in my head.
“It all sounded right, why are they laughing?” I had thought to myself.
“Hmmm .. it must be something I said but who knows now, just give me the fucking bread so I can go on with my day. I was starting to get agitated.”
“Ok, I know I am a foreigner and I don’t always pronounce things right, but you know what I am saying. It can’t be that badly pronounced.”
Bread in hand. Boys still laughing. Me annoyed. Off I go.
Upon returning home, I tell my husband the story.
He tells me to repeat to him what I said. So I do, exactly they way I had said to the boys.
He starts hysterically laughing.
“What the fuck?” At this point I have steam coming out of my ears.
“What did I say?” I ask him.
“You asked them for 6 hard, french dicks!! ” He replies.
Pão, if not said correctly with the nasal sound, will sound like pau {pow} which is dick.
Mortified, I vowed to myself never to go back to that bakery and to learn the correct way to say bread in Portuguese.
My husband then taught me the plural version to say bread. Which is pães, sounds like pies in English, easy enough I can say that.
For fear of asking for a dick, from that day forward I never again asked for pão, even if I wanted just one bread. It was always pães.
Shortly after this mishap, I made it my mission to master this sound. And that I did. A year later I was able to ask for pão correctly, and have since returned to the same bakery. I think those boys still secretly laugh at me when I come in. Oh well!
Have you ever had a funny language mishap? Please do share with us in the comments!
Beijos, Tanya
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Yes, my story is pretty much exactly the same. Stupid words being so similar!
I already knew about the pão/pau problem, and I just avoided the word pão (I still do, or I just say it so forced that I sound like I’m deaf or something, but at least I’m not saying ‘penis’).
Anyway one day, Alexandre was reading some article online in English. He asked “Hey, what does ‘stale’ mean?”
I responded in Portuguese “é quando o pão fica duro.” But I didn’t get the “pão” right. So while I was trying to say “it’s when bread gets hard”, I said “it’s when the penis gets hard.” He had fun with that one.
Haha! Funny, love it Danielle. Yes, I avoided the word forever too, and finally committed to learning it right. Thank goodness I have the nasal sound down now, no sounding like a perv when I ask for bread!
I can’t say that word either. My husband makes fun of me for it and tries to get me to say pão in front of everyone, like my MIL! Thanks for teaching me the plural word though!
In an Italian supermarket, I asked for jam (jelly) without “preservativi” in it. Sometimes if you put an e, a, o or i at the end of a word in English it will be the same in Italian, but not in this case. Preservatives are called conservanti in Italian, preservativi are condoms!! I even argued the fact when they told me you can’t get jam with condoms in it & in the end the store manager came out & took me to the isle where they had an array of condoms & explained my error. I could have died!!
Another pitfall in Italian is that just one letter in the word can change the meaning drastically…pisolino = nap, piselino = little dick (yes, I said I needed one of those too)…penne = short pasta, pene = you guessed it, dick again!!… fa pena = feel sorry for, fa pene = do a dick. Need I say more?
How are you finding living in Brazil with young kids? Do you feel safe where ever you go or do you avoid certain places/times? I live in Jakarta, Indonesia (& love it here) we may move to Rio sometime this year.
haaaaaa hahahahahahahaha! and not in the cruel, bakery boy way, in the “so hilarious after the fact I totally understand” way. Oh man, that’s a good story. Who doesn’t have trouble with that one? Pretty sure I still ask Ro’s mom if “ela sabe a onde e o pau?” … hahahahaha
And also hahahahahahaha @ Danielle
Hi Cheryl,
Thanks for stopping by my blog! I love living in Brazil, and don’t feel unsafe one bit. With my daughter I can go any place at anytime without feeling danger. But it’s good to note that I dont live in a big city like Rio either. I live in a small village in the N.East, so that makes life a bunch easier. I would love to go to Indonesia with my daughter, in fact I have thought about maybe making a small trip out there in a few years to come, lets see
Like your Italy stories!! Very funny!
Tanya
hahahah! So funny! And congratulations for making the mends.
In Paris, I found out I was saying merci bo-que (English pronunciation) which meant “thank you, nice ass”.
Thanks for visiting me! You have a great site!
Just dropping by from SITS! Have a nice weekend!
usually i point to the bread, since i knew of this incorrect pronunciation, it scared me that i would ask for something else.
It makes me laugh alot upon reading this blog coz its quite similar with what im going through now, i´ve been living here in Sao Paulo for 5 months now and my portuguese is very poor, I normally interchange words from another like churrasco(BBQ) and cachorro(DOG). I remember I told my husband I want to eat cachorro(what i really mean is I want to eat barbeque) and everybody was laughing at me.
Hi,
I live in Portugal and I had exactly the same problem when discussing growing vegetables with our Portuguese builder -
eu tenho problemos os meus tomates!
My Portuguese teacher could not believe I said that! what, why? OK I see. To the guys credit he did not bat aneyelid and we moved on to his prize lettuces!
I did not realise paõ also meant dick if not pronounce correctly – well you live and learn. LOL
Cheers
Piglet