O Americano, Outra Vez!

One time I picked up a hitchhiker who told me how interesting<br>South America was, and that I ought to go there. I complained<br>that the language is different, but he said just go ahead and learn it -<br>it’s no big problem. So I thought, that’s a good idea: I’ll go to South<br>America.

Cornell had some foreign language classes which followed a method<br>used during the war, in which small groups of about ten students and one<br>native speaker speak only the foreign language-nothing else. Since I was<br>a rather young-looking professor there at Cornell, I decided to take the<br>class as if I were a regular student. And since I didn’t know yet where<br>I was going to end up in South America, I decided to take Spanish,<br>because the great majority of the countries there speak Spanish.

So when it was time to register for the class, we were standing<br>outside, ready to go into the classroom, when this pneumatic blonde came<br>along. You know how once in a while you get this feeling, WOW? She<br>looked terrific. I said to myself, “Maybe she’s going to be in the<br>Spanish class - that’ll be great!” But no, she walked into the<br>Portuguese class. So I figured, What the hell - I might as well learn<br>Portuguese.

I started walking right after her when this Anglo-Saxon attitude that<br>I have said, “No, that’s not a good reason to decide which language to<br>speak.” So I went back and signed up for the Spanish class, to my utter<br>regret.

Some time later I was at a Physics Society meeting in New York, and I<br>found myself sitting next to Jaime Tiomno, from Brazil, and he asked,<br>“What are you going to do next summer?”

“I’m thinking of visiting South America.”

“Oh! Why don’t you come to Brazil? I’ll get a position for you at the<br>Center for Physical Research.”

So now I had to convert all that Spanish into Portuguese! I found a<br>Portuguese graduate student at Cornell, and twice a week he gave me<br>lessons, so I was able to alter what I had learned. On the plane to<br>Brazil I started out sitting next to a guy from Colombia who spoke only<br>Spanish: so I wouldn’t talk to him because I didn’t want to get confused<br>again. But sitting in front of me were two guys who were talking<br>Portuguese. I had never heard real Portuguese; I had only had this<br>teacher who had talked very slowly and clearly. So here are these two<br>guys talking a blue streak, brrrrrrra-ta brrrrrrr-a-ta, and I<br>can’t even hear the word for “I,” or the word for “the,” or<br>anything.

Finally, when we made a refueling stop in Trinidad, I went up to the<br>two fellas and said very slowly in Portuguese, or what I thought was<br>Portuguese, “Excuse me . . . can you understand . . . what I am saying<br>to you now?”

“Pois não, porque não?” ” Sure, why not?” they replied.

So I explained as best I could that I had been learning Portuguese<br>for some months now, but I had never heard it spoken in conversation,<br>and I was listening to them on the airplane, but couldn’t understand a<br>word they were saying.

“Oh,” they said with a laugh, “Não e Portugues! E Ladão!<br>Judeo!” What they were speaking was to Portuguese as Yiddish is to<br>German, so you can imagine a guy who’s been studying German sitting<br>behind two guys talking Yiddish, trying to figure out what’s the matter.<br>E Ladão! It’s obviously German, but it doesn’t work. He must<br>not have learned German very well. Judeo!

When we got back on the plane, they pointed out another man who did<br>speak Portuguese, so I sat next to him. He had been studying<br>neurosurgery in Maryland, so it was very easy to talk with him - as long<br>as it was about cirugia neural, o cerebreu, and other such<br>“complicated” things. The long words are actually quite easy to<br>translate into Portuguese because the only difference is their endings:<br>“-tion” in English is “-ção” in Portuguese; “-ly” is “-mente,” and so<br>on. But when he looked out the window and said something simple, I was<br>lost: I couldn’t decipher “the sky is blue.”

I got off the plane in Recife (the Brazilian government was going to<br>pay the part from Recife to Rio) and was met by the father-in-law of<br>Cesar Lattes, who was the director of the Center for Physical Research<br>in Rio, his wife, and another man. As the men were off getting my<br>luggage, the lady started talking to me in Portuguese: “You speak<br>Portuguese? How nice! How was it that you learned Portuguese?”

I replied slowly, with great effort. “First, I started to learn<br>Spanish. . . then I discovered I was going to Brazil.

Now I wanted to say, “So, I learned Portuguese,” but I couldn’t think<br>of the word for “so.” I knew how to make BIG words, though, so I<br>finished the sentence like this: “CONSEQUENTEMENTE, apprendi<br>Portugues!

When the two men came back with the baggage, she said, “Oh, he speaks<br>Portuguese! And with such wonderful words:<br>CONSEQUENTEMENTE!”

Then an announcement came over the loudspeaker. The flight to Rio was<br>canceled, and there wouldn’t be another one till next Tuesday - and I<br>had to be in Rio on Monday, at the latest.

I got all upset. “Maybe there’s a cargo...