Nao Falo Portugues

I am aware of taking roads less travelled as i realise i have not seen another travellist since Vilankulo. The further north i travel English has become totally redundant and even Spanish speakers seem to be non-existent. Thus i have been forced into trying to communicate in Portuguese.

I have serious problems with additional foreign language acquisition. Whilst we are all multilingual, i seem to have two languages – English and Foreign. I famously asked a taxi driver in Bogota to take me home in Cantonese, and recently had a long conversation with a bus driver in Nice in a mix of French and Spanish – amazingly he understood me, unlike my Colombian taxi driver. Thus it is no surprise to me that i confuse abrigado (Portuguese for “thank you”) with the Japanese “domo arigato” which also means thank you.

Nonetheless, i have made some inroads. Unfortunately, by being able to speak a few words is mistaken by locals that i am fluent and the volley of words in return is daunting. In desperation for Spanish speakers one can simply try adding a “sh” to words that end in “s”, which sometimes works, for example dos becomes dosh and mas becomes mash.