Here is the short one:
Would you like to practice your Portuguese and hopefully have some fun?
So come to the first meeting of the second edition of Erasmus Language Café!
This Wednesday, 16th of March, at 21h30, in C.A.R. – Circulo de Arte e Recreio (Rua Francisco Agra, Guimarães).
Don’t you know how to get there?
Coming from the University in the direction of the town, once arrived at a greeny roundabout you have to turn right into Rua Francisco Agra. After some 50/100 meters you will reach a small square with a building on the right. That’s C.A.R.!
If you are still not sure check out this page:
http://wikimapia.org/14384844/pt/C-A-R-Circulo-de-Arte-e-Recreio-Guimaraes
… and don’t forget to bring your pocket dictionary, books, doubts, some friends and a good mood!
Still not sure of what is it all about? So get the long one…
But let me first introduce myself: my name is Andrea, I’m coming from Italy, and I’m here doing an European Voluntary Service (EVS) at cultur@rum (http://cultura.rum.pt/). Together with Agata and Kasia from Poland and two other boys from Turkey (who still have to arrive), during the next months we are going to organize cultural activities aimed at the foreign students of the Universidade do Minho (including a radio program, called Erasmus Voice, which will be aired on RUM, http://www.rum.pt/).
One of these activities will be the second edition of the Erasmus Language Café. This is a project which has been established last year here in Guimarães and Braga by Ewelina, an EVS volunteer at the time (you can get a picture of the past activity by scrolling the old posts of the blog: https://erasmuslanguagecafe.wordpress.com/ – with more info here: http://www.languagecafe.eu/).
The Language Café will take place once a week in different bars and cafés of Braga and Guimarães, and basically it is intended to provide a space for foreign students where to practice Portuguese language with the aid of native speakers, meet new people, discuss about cultural diversity and … being insulted! And I mean being insulted for the sake of knowledge!
This in fact is the novelty for this year’s edition of ELC: I want the participants to compile together a multilingual glossary of a particular category of false friends: those affecting the sense of decency.
When talking about languages, everybody knows what a false friend is: for instance, the very same word burro means ‘butter’ in Italian, and ‘donkey’ in Portuguese and Spanish. That can create just some little misunderstandings in the beginning, but nothing really serious.
But there can be some false friends way more insidious… False friends that can make something click in the mind of the listener, that can evoke an unwanted shade which could distract him/her from the speech and even lead him/her to unexpected and even inappropriate reactions: to provoke an abrupt laughter, to summon up some nasty thoughts, to enrapture him/her to some nostalgic longing…
There are in fact words which possess those powers. For example one should be aware that the very common Portuguese verb ficar (‘to be situated’) carries a very strong sexual connotation to the ears of a native Italian speaker: consequently, when talking to an Italian, according to the case, it would be better to use the more neutral verb estar. Well, unless the purpose of the speaker is to deliberately introduce a subliminal lure into his/her speech.
The examples could be countless: the Italian sciare (‘to ski’), although having a very similar pronunciation, is totally unrelated to the French chier (‘to shit’). And more: anybody would enjoy to accept an invitation to have a French crêpe, but it could take a different taste if you think of it as a crap. A very popular beer here in Portugal is Super Bock, popular even among Turkish students, despite the fact that in their mother language the word bok means ‘shit’. On the menus of Slovakian restaurants it’s very common to find dishes in which ‘chicken’ is the main ingredient: that should sound like a bizarre option to native Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian/Slovenian speakers, in whose languages a very similar sounding word (kurac) means ‘cock’ (and I’m not referring here to a rooster…). And so on and on.
Some of those false friends are so known that they reached the status of a legend (the only Finnish sentence any Italian knows is the one meaning “Look at the sea!”. In Finnish: Katso merta…). But lots of them still need to be pointed out, and for this we need volunteers willing to get insulted, and to insult back on their turn.
So my proposal is to have some insulting sessions, as an ice-breaking warm-up before each regular Language Café meeting. In rotation there will be formed couples composed by two persons of different nationalities that in turn will tell to each other in his/her mother language every kind of profanity, obscenity, taboo-word or everything else could be perceived as offensive or inappropriate in his/her society and culture. The person having the passive role should then take care to note down those words which resemble normal ones in his/her language, and propose a neutral alternative without any sexual or scatological connotation.
The purpose in fact is not only to have some fun by talking dirty: the purpose is to become aware that in some cases, when talking to foreigners, words can say more than what they are supposed to; that sometimes by talking about the apparently most innocent topics (“Do you like chicken?”, “Do you love to ski?”) people can unintentionally touch some sensitive points.
It is a just matter of tact: we don’t want people’s inner child to awake and laugh when hearing the word ‘poop’. And neither we want a naughty grin to appear on the face of those who are vicious minded by nature!
But still I’m aware that this research could also lead to the opposite results: if they just would like to, thanks to it, people would be able to spice up their speeches by adding some subliminal obscenities into them.
One last note: I think that the resulting glossary could be a quite useful tool for people employed in a diversified range of professions: from interpreters to diplomats, or anybody working in an intercultural environment. That’s why I would like the glossary to meet at least some basic scientific standards (a phonetic transcription of the words, an introduction, etc.) – but that goes far beyond my abilities. To do that I will need as well the help of some students with a preparation in linguistics. And, why not, even psychology. And of course, native Portuguese speakers are also more than welcome!
The calendar of the Language Café meetings will be published on the blog https://erasmuslanguagecafe.wordpress.com/, on http://cultura.rum.pt/ and on the Facebook group “Erasmus Voice 2010 – 2011”.
I encourage anybody interested in the project to write me comments, suggestions, even insults (I will need lots of them!) at this e-mail address: andrea.cultura.rum@gmail.com – or contact me through my mobile phone: 963514899 (it’s a tmn moche).
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