Life would have been easier if the Tower of Babel had never happened.  A lot easier.  Of course, a lot of people would go out of business, including the inventors of language tapes.  Which might not be a bad thing.

Don’t get me wrong, language tapes introduced me to the Portuguese language.  Unfortunately, the introduction was like the introduction between characters in a very polite British movie, where everybody bows politely and says, “How do you do?” with just the right enunciation.

In real life, nobody talks like that.  In fact, it sounds far more like, “howdayado.” 

When we began the language tapes, carefully copying each perfectly enunciated syllable, we had no idea that it was actually a lesson in futility.  So we began the tapes.   I was twelve years old and we would be moving to Brasil in a year.  I learned lots of very interesting phrases.  “Where is the bathroom?” and “I’d like to order a beer”.  Not perhaps the most useful phrase for a twelve-year-old, but I digress.

My parents flew down to visit before the move, clutching their smattering of perfect Portuguese and prepared to use it.  One phrase they’d learned was, “Thank you.”  In case you didn’t know, Portuguese is a masculine/feminine language so “Thank you” changes based on whether you are a man or woman SAYING the phrase.  My Dad missed that minor fact so his entire month of his visit, he thought it changed on TO WHOM he was saying it. 

Therefore, my father became a woman to the women and a man to the men.  Paul spoke of becoming all things to all men but, perhaps, not to this extent. 

Fortunately, he did learn the difference before the whole family moved down.  The most useful phrase we learned from the tapes—and the one we used most often—was, “I don’t speak Portuguese.”  In fact, we got so fluent at saying it that no one believed us.

If someone told you they didn’t speak English in fluent English, would you believe them?

Have you studied a foreign language?