Cognates

Its hard to believe that I have not written very many posts about language study, since this is almost all I do with my time right now in Brazil. As you can imagine, with April and I learning a foreign language, the funny stories that could be told know no bounds! But unfortunately, one of two things usually happens, first, whenever something happens it is really funny, but by the time we get home and start thinking about it we decide its not really that funny, especially if you don’t understand both languages. Or, when it happens its not really that funny, and its not until later when I’m talking to somebody about it that it becomes funny. Well, the real reason for writing this is to share some fun misunderstandings that have happened while here. Anybody who has studied two languages knows there are words called “cognates”, which are words in two different languages that share the same origin, and therefore appear very similar (also known as “God’s little gift to Zane”). For instance, an easy example is the word “capital” which is exactly the same in both english and portuguese, a slightly harder one is the word “dictionary” and “dicionário”, which are similar enough to make the connection (especially when spoken).
Well, you can see how this makes language learning fun and exciting and sugary-sweet and everything neat, right? Well, you must know in life where there is good, there is bad, which leads us to “false cognates”, which are as horrible as they sound. These are words that dress up like friendly english words, but are in reality fakers waiting to embarrass you. The most popular of these is the verb “pretender” in portuguese, which you would think means, “to pretend”, but alas, it doesn’t, it actually means “to intend”. But what about the portuguese verb “entender”, which surely means “to intend” also? Wrong again my friend, because “entender” means to understand…understand? Well, what if I do want to say pretend? Well, that would be the verb, “fingir”, which sounds like the word “finger” in english…confused? Good, welcome to my life.
So now that we are done with the language lesson, lets look at some real life examples of false cognates that await you in the jungle of Brazil (metaphorically speaking, again, we don’t life in the jungle!). We visited a church a few weeks again a very nice man was talking VERY SLOWLY to us (which I love) after church when he abruptly turned to me and said (in portuguese), “Would you like a Corona?”… As I stared blankly at him wondering why he had just offered me a beer in the auditorium of a church, my mind began racing to come up with possible solutions for what could have been meant by his question. See, in any conversation I have my brain listens for about 2 seconds and as soon as there is something I don’t understand my brain says, “Abandon ship! Quit listening to the language and start looking for context clues!” So, naturally, I quickly started scouring the room looking for any clue as to what was just said, when I see his child and wife standing at the door to the church, clearly ready to head home, and then it clicked, the portuguese word “carona” means “a ride”, and I was so relieved to know that I was being offered a ride home, and not a Mexican beer in the middle of church! Not but a few days later, while sitting in class with our portuguese teacher we were talking about food that we liked and she (our portuguese teacher) said, “I need some Copenhagen”. Now being a born and raised Texas boy, Copenhagen only has one meaning for me, so again, the blank stare came across my face, but sadly, I found no context clues to help me understand my portuguese teachers urge for some chewing tobacky. Well, luckily I’ve been humiliated in front of her so often that I don’t have a shred of self respect left, so I just went ahead and asked for clarification. Apparently, Kopenhagen, aside from being a city in Denmark, is also a store in Brazil which sales higher-end chocolates, which makes much more sense with the current impression I have of my portuguese teacher.
So, bottom line, just because something looks friendly, don’t fall for…its probably a word that you don’t know waiting to deceive you!