BitaTruble
Posts: 9779
Joined: 1/12/2006
From: Texas
Status: offline
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I was going to post about the first couple of weeks we've spent here in Portugal, but it turned out to be way to long so instead I thought I'd put up a few of the funnier mishaps of forgetting to bring the Portuguese to English dictionary when we went to go shopping.  First, very few of the packages have little pictures on them as so many do in the US so when Himself picked up what he thought was a box of Kleenex we soon discovered that mulher guardanopo actually means feminine napkins.. as in Kotex.. not Kleenex. Rather hard to blow your nose on it.  Then there are those things which do have pictures on them but those pictures have absolutely nothing at all to do with what you are actually buying. We have a traditional Thanksgiving turkey in November, but Christmas, when I haven't been in CA has always been celebrated with fillet mignon so we bought two beautiful steaks which certainly looked like fillet mignon and there was a little picture of a cow on the package but it turns out that they were really goose medallions .. so, I'm cooking his goose in the form of a stew and that will be our Christmas dinner this year. I've never cooked goose before so in about another 30 mins, my culinary experiment will result in feast or famine and we may resort to turkey sandwhichs instead. The lap top I got for Himself for Chanukah actually does everything it's supposed to do .. however, when you convert the language to English it only converts the Internet websites to English - the rest of the lap top is in Portuguese. He's still trying to figure out how to convert all the commands (start menu, control panal etc) into a language he can actually read! Then there is the little place that Himself eats at for lunch every day. It's very small, only has 4 tables and it's owned by 3 brothers who do all the cooking, waiter stuff and table clearing. Michaels' been eating there for the past week struggling with the waiter to convey his desires for his meals. Tuesday, the inside was full, so Himself and the staff manager decided to sit outside and a guy from the UK walks by and asks the waiter for some directions. In perfect English, the guy gives him the directions and Michael looks at him and accuses him of speaking English. Both the waiter and the staff manager laughed .. and so did Himself!y Before he learned that Natal actually means or Christmas.. Himself thought it meant it meant baby and as we did some window shopping last week, he commented on how many odd stores had sales on baby items when they didn't appear to carry anything at all for the wee ones! The one that cracked me up the most was the 'pre-christmas sale' which Himself translated to the 'pre-baby' sale and wondered how the hell you could accomplish having a sale for a baby that wasn't even born yet! Just a few of the giggles we've had here that I thought would be fun to share. Now, I have to go check on that goose. Feliz Natal, everyone!
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"Oh, so it's just like Rock, paper, scissors." He laughed. "You are the wisest woman I know."
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Fun with language barriers - 
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