Straight line
Some CNN International commentator: Schwarzenegger has an approval rating of 62%! Bush would kill for an approval rating like that!
Seth: He has!
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Some CNN International commentator: Schwarzenegger has an approval rating of 62%! Bush would kill for an approval rating like that!
Seth: He has!
Leonard recalls that he had exactly the same language problem -- he couldn't use his language knowledge because everybody kept speaking English. Yep.
I finally found a restaurant where, after initially handing me an English menu, the English-proficient staff was nonetheless actually perfectly willing to speak Portguese. At the end of my meal, I said "obrigado pela comida, e obrigado por falar o português, porque todos os homems no hotel sempre falam o inglês comigo, e quero falar português!" Actually, what I said had at least two more gramamtical mistakes than what you see here, but the waiter understood me and was actually very happy to hear someone make the effort.
Today I visited the Pão de Açúcar -- Rio's own Mount Sugarloaf -- and had a lovely time despite the general tourist-trap feeling. The views were unbelievable. At the top, I ran into a different kind of language difficulty. I heard a woman speaking Hebrew to her children. I ran into her again on the way down, speaking a mixture of Portguese and Hebrew, and so I was sorely tempted to say "com licença, senhora, at mdaberet ivrit, me-efo culchem?" ("Excuse me, ma'am -- you speak Hebrew, where are you all from?") But I chickened out because I don't actually know enough Hebrew to carry on a real conversation, and I don't even remember an idiomatic way of explaining in Hebrew that I don't know very much Hebrew. (If only I knew the Portguese word for Hebrew, I could at least have explained in Portuguese that I don't know very much Hebrew; my Portuguese is now, I think, much better than my Hebrew.) So, as I say, I chickened out and didn't say anything at all.
On the way down, I wrote a postcard in Portuguese. I had a grammar question and I actually figured out how to ask the question itself in Portuguese, but I ended up chickening out again and not asking anybody. I didn't have any good excuse not to ask that question; in fact, I at least should have asked the taxi driver on the way back. ("Por favor, posso perguntar alguma coisa sobre o português? Tento escrever para a minha família no portguês, mas não sabo: posso falar 'fico mais quatro dias'?") So if you happen to know Portuguese... (and it's still November 2004...)
Leonard had a great fear, that he would
somehow order the concept of waffles, or all the waffles in existence, or whatever weird thing I learned "la x" meant in that context; furthermore that they would actually carry out my order and I'd have to pay for the concept of waffles.
Those Platonic Forms Restaurants they have in some countries can get pretty expensive!
This is especially scary in Portuguese because it uses articles so much.
I got an e-mail message from someone at the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom. What do you suppose its MIME Content-type was?
Content-type: multipart/alternative
Heh, heh.
Contact: Seth David Schoen