Pants On Fire

There are two lies people living abroad in a country not of their native tongue deal with more than any other.  One they are told, the other they tell.

The former is how "good your new language is!"  It truly is amazing that even I know I pronounced things funny, conjugated everything in the wrong tense, and called you a woman, sir, but thank you.  Also, since I am aware of my own awfulness, this is no longer a compliment, but a perverse slap in the face.

The lie we tend to tell ourselves is actually more of a stretched untruth:

"Que pena, pero no hablo español." 

"Je suis très désolé, je ne parle pas français." 

"Me desculpe, mas não falo português."  

Sorry dude, I just don't speak your language.

This is an untruth on several levels, all of the speaker's own choosing.  For me, I understand a good deal in Portuguese, but if the speaker is too fast, slangy, or accented, then "I don't speak Portuguese."  However, since I do understand some things, oftentimes I use this catch-phrase to avoid a conversation.

Case in point, today at the grocery store on the way home from work:  All I needed was to grab some bananas, detergent, and eggs.  In and out.  Except when the oldest man in all of Campinas steps in front of me to complain about the price of papayas.  (This is not a figure of speech; he honestly wanted to vent his rage over the mark-up of the fruit compared to another shadier grocer a few blocks away.)

He spoke.  I understood the gist of his topic of conversation.  I decided I wanted no part in it.  I smiled and told him I didn't speak Portuguese.  You don't put yourself between the deer and the rifle unless you want to get shot.  I wanted to go home, not discuss the economic principles of papayas in Brazil.

Usually this lie works.  Normally people either smile back out of embarrassment or pity - sometimes suspicious eyebrow raised contempt - and step slowly away, lest they catch whatever language-related contagion you're carrying.  Not Grandpa Papaya!  He eyed me with a look that was both inconvenienced and stern; as if to say, "I didn't ask you if you spoke anything.  I told you the price of papayas is ridiculous!  Do you agree or not?!"

Also, I should mention I was cornered.  The man with a cane and four liver spots on his left cheek had me between a stocker's push-cart, the yogurts in the freezer case, and the now-infamous papayas.  And he was waving the ad from the other grocer in my face, clearly enough that I could see - thanks to the circle he drew around it - that, indeed, the papayas are cheaper a ten minute walk from here.  He was so adamant about them that I actually looked down at the bananas in my hand, concerned I had grabbed something else and he was just trying to be a good fellow consumer.

I reminded myself on the walk home that I used to use the verb "to comprehend" in lieu of "to understand" when I was trying to avoid conversation in Colombia.  Even the street beggars would look at you with pity and shake their heads with that one.  Time to go to the dictionary...