Portuguese, this beautiful language of Luis de Camões.

Ok, so all of you reading this or at least , most of you, know that as a Brazilian that I'm, I am fluent in Portuguese. If you remember your History classes back at school, you will remember, that the Portuguese were FANTASTIC admirals and sailed the seas triumphantly when the planet being flat was still a possibility.

Portuguese colonies were established in Africa earlier and in Asia a couple of decades later than Brazil, which was in April 1500. Portuguese people went to all these colonies around the world to secure their sovereignty. Of course, as expected and as it has indeed happened with all European colonies everywhere, the accent and a couple of expressions turned out to be different from those in the Mother Country. With us, Portuguese and Brazilians, it wasn't any different.

Ok, so all this long story to share with you the funny experience we've been living lately. For some unknown reason or may be for lack of opportunities, I have never had any close friend from any Portuguese speaking country, other than Brazil, of course. Therefore my experience with the other accents is poor, just more on a social level than anything else. I remember one of my brothers had a friend in college who was from Angola. Together with his mother, they ran to Brazil after his father had disappeared during the civil war here. Also, Alice had a school friend from Angola who we car pooled with, when we lived in Johannesburg.

So, here we are now, living in Luanda, a former Portuguese colony, therefore a Portuguese speaking place. As expected, their accent is different from the original, in Portugal, the Portuguese spoken by Camões. Here, I can understand them almost ok, with no problems at all. Of course, we were both colonies, so we understand each other well, right?

However, with the Portuguese people here in Luanda, my ears have to be full on, completely attentive and not paying attention to anything else, but to the speaker. Joel's boss is a true Portuguese man and speaking to him requires a couple of "sorry, what did you say?" In the English speaking world, I guess it'd be like a real Scottish speaking to a true Texan...

One of the blogs I follow, is written by a sweet young lady and her husband, both from Portugal, who have recently moved to Luanda too. Their blog is in Portuguese and as I read it, I "travel" in time, remembering my days at the archives researching old Portuguese documents that were several hundred years old. It's a delight! However, yesterday, I had to write her and ask for some help in understanding a sentence she wrote. It was all cleared up when she wrote back, saying that "sabe a mel", translating literally, "knows the honey" (honey as in the syrup not as in Darling) means "it's great"/ "it's excellent", LOL!

But, the very best, really the very best, was listening for the 1st time ever in my life, a Portuguese person (Joel's boss) imitating a Brazilian from Rio, a Carioca, speaking Portuguese. I really rolled on the floor in a big fat laughter. I have always heard the opposite, us imitating them, not them imitating us. It was great fun!