Lost in Translation
(The continuing adventures of "Joe's English Mailbox")

Well here we go again, delving back into the depths of Joe's infamous mailbox, but this time, there's a new twist. The guilty party in this case is non other than your's truly.

Little Akemi Shiga (a first grade Brazilian student) finally, after months of careful deliberation, decided that she would write me a letter. Usually first year students are too nervous about their English to write to me so I was delighted at my little letter. It contained such English gems as "I like dogs" "how are you? I'm fine thank you" and "I am writing English well?" So, I decided that in addition to replying to her in English, I would also write back in Portuguese. Following the advice of every "how to be a good ALT" lecture I've been to, I decided to subscribe to the "if students see you studying another language and making mistakes, they will understand that it is O.K for them to make mistakes in English" school of thought.

So, with that I embarked on my first attempt to write my first "composition" in Portuguese. After 30 minutes of frenzied dictionary flipping and textbook consulting I produced one shiny page full of what I considered not quite perfect but understandable non the less, Portuguese. But I figured that before I gave it to her I could use my shining example of language study to soften up another one of my "Dangerous Minds", make the bad kid good students.

Good ol' Allan Arie, my favourite bad ass Brazilian student has taken quite a liking to me and spends most of the time in between his classes standing at my desk talking about how much he hates Japan and stupid Japanese teachers etc etc. I know I'm getting in good with him because he showed me a picture of his girlfriend last week and then he even let me read an juicy email she sent him in Portuguese on his cell phone. You know you're in when... Anyway, I proudly showed him my "piece de resistance" and asked him to read it over and make sure that it was understandable. I told him that it was ok if there was mistakes in it, I just wanted to make sure that Akemi could understand what I was saying.

So, he reads it, looks a bit confused but in the end he told me it was fine as is. Great! But, before I gave it to her I wanted to bring it home and show Luciano my new found skill in Portuguese.

So, I give it to Luciano and he reads it and proceeds to burst out laughing and says "oh honey you can't give this to her!!"

Mistake number 1: I wanted to write that I was very excited about going to Brazil but the word I used for "excited" actually means "sexually aroused". Yes "Dear Akemi, I am sexually aroused to go to Brazil" ....definetly a problem.

Mistake number 2: I mixed up "gostar" with "gostosa" and instead of saying "I like Brazilian culture" I actually said "I am sexy for brazilian culture"

So, if you put them together I was going to give a letter to a 12 year old girl that said, "I am moving to Brazil, I am very sexually aroused and sexy for Brazilian culture".

I think Allan was too embarrased to say anything to me. I'm gonna give him shit on Monday.

Cheers

J