Otimo

Portuguese is a delightful language.

When I close my eyes, slip my sandals off and hoist my ears to the conversations going on around me I imagine being in a comfy barrel surrounded by drunk mosquitoes. It’s all jjjjj and zzzz and waves rolling into each other of vowels that couldn’t care less where one word stops and another begins, a melty-cheese of a language that belongs in a cartoon world of languorous ducks swimming backstroke while blowing kisses. I don’t understand a word, but it soothes.

Speaking Spanish does not help. Or at least that’s what I’ve come to believe from my not-so-unique vantage point of not really speaking Spanish. Sure, you can muddle your way through a page of text while remembering those Berlitz tape conjugations used for a trip to that Mexican Club Med sometime in the late 1990s. But literate functionality is of little help when you need to order a drink, get cable TV installed -- or insinuate to a pushy driver that it would be redeemable on his part if he took his self-regarding ways to a parthonegenic state impossible for all animals except earthworms and, it appears, sharks. You simply cannot ask a Brazilian to wait while the conversation is scribbled out on whatever parchment is at hand. Even preparing yourself – Pillow Book-style – won’t cover all eventualities.

And throwing Spanish around can be risky. Just try reciting the alphabet and watch the Brazilians sidle away when you hit Q. And the incompatibility of Portuguese using ‘no’ to mean ‘in the’ whereas Spanish-speakers instinctively take it to mean, well, ‘no’ (one wonders why?), creates all sorts of opportunities for misapprehension. Particularly if you’re on a date.

Naõ, there are too many pitfalls in relying on Portuñol. The only way forward is immersion into the language. Dive straight on in and join those punchdrunk mosquitoes and wacky ducks.

It was in that spirit I bought a ticket to the movie “Elite Squad”. Sorry: “Tropa de Elite” (pronounced TRO-pah jay Ee-Lychee – if you don’t speak Portuguese and someone’s recommended the film to you, you could be forgiven for figuring it’s a mystical tale about eating way too many Asian fruits. It’s not, trust me.) The film is apparently a riveting exposé of community relations as employed by those civil servants beloved the world over: police officers. Acts of kindness are legion in the script. And the warmth of human natures just kind of shines through, sparking up the screen. Er, or maybe those illuminations were from the canon explosions of the arsenal of high-calibre weapons wielded by the flak-jacketed cops.

In any case, that celluloid assault did wonders for my grasp of the language of Brazil. I didn’t catch all of it, or even most of it. But I now feel much better qualified to engage in conversation with law enforcement officers or proponents of the country’s unofficial economy. Bring ‘em on. It would be kinda like Quentin Tarantino addressing the UN. Only with even more cocaine influence.

Of course, the path to language mastery is long, and I’m not even at the first petrol station. In the meantime, my tactic is to repeat the four magic words that make it sound, simultaneously, that I am both fluent and hip:

“Otimo.” “Legal.” “Belleza.” "Bacana."

With those four words, doors have opened, taxi drivers have launched into soliloquies about their families and barmen have been prompt with my order. I’ve participated in whole conversations where my sole contributions have been repeated offerings of "otimo" and "legal". I’m not sure, but I think I even navigated my way through the opening of a bank account by smiling and effusively offering that the manager was "belleza". Which he certainly wasn't.

Once I get to the stage of stringing sentences together, I'm sure I'll be able to find some creative ways to get myself into trouble (with the escape policy of blaming any offence on my poor grasp of the lingo).

In the meantime though, it's drunken mosquitoes in my ear and an otimo smile on my lips.