My rant about the languages I speak (and why Spanish is my favorite)

With my recent move to the Italian peninsula I had a very interesting challenge alongside others: I had to learn Italian. I dove into grammar studies, consumed various audiovisual materials and today I find myself in Italy using this wonderful language.

With that, the following conversation came up:

• “Which languages do you speak?”
• “Speak fluently? Spanish, Portuguese, English and Italian. Catalan I can try a little bit, but I wouldn’t count it”
• “Wow, so you fluently speak 4 languages, right?”
• “Yes… four…”

And honestly I hadn’t stopped to think about it. Four languages. It is absolutely nothing out of this world, but I didn’t have this realization that it had been a while since I was just bilingual. Portuguese is the language of where I was born, Spanish of where I was raised, Italian of where I am right now and English… well, English was a necessary evil for someone who works in IT and likes to travel. But I want to share my perspective on some aspects of these four languages that don’t necessarily have any philological or scientific basis. These are my two cents on how I see each of these languages.

Let’s start from the beginning: Brazilian Portuguese. Yes, I specify the variant because there is an abysmal difference between the European and Brazilian versions, especially on a phonetic level since today I am capable of understanding spoken French better than a Portuguese person speaking. And I am not exaggerating, this actually happened. The point I have to highlight about Brazilian Portuguese is the absurd amount of synonyms that can exist for a single word. For example:

Grana, bufunfa, tutu, cascalho, dindim, pila, verba, conto, faz me rir…

All of this means money. And if we focus on words of a sexual nature, we can reach the hundreds of variations to talk about the penis, and I am not exaggerating:

1.caralho, 2. pica, 3. rola, 4. piroca, 5. cacete, 6. pau, 7. pinto, 8. peru, 9. benga, 10. manjuba, 11. jiromba, 12. jeba, 13. vara, 14. varão, 15. mastro, 16. ferramenta, 17. instrumento, 18. ferro, 19. trabuco, 20. canhão, 21. torpedo, 22. cajado, 23. porrete, 24. bastão, 25. tora, 26. verga, 27. cobra, 28. jiboia, 29. anaconda, 30. minhoca, 31. passarinho, 32. pombo, 33. pomba, 34. banana, 35. pepino, 36. mandioca, 37. nabo, 38. beringela, 39. cenoura, 40. salsicha, 41. bilau, 42. amigão, 43. garoto, 44. documento, 45. bráulio, 46. coisa, 47. negócio, 48. bingulin, 49. piupiu, 50. bicho, 51. pinto sujo, 52. peba, 53. linguiça, 54. salame, 55. chouriço, 56. linguição, 57. marreta, 58. martelo, 59. picareta, 60. pica das galáxias, 61. cobra cega, 62. vergalhão, 63. picão, 64. pica pau, 65. pinto bravo, 66. caceta, 67. caralhão, 68. pirulito, 69. estaca, 70. picolé, 71. cacete de agulha, 72. bimba, 73. zeca, 74. peça, 75. pino, 76. tarugo, 77. canudo, 78. canivete, 79. bife, 80. cacuá, 81. manjanjola, 82. manguari, 83. pirulito, 84. pinto mole, 85. pinto duro, 86. pica grossa, 87. jeba de aço, 88. vara de pescar, 89. cobra coral, 90. jeba tora…

Of course, the further you go the more eccentric the word is, but in general any Brazilian will understand from context what it means. This probably happens because of the miscegenation of the Brazilian people, as well as the taboo against speaking swear words forcing people to resort to any existing synonym.

I love the variety of the Portuguese language, the sentence doesn’t need to have the ideal format, ideal conjugation, or the ideal structure, but the Brazilian understands it. What matters is the message, not the form. That is art.

If I had to bring up a negative counterpoint, something I see is that this poetic freedom of the Brazilian is beautiful in spoken language, but in written language it is a nightmare. This and the low level of basic Brazilian education makes it the language where I see the most people (by a huge margin) out of the four languages murdering grammar in the cruelest way possible.

Let’s talk about Spanish, more precisely its Iberian form. Here I will start with the point I see as negative: the vocabulary is, by a huge margin, limited. It is not rare to have the following conversation with my wife:

• “How do you say this in Spanish?”

• “Damn… I don’t think that term exists in Castilian”

• “True, it really doesn’t exist”

And the worst part? IT DOES NOT EXIST. I will give examples so it doesn’t stay just in theory:

Sprezzatura (Italian): The art of making something difficult look extremely easy and effortless. In Spanish it simply does not exist. Spanish does not have a term for this “charm of planned sloppiness”.

Tradeoff (English): That situation where you gain something but lose something else. They need to explain the whole concept of “compensación” or “intercambio” and because of that they directly use the English term.

Saudade (Portuguese): The classic example. In Spanish you use “echar de menos” (verb) or “añoranza”, but neither of them carries the weight of an abstract noun and the existential depth of “saudade”.

And why did I start with the negative point of Spanish? Because for me that is THE ONLY NEGATIVE POINT. Spanish is by far my favorite language of the four. It is the most democratic language: in Brazil, the way you speak reveals your social class in 2 seconds, while in Spain a rich person raised in the best schools of Madrid and a low income person from some “pueblo” speak the same language, without adding or taking anything away. Another point: the pronunciation. What is written is what you read, period. No tricks, no changes, no exceptions. This might make Spaniards have a hard time assimilating foreign sounds, but it is something that to me makes Spanish so wonderful.

Spanish has no “hidden letters” or “pranks”. If it is written “mañana”, you read “mañana”. There is no ghost “H” that changes sound depending on the speaker’s mood, like in French or English.

This “iron logic” is what makes Spanish the most welcoming language in the world. It gives you the rules on day one and fulfills the contract until the very end. It is a language with no “fine print”.

It is the language I use daily at home and I do not regret it.

If with Spanish there is a lack of vocabulary, with English it is the opposite. The monstrous amount of English vocabulary is absurd. You can name anything that exists with Shakespeare’s language. So much so that anglicisms are increasingly invading other languages. There is an issue of cultural and economic dominance, but it is undeniable that English has custom designed terms for every situation. I will illustrate:

Serendipity. The act of finding something valuable or pleasant by pure chance, while you were looking for something else entirely.

Petrichor. That characteristic earthy smell that rises from the dry ground right after the first rain.

Sonder. The sudden and profound realization that each person passing by you on the street has a life as complex, vivid and full of problems as your own.

If on a grammatical level and cultivated language English is surprising, its use for everyday conversations and small talk seems to me the ugliest and most horrible thing that exists. A conversation between two English speakers is packed with “Yeah”, “Ok”, “Sure”. To be fair, non native English speakers who master the language, in my view, speak in a superior way to the natives themselves on a daily basis. Two natives speak as if they were two recently lobotomized patients. Here is an example:

Native A: “Hey.”

Native B: “Hey, man.”

Native A: “How’s it going?”

Native B: “Good. You?”

Native A: “Good. Good.”

Native B: “Yeah?”

Native A: “Yeah. Weather’s nice, huh?”

Native B: “Sure is. Pretty cool.”

Native A: “Yeah. Totally.”

This kind of conversation gives you secondhand embarrassment, truly.

The last and most recent of my languages is Italian. Yes, I will state the obvious: THIS LANGUAGE IS FUCKING BEAUTIFUL. Holy shit. Tone, gestures, cadence, vocabulary. My god, it is a work of art. The expression “music to my ears” was made by someone who stepped foot in Italy for the first time. That is if we talk about everyday Italian. If we reach a level of cultured and poetic Italian, the beauty multiplies.

If it is so beautiful, why is it not my favorite language?

Well then, Italian grammar is a pain. I am a logical person, and I love Spanish because it is logical. But Italian is not. Almost every rule has an exception. For anyone learning, this is a nightmare. Let’s talk about body parts. In any logical language, if something is masculine in the singular, it stays masculine in the plural, right? In Spanish: el brazo > los brazos. Simple.

In Italian? Italian wants to watch your world burn. You learn that “Il braccio” (the arm) is masculine. Then you, innocently, think: “Alright, the plural must be i bracci”. Wrong! The plural is “Le braccia”.

Yes, the arm changes sex when it becomes plural! It is born a man and dies a woman. And it is not just the arm: “Il dito” (the finger) becomes “Le dita”. “L’uovo” (the egg) becomes “Le uova”. It is a grammatical gender identity crisis that makes absolutely no biological or logical sense.

If the masculine word starts with a normal consonant, you use “Il”. So far, so good. But if the word decides to start with “Z” or with an “S” followed by another consonant (the dreaded impure S), Italian panics. You cannot say “Il studente”. God forbid! You have to say “Lo studente”.

And the plural? The plural of “Il” is “I”. But the plural of “Lo” is… “Gli”. Yes, this combination of letters that sounds like choking.

So you have:

• Il gatto (The cat) > I gatti (The cats) Logical.

• Lo zaino (The backpack) > Gli zaini (The backpacks) Psychotic breakdown.

Not to mention the verbs. In the past tense, you have to choose between using the auxiliary “to have” or “to be” (Avere or Essere). “I ate”? Ho mangiato. “I went”? Sono andato. Why? “Oh, because verbs of motion use Essere”. Then you look at the verb “To walk” (Camminare)… and it uses Avere!

Maa daaai, vaffancuuuulo!!!

But fits of rage aside, Italian is just that: a language to be felt, not understood. Maybe it is part of its beauty. Who knows.

Speaking four languages is not just swapping words, it is swapping personalities. In Spanish I am logical, in English I am technical, in Italian I am passionate and in Portuguese I am chaotic.

With this I want to wrap up my two cents on these four languages. We could dive into a sociological and cultural level on how different cultures shaped these languages, but kind of fuck it, right?

CIAOOO!