Emerald Fog

A language is simply an army’s dialect. 

This little piece of wisdom was from my university Spanish language professor who, incidentally, funded his education by smuggling emeralds in a Pert shampoo bottle from South America. The Iberian Peninsula, like most of Europe, was at one time under the banner of a Roman legion. As such, the language of commerce, government, and culture was Latin. However, while it was the official language of the Empire, there were accents and dialects that were as diverse as the people from Britannia to Aquincum (the Buda of Budapest.)  

After the break up of the Roman Empire, the languages kept evolving. Words and sounds began mixing with local dialects and vulgates leading to the Romance languages we know today. However, the Iberian peninsula was changed indelibly with the advance of the Moorish empire that overtook the Christian forces, causing them to retreat all the way to the north in the year of our Lord, 711 AD. For seven hundred and eighty one years, those forces slowly began retaking the peninsula. Eventually, if you recall, this was why Castilian, the dialect of the armies of Castile and Leon became the dominant language for the Spanish kingdom after they were able to expel the Moors from the Peninsula in 1492. 

However, another army was able to assist in the Reconquista. A Galician nobleman named Vimara Peres, led an Asturian force (Asturias being the Northernmost fallback point of Spanish Christiandom) to conquer a sizeable chunk of Andalusian territory between the Minho and Douro rivers in the 9th Century, using the area as both a flank and a stronghold moving south. The Asturian King Alfonso III awarded the entire region to Peres as a country, and Peres resettled the area with Galician colonists. He named it after the largest port city in the region, Portus Cale. It does not take a great imagination to figure out what this new country would come to be called. From this point on, Portugal began to develop its own regional identity, and indeed, its own distinct dialect, separate from the others of the Peninsula that would then soon coalesce into Portuguese.

Given their coastal proximity and the advent of ocean goings ships capable of great distances, it did not take long for the Portuguese to start exercising their naval muscles. They already had colonies in coastal Africa and had their sights on new trade routes to all the corners of the world. I surmise that to keep the peace between the two most powerful nations in Christendom at the time, the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494 was signed dividing the New World. In 1500, Pedro Álvares Cabral landed in what would be known as Brazil and the rest is history. 

Having spoken Spanish in South America to this point, I felt newly humbled as I fumbled in a language I did not know. Portuguese to me was like trying to navigate a city through an incredibly dense fog. One has a general idea of where you are and how to get where you are going, but the haze was there distorting my path. Lucky for me, I had a beautiful translator by my side. My native Spanish-speaking girlfriend took her Christmas break of one week to learn Portuguese. Although, she had been fascinated by the country for her entire life, being far more culturally enticing than her native Peru.  I did the best with my pidgin Portuguese which was basically me speaking Spanish as if I were Sean Connery. I was understood more times than not. The word book is libro in Spanish and livro in Portuguese. To cry is llorar in Spanish and chorar in Portuguese. And I would learn that Lambada is universal.

The first thing that struck me about Brazil as I was traveling from the airport to my lodgings was how green it was. São Paulo was a city that felt ensconced in a garden. And the Paulistas were like the residents of Eden, beautiful and carefree. The emerald nature of the country was only heightened as we traveled to the rainforest in Foz Do Iguaçu. The nature there was almost overwhelming; as if it was going to burst through the seams of reality itself. But the verdancy which was once only contained by the gardens and the forests then spread to the waters of Rio de Janeiro. Rio was a city that seemed to grow around its nature and not the other way around. I then realized why green was such a prominent color in their national flag.

During this time there was another fog of language I was dancing through. I have been very careful with the words I use with women I am seeing, for I know they mean a whole lot more to them. Utterances, jokes, or free words can have unintended consequences. I had been with women, some for a very long time, some too long, that I did not know if I loved. Or if they loved me. Even if those words were exchanged. The silly games of wounded children in love that can sometimes feel like war. But A was different. It was more than an infatuation; a collection of a “flag.” She cared. She wanted to know my thoughts. And I hers. We talked for hours in our native tongues. She gave me new perspectives of life as I did for her. We looked after each other. She took a chance with a man she barely knew, a foreigner nonetheless, to travel to the other side of the continent. And she was happy. She was in love. I did not need her sweet words to know.     

I remember sitting on a supplied beach chair with my hand intertwined with A on Copacabana beach. As the many green caipirinhas passed our lips, I noticed that some of the many fogs swirling around me since I arrived in Brazil had lifted. I cocked my head to one side, looked deep in her eyes, and said, “Eu te amo.”