Something for the weekend, Sir
After having been to Brazil with my Brazilian wife for the first time, I returned home by myself, with my wife remaining behind for a couple of extra weeks with her family. On my way back, having learnt the very basics, I decided to try out my newly found language skills in Rio airport duty free and try and buy a t-shirt, extra large with Ipanema written on it. Knowing the word for shirt was camisa and having been told the diminutive of a noun was to add -inha or -inho to the end, depending on the gender, I put the two together to get a 'little shirt', and said in my best Portuguese that I wanted uma camisinha grande com Ipanema. The lady in the shop smiled nicely and replied back in Portuguese that they didn't have any. Not too disappointed I returned home and proud of my achievement in speaking Portuguese I later recounted the story to my wife when she returned home. She sheepishly explained I had asked for an extra large condom with Ipanema written on it! No wonder they didn't have any in extra large sizes!
Sent by: Robert
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That´s really funny....that´s the problem when we say diminutive of a noun (inho-inha) could change the meaning totally, lol.
In Portugal we use the word T-shirt as well! In Brazil is more like camiseta and not camisa. Camisa is a shirt (either in Brazil or in Portugal). You can say camisinha here in Portugal, because that would be a little shirt and not a condom. That we call preservativo. It's a long and complex word for something so simple, isn't it? The word preservativo comes from the verb preservar, to preserve. So a preservativo is something used to preserve! :)
That was really funny! Many foreigners make the same mistake here in Brazil! It's surprising the girl didn't understand such a common error.
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It really depends on the pronounciation of the word. They are very diffent.
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