Cloth recommendations for first navy odd jacket

[storeynicholas]

I'm just teasing. It is actually good to reflect that the English-speaking peoples have given the whole world the foundation for modern civilian and naval and military dress and a wonderful language in which to communicate; both dress and language evolve and change, according to location, circmstance, usage and taste....." and if you want pockets on your blazer, sir, you can have 'em." (to be said with a cockney accent). We met a German in Buzios yesterday and I apologized for the fact that neither my German or Portuguese was likely to be up to the standard of his English and he rather graciously said that the British don't learn languages because "you don't have to". This is a fact - although I am trying to speak Portuguese here.
NJS

[RWS]

He was right: we don't have to learn other languages, other people learn ours. (And why not? With the largest vocabulary by far of any language that's ever existed, and with one of the most complex, supple, and expressive grammars, most foreign communication is translatable into English, in which more can be said with less effort.) I find that my efforts to bring my Spanish back to fluency aren't much helped by my stays in Buenos Aires, for my Argentine friends and cousins more want to practice their English with me than to hear my limited castellaño.

But both Spanish and Portuguese (well, good Lusitanian Portuguese, at least!) are lovely languages.

[storeynicholas]

The Carioca Brazilian-Portuguese language spoken in Estado do Rio de Janeiro is, in the hands of a well-educated Brazilian, attractive to listen to. It is a strange sound to me because it is Portuguese with a French accent and incorporating other vatiations, like making the d in 'tarde' sound like a j or sometimes it is omitted altogether, so that 'Good afternoon' becomes 'Boa tah'. Never a brilliant linguist, I have managed to cobble together the remains of my schoolboy French and Latin to get to reasonable grips with the the local lingo. However, the town which we live in (50 miles east of Rio Centro) is located in a beautiful area, between mountains, lagoons and ocean, which we feel the Cariocas and Fluminenses would rather keep to themselves (!) - I mean a genuine observation and not to be ungracious - as I have been told to 'get out' of a small local cafe (presumably just for being a foreigner and, fairly obviously underneath the sun tan, a pastey Celt! - my wife suffers less as she is darker in hair and complexion), and we have 'gringos!' shouted at us, with some asperity, from time to time. Indeed, I suspect that if Brits or Americans behaved towards other nationalities as some of these people do, one would hear the march of the policemen's feet. Buzios is more of an international town and we are planning to spend more time there as it has all the facilities which we are used to - restaurants, cinema, shops (although I am afraid that I would never buy any clothing here). Anyway, pleasant to have a chat!
Nicholas.

[RWS]

. . . . It is a strange sound to me because it is Portuguese with a French accent . . . .

My own impression (having fair dominio in Spanish but, as yet, nothing beyond portuñol in Portuguese) is exactly that: a variety of Spanish, spoken with a French accent. Of course (I write flippantly but as a former historian), there is ground for such an impression!

. . . . we have 'gringos!' shouted at us, with some asperity, from time to time. Indeed, I suspect that if Brits or Americans behaved towards other nationalities as some of these people do, one would hear the march of the policemen's feet. . . .

And most of those feet would have been shod in the States or Britain. Amusing, in a way, that we are so much harder on ourselves than others are on us or themselves.

Ah, well. 'Refreshing to have a website in which some absurdities of human nature seldom appear.