Adventures in language

Yesterday, I took Helena to the grocery store, and as always, she was the hit of the day, with everyone staring at her, talking to her... (in fact, we may have to work hard so that she doesn't get too arrogant, given how everyone dotes on her in public.)  Then, at the cashiers, we checked out and Helena said "obrigada" to the girl working the line.  The girl was in a bad mood, and didn't pay attention to Helena, so Helena spoke in a louder voice, "Thanks!"  The message, at least the one I understood, was "if you don't understand me in Portuguese, then let me try English!"  Better, after all, to think that someone doesn't understand, than to think that they are being rude.

The point of all of this, I suppose, is that Helena has learned that language is descriptive; it's also a way to ask for what you want.  But at some basic level, language is a social lubricant, a way to make contact with other human beings.  And when they don't recognize that element (something common to rude cashiers and many types of analytic philosophers), Helena wants to try something else.  Even if that means talking English in Brazil.

This morning, another interesting bilingual game.  Helena loves to use the diminutive and the aggrandizing forms of nouns: Mãe (mother) becomes maezinha (little mommy), a rock is a pedrinha, and she sings "macaco, macaquinho, macacão" (monkey, little monkey, big monkey) to herself for hours on end.  As she walked around her room this morning, looking for her stuffed alpaca ("paca, paca?"), she had to step around a number of pillows.  She looked at Rita and me in the way she does when she wants us to do something, and said, "pilinho."

"Pilinho" would be the perfect diminutive form if pillow were a Portuguese word, meaning "little pillow."  It isn't, of course, and Helena probably learned quickly as we laughed.  But it makes me wonder how Helena distinguishes one language from another.  How does she hear the difference?  Know that she should speak one language to me, and another to a person she meets on the street?  Honestly, I'm not sure how she figures it out, but as her language skills get better (and as we travel to the US next month, where she'll have to figure out the whole context anew), I have a lot to learn.