Today I was explaining to someone how difficult it can be for me to navigate the differences between languages. To illustrate, I ended up describing a bus ride I once took in Brazil from Rio de Janeiro to Sao Paulo.
It was quite a long trip, so along the way the bus driver stopped at a rest stop, which contained a little snack bar, a rest room, etc. I found myself running into a surprising number of language barriers just trying to use the rest room.
First off, to enter the rest room, I needed to go through a door labeled with a word which is pronounced “Push”. In Portuguese, this word means “Pull”.
Then I needed to decide exactly which restroom to enter. One of the doors had a big “M” on the door. It turned out that the “M” stood for “Mulheres”, which is Portuguese for “Women”.
Once inside, I needed to figure out which tap was for hot water and which was for cold water. Just like in the U.S., one of the taps had a big letter “C” on it. Except in Portuguese, the “C” stands for “Calore”, which means “Hot”.
I wonder whether Brazilians visiting the U.S. for the first time are as confused about our signage as I was about theirs.