Gazetteer

I say AY-zores, you say a-ZORZ.

And guess what: We're both wrong.

Well, maybe not completely wrong. After all, AY-zores is the preferred pronunciation in Webster's. The British put the accent on the second syllable, which is beginning to sound more natural to me. But the other day someone here suggested very gently that if I was going to go around telling people about my time in the Azores, I should start pronouncing it correctly. It has three syllables, as in the Portuguese (Açores): a-ZOR-uz. Of course, in Portuguese it probably sounds more like MUSH.

Cows and Flowers

Flores is loaded with cows. Whenever you go someplace, up a road or a footpath, wondering What's up here? it turns out to be a cow. Well, sometimes it's a goat, but most of the time it's a cow.

There are, however, no dairy barns. I saw a man on a horse with a milk can hanging off each side. And then I came across this portable milking station:




The other thing Flores is famous for is flowers. Its name means flowers. Hydrangeas have naturalized here. They are not at their peak right now (that happens in July), but there are enough to satisfy me. The Portuguese for hydrangea is ortensia.

Of course I've tried to take pictures of the landscape, all combinations of hills and pastures, cows and the sea. This is the only really good one. It came out looking like a painting! Except that the horizon is not level. Tilt your head slightly when you look at it. Better yet, blur your eyes.



I went to church again yesterday (Sunday), because I didn't want the good people of Lajes to think that the big American tourists went to church only when there was a free lunch afterward (proving once again that there is no free lunch). I caught a few more words this time, including palavras (words), Senhor (Lord), oremos (let us pray), mundo (world), sangue (blood), memoria di me (pretty obvious at what point I caught on, isn't it?), and amanhá (tomorrow). Oh, and creio (I believe). I also picked up a two-month-old copy of the church newspaper, from which I learned that Irmã Lúcia (Sister Lucia), one of the three children who saw Our Lady of Fátima, has been put forward for beatification, the first step toward sainthood. Fátima is a huge cult here, and explains all the processions with children carrying crowns for the Virgin. I saw a notice on the church bulletin board saying that next week is First Communion. I think I might take next Sunday off.

Perils of Portuguese

Where is the Eclair? To fly to the Azores, I had to leave from Boston, so she is in Massachusetts, where I hope the friend who has her keys will open the windows on sunny days to rid her of mildew.

Here in the Azores, the little bit of Portuguese I learned in Brazil is useless. One book advises that Portuguese pronunciation is extremely difficult, and until you have mastered it there is no point in building a vocabulary. It is typical of the perversity of Portuguese that one of the most difficult words to pronounce is also one of the most common, the word for bread: pão. (A lot of words, by the way, are more recognizable, at least in print, if you stick in an "n" when you see that tilde over a vowel, hence, pan, pane, pain.) The sound of that nasalized diphthong comes from deep inside the head. One book advised holding your nose while you say it. I can´t very well hold my nose when I ask in the grocery store "Onde é o pão?" In Brazil, this problem was complicated by the fact that if you mispronounced pão as pao, without the tilde ("pow" in English), you were asking for something completely different. Pao means a stick of wood and has the same slang meaning as it does in English (woody, or hard-on). In Bahia, the bread came in either rolls or small loaves, and I once compounded my error by mispronouncing pão and using my hands to indicate that instead of rolls I wanted a nice nine-inch loaf.

At least I have trained myself not to give people the O.K. sign by making a circle of thumb and forefinger. In Brazil, that is the equivalent of the raised middle finger. People tend to be surprised at a party when they ask you, say, if you liked the salgadinhos ("salty little things," appetizers), and you give them the finger.

I'm not sure if this holds true in the Azores, but I now give the thumbs up wherever I go, just in case. I find it is more universal. Also, lucky for me in light of my Portuguese speech impediment, the bread in the Azores comes in big round loaves.