In one of the last sessions with my psychologist, I told that, although I didn’t fear understanding what people said, I feared that I would misunderstand what they were saying ’cause, even if there is a direct translation of the word, the meaning won’t be so direct. The most obvious example is “love”: although there is a direct translation to a understandable word in Portuguese, the meaning isn’t the same as the Brazilian word (and I’m taking my experience with the American meaning): a dad would say “I love you, son” without a problem on USA, but the direct translation would appear quite strange back in Brazil, since “love”, to us, is related to the passionate love, not to “care and like very much”.
So, the firsts weeks here didn’t have any “misunderstandable” words, except for the last week. There was a communication between two people (one of them being me :)) that, if it was directly translated to Portuguese, it would mean one thing. I was so unsure about it that I had to ask the other Julio what he thought and even he couldn’t point if there was a meaning understandable in Portuguese terms or if it was a simple communication.
I think I need to go deeper into the Australian culture to understand that…
