As a kid, I grew up bilingual, Spanish at home, English everywhere else. I learned Italian when we lived abroad and took a few years of French in high school. You don’t really think about language as a kid, but somehow you are wired to remember it better and pick up the accents. That said, I don’t consider myself fluent in French or Italian, but I can get by.
Now as an adult, I’m learning Portuguese. I find myself wondering a lot more about the origins of the words or comparing a word in one language to another (of course in my case they all have a Latin base).
So recently, I asked my Brazilian colleagues, why on earth is it that in Portuguese the days of the week are numbered, (segunda-feira) instead of Latin based names like Italian, Spanish, French (lunedi, tunes, lundi, etc..) and no one seemed to know the answer to my dorky question. So I looked it up and found out that a monk suggested the change sometime in the sixteenth century in Portugal to get away from Pagan-based names. Really blew my mind!
That and the false cognates have me totally mesmerized (aula, clase, oficina, escritorio, esquisito, alagar, etc.) and truth be told, even though my retention is not what it used to be, I’m getting a kick out of this new language and the interculturalist in me can’t help but wonder about the stories behind the words…