Thursday, October 27, 2005

For you portuguese speakers out there...

From the site of a real estate broker in Rio de Janeiro, who offers in bold letters with animated American and British flags, customer service in native english for its customers.

We speak English!

We offer personal attendance in the English language for customers to whom desire to buy or sell immovable in the state of Rio de Janeiro. Our real estate mainly works with the quarters of Barra da Tijuca, Recreio dos Bandeirantes, Vargem Grande, Vargem Pequena and Angra dos Reis. We have a gamma of preoperty of high quality: mansions, houses, penthouses, apartments, stores and commercial room.

Do not leave of consulting us when negotiating your property in our city.Only purchase and sell. We do not work with rent.

Fabulous, just fabulous.

Another great one I heard the other day was about a brazilian guy from Santos that attended an exchange course in Cambridge with Ricardo several years ago. The young student came into the classroom (which was full of brazilians as well as other people from around the world studying english) and proudly announced that he had, "Passed machine two on my head."

I guess when you think about it, compared to other languages it is somewhat complicated to say that you've gotten a haircut in english!!!

2 comments:

Bart Treuren said...

hahahaha.... such a lovely combination of the "if you can't convince them, confuse them" routine and just plain cross-cultural confusion in general...

very funny, a little sad for those involved and caught up in the cross-fire because they probably feel just a little ridiculous, but well worth mentioning here... :D

Anonymous said...

Great laugh of reconition ;)