International Relations

ONLY recently did I realise that if you inadvertently mumble the English expression ‘I suppose so’, it sounds remarkably like the Portuguese word for wife (’esposa’). Go ahead, try it for yourself.

Now, whilst not applicable in my case, I can clearly see how scores of Anglo-Portuguese marriage proposals might have been disastrously misinterpreted. One minute the prospective groom is reluctantly agreeing to accompany his girlfriend to the shopping centre, the next some kind of mistranslational chaos has ensued and she is whisking him off to the local church or registry office where, inevitably, the question ‘Do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife’ - in Portuguese, naturally - is met with the fatal reply ‘esposa?’ (’I suppose so’).

No wonder England and Portugal hold the record for the world’s oldest treaty, Portuguese women must have been handling their side of the negotiations. Here’s to another 632 years of utter confusion.