Having never, never been to America, you know Multi generational decedents Of confederates who fled the United States in 1860 something And now here you are Going to America for the first time in like a hundred plus years. I told Dan Coleman "Where's your carriage? " Carriage for car?
Yeah! Garage for a car! [Brazilian Portuguese] Hello, how are you?
How's it going? You are Brazilian? Yeah What part of Brazil?
I was born in Paraná I spent some time in Minas Gerais. And I've been in São Paulo since 1970 Do you speak English too? Yes, a little My English is a little rusty Because I haven't been to the States for maybe 20 years And I never, I never stayed in the States over.
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say, uh, 20 days and that was in 78. I speak English since I was a kid. Your accent to me is so interesting Because you have a slight Brazilian accent But also a southern U.
S. accent Yeah, I think it's a little bit erased Because I haven't been speaking English for a long time, you know You might be the last person who has this kind of Southern accent Well, there's a distant cousin of mine He's older than I am But he would be probably the last one that I know of When the South lost the war a lot of people leave Wanted to leave the country, you know General Lee was against it Some die hard southerners decided to come to Brazil It is said that they spoke to Dom Pedro II Which was the emperor of Brazil at that time We're talking 1866 And it was interesting for Brazil because, Because of the war, the price of cotton shot up Dom Pedro was interested in having cotton grown in Brazil And of course they had plantations When Jefferson Davis was captured One of his, at least two of his guards came down to Brazil also But what happened is they came down A small group came down and spoke to Dom Pedro They found land similar to Georgia and about 400 families settled in Santa Bárbara d'Oeste So they married between them And they had the language barrier and they lived on farms They thrived and they married And my mother was one of the first ones that married out of the colony I never went to school And I learned how to speak English with my My grandmother used to teach me English But I used to spend vacations At my grandfather's farm And my grandmother, she taught me English That's how you ended up with this This Southern accent Oh yeah I think so But real quick before we get back to the video A quick shout to Saily for sponsoring it So I recently got back from a month long international trip Where I was staying in places with spotty or no wifi But that's where Saily came in Saily was an absolutely essential tool for me to stay connected while abroad It's an eSIM service where you can choose from affordable data plans In over 170 countries and regions It's way cheaper than your international carrier's roaming plan And way more convenient than getting a A local physical SIM card to put in your phone I actually remember the days when I used to have to stand in line With my passport To get a physical SIM card in the country I was going to And basically waste half of my entire first day in the country But now with Saily All I have to do is download the Saily app before I leave my own country Select a data plan for the country I'm traveling to And then use my personal code Xiaomanyc To get 15 percent off the checkout And when I was abroad all I had to do was turn on Saily To get super fast internet wherever I was Whether I had Wi Fi or not So download the saily app using this QR code To get 15 percent off using my coupon code Xiaomanyc And now back to the video, let's go Because to me this is so interesting because Your family has been in Brazil for five generations now? Six generations?
Your grandmother grew up in Brazil My grandmother spoke English and spoke Portuguese with a very heavy accent My grandfather also They never spoke Portuguese in the household She's growing up in Brazil in this town Yep Speaking like Southern English and Yeah A Brazilian, like Portuguese with with an American accent And the second or third generation they had married between themselves So they created a lot of schools here They didn't have anything to do with Brazilians Right Their community only spoke English in this town Yeah Because when I listen to you to me it sounds like a mix of Something Slavic, but then this Alabama thing I told you I told you that, you know, I'm rusty First time I went to the States was in 79 And it was the strangest feeling That you could ever feel Because you know, everything was different I was in New York city and everything was different The smells were different The buildings were different The cars were different The people were different But I understood everything they said It's the strange feeling I'm so curious Like, what did that feel like to you Having never, never been to America, you know Multi generational decedents Of confederates who fled the United States in 1860 something And now here you are Going to America for the first time in like a hundred plus years I visited the Cleveland museum You know you can stay days in there Cleveland Yeah They have a great museum there I attended a concert I spent 20 days there but they took good care of me I traveled through Georgia and Kentucky I didn't go to Alabama I would have liked to go to Alabama because My great grandparents came from Alabama also When you went to America What did Americans think of your accent Like, where do they think you were from They thought I spoke very good English In fact I had a bank manager down here, a year or 2 ago He said I spoke better English than he did I'm not sure And the first time I went to New York I picked up a cab and the cabbie was, you know, an Indian The guy that used a turban Yeah. Probably Sikh Probably Sikh Sikh Probably Sikh And I asked him where do you think I come from He looked at me I had a big nose and he said probably from Egypt So they don't place me, you know, if they don't know anything about me They can't place me They don't know what the hell I am Did it feel in some sense to you like Combing back to a long lost homeland in any way? No No I was very emotional because I visited several battlefields And then one of them, I wandered away from the track and I stumbled on the place where my great-great grandfather Was standing there With [General James] Longstreet The Battle of Chickamauga Are there any unique phrases or expressions That you still remember Or maybe that you use personally?
My grandmother used queer She used to say, so and so is a queer man Which is a strange man And she used the word naturally, it didn't mean that Yeah, yeah, yeah It didn't mean anything you know, the exception that has today I went to the States once in Georgia And I told Dan Coleman "Where's your carriage? " Carriage for car? Yeah Carriage for a car You must remember they came here before there was a motor car An automobile The queer thing I remember that very clearly because The queer thing It sounds like 18th century Victorian English Yeah There's a queer thing about this matter I like the way you say "what" or "where" There's a little bit of like a where or what Yeah.
Well my cousin and I, my cousin's name is Robert Lee But he won't have anything to do with the Confederates Yeah, he speaks English Does your cousin speak English like you do? Yeah Yeah Wow, so there's still some people who speak like this Oh, we're probably the last ones And he speaks English with me When we're in public to show off, you know Really? And we were, we were arguing yesterday We were arguing about I said, it's "a limony" and he said, no, it's alimony I said, no I think it's "a lemony" no, it's alimony Then he sent me an internet thing that spells out the word and says alimony But "a limoney" might be a regional pronunciation Could be, you know, but I heard it down Charlie Harper When they're discussing the alimony of his brother Charlie Harper?
Yeah Two and a half men The series Yeah, I've heard of it You've heard of it I'm a big fan I watched it maybe five or six times The whole thing You know, He was my hero Does he pronounce it like "a limoney" No he pronounces it as Alimony When you watch these American TV shows these days Oh they hate me because I put it in English I hate, I hate dubbed stuff I hate it I just I can't imagine You know, I can't imagine John Wayne speaking Portuguese It's hideous It's ridiculous To the rest of your families, they're like No we want to see this in Portuguese, though But you insist on English If you'll watch it there I'll go and watch it some other place I'll put the thing, you know, what do you call it The legendas Subtitles? Huh? The captions I'll put the captions in Portuguese so they'll understand because I have a girlfriend And she don't speak a word of English So when we watch films together I put it in English And then I'll put the captions so she'll read it But I watch all the big films, all the good.
. . You know, Sam Peckinpah And yeah I used to like movies very much And I have Citizen Kane here And how do you feel about it culturally?
Culturally I think the average Brazilian and the average American are all idiots Okay Outside of language are there any customs Or traditions that your family has maintained For one thing we never commemorated Halloween No This came down to Brazil after we were colonized by the Americans Because we import everything, films, movies We never commemorated Halloween Halloween was brought to the States by the Irish And the Irish settled mainly in the North That's so interesting that you guys essentially skipped over that phase of American history When America got Halloween And so for you it's this totally foreign thing Are there any unique foods that you have We make cornbread to this date You still make cornbread Oh yeah My daughter makes cornbread I make cornbread Really? Yeah That's amazing We make baked beans also Baked beans Yeah I had a cookbook that my mother and my grandmother had Biscuits I haven't made biscuits for a long time You make biscuits Yeah The recipe was passed down Down through the generations Cornbread Here it is Oh, wow When I went to the States, I had. .
. What's the name of that chain that makes typical southern food Oh, there's a few Waffle House, Cracker Barrel Cracker Barrel Yeah Cracker Barrel And what did you think of the food at Cracker Barrel You know, we didn't have that kind of food here We had cornbread and What's the thing you make with corn It's real yellow And you have it at home Porridge? No, porridge is in English I forgot the name, but you know, my grandfather used to have it Grits No, we didn't have grits I learned about grits in the States Yeah You didn't have grits Okay No we didn't have grits, brown corn.
Ground corn I'm looking it up Is it mush Mush That's it Mush We have mush Cornmeal mush I've never heard of this I guess I have heard of it but I. . .
Mush, that's it That's it Mush And he used to give it to the dogs And we used to have mush also. Okay And then you never had grits but you first learned about grits First time you know, in the late eighties When I went First time to the states So Grits may be one of those, not even really truly It may have come later Grits is potatoes, isn't it It's made out of potatoes Wait a minute my daughter is on the phone Hello Do you ever speak to your daughter in English No No No What does it feel like for you now To be one of the last few people who speaks English like this I'm 73 years old The feeling is that, I don't believe here nor there You don't belong You don't have the belonging I guess I don't know if how you would describe your own identity Do you feel Brazilian, American, Confederate? I feel Brazilian but I talk about the Brazilians also And the Americans Oh, look, you guys are crazy You are all crazy You are, you know, the Americans are completely out of their minds They just run around and kill everybody You know one of the things I admire And the Americans is their sense of taking advantage of space You know, you have large things One day I walked for over half an hour In the parking lot in Boston you know yeah that's right Well I don't I don't want to talk too much about politics in this But I'm just curious do you have any thoughts on American politics these days?
Sometimes I'm a Democrat Sometimes I'm a Republican depending on what we're dealing with You couldn't have two worse Candidates But I'm a translator, I have no political action If people need some translation work, where should they go? I have a website it's bettertrans. com.
