On Life as a Gringo

There is an irritating but persistent manner about Portuguese people that due to the fact that I have (somewhat) blonde hair and an accent, I must not speak Portuguese very well and need to speak in English to do very easy things such as repeating the fact that yes, I really did say that I just want a coffee, stop making me repeat myself, thank you. It is not for want of talking loudly enough or enunciating myself clearly, it is as simple as the idea that those two things combine—especially, nay, to a degree of magnitude more so as the summer months approach and tourists begin to arrive en masse—to form the metaphorical equivalent of a neon sign on my forehead that flashes "Gringo!" every time I open my mouth. It's not that I mind speaking English, to be sure, but it's an obviously disrespectful assumption made automatically even while I am speaking perfectly decent Portuguese. Sometimes I quite simply did not hear what they said, others I was not paying attention. Sometimes I am bewildered by the fact that they didn't seem to catch the simple thing I ordered, others I am just annoyed by the useless necessity of repeating myself. Mostly it isn't personal and it would be more courteous to repeat what was said in the language we had otherwise been using. This is something perhaps more grating the longer I spend here and the ever more banal such interactions become, in which I can not lay any legitimate claim to having "off days" that would preclude me from being able to function in the world of food or other service even to the point of bantering somewhat. I may be lazy, but the language, at least to that extent, is all up there in the 'ol cabeça. Similarly, I often hear comments like "oh, how do you know so much Portuguese, do you use Google Translate?", "you look a little red today, did you go to the beach?", and so on.

It is a manifestation of a cultural insecurity, the collective doubt as to why someone would want to bother learning Portuguese here in the first place, much less spend an extended period of time here, doubt that someone who doesn't look like the prototypical Generic Portuguese Person speaks their language because the country is small, doubt that this person conforms to cultural norms as a result, doubt that this person is more than just another grating fair-skinned, lighter-haired insensitive tourist. I have never experienced anything similar anywhere in France or francophone regions of Europe except when in groups of several people where the language being spoken was English, there they opt instead to simply repeat themselves or explain themselves in a different manner. I suppose the weather makes up for it.