Spelling in Portuguese isn’t for sissies

In eighth grade, Joanne Longino beat me out for the school spelling contest. We’d gone back and forth for several rounds when I was given the word that I heard as “militia.” Without asking for a definition, I whipped out what clearly was the correct spelling — of the wrong word.

“M-A-L-I-C-I-O-U-S,” I said.

“Wrong,” the teached responded. Then she turned to Joanne, who spelled the correct word correctly. And then went on to correctly spell the tie-breaker: “Crescendo.”

I pass on that story to explain that even though I am a pretty good speller in English, I’m not all that good in foreign languages. I can’t spell in Italian worth spit. The same, apparently, holds true for Portuguese. I spent all last week blogging about my stay in “Sao Paolo” Brazil. Which would have been great, except that the correct spelling of the city is “Sao Paulo.”

So I had to go back and make corrections. Which I have done. If you notice a difference, no, you are not going crazy. I have adjusted the text.

If only I could do the same with my memory. “Militia,” damn it. “Militia, militia, militia”!