One of the experiences of learning a new langauge is that, in addition to verb conjugations and the proper uses of prepositions, you also get a glimpse into a whole other way of creating conceptions of the universe.
I got one of these with Portuguese this evening when I opened up my next lesson and found out it was all about vocabulary related to the telephone. There, among such mundane words as o celular (the cell phone) and linha (the phone line), I got to find out what Brazilians call an answering machine.
In Brazil, apparently, an answering machine is uma secretaria eletronica--an electronic secretary. Interestingly, although secretary is a gendered word in Portuguese, the device is always in the feminine, perhaps suggesting that Brazilian secretaries are as likely to be female as American secretaries.
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