Trailer Park

 

There are some American things for which there are no Brazilian concepts. The trailer park is one of them. One of our teachers asked us to tell a story about the where we lived growing up. I lived in a trailer park and wanted to tell something that required an understanding of the stereotypical American trailer park.  During the conversation, we learned there is no such thing as "trailer park" in Brazil. They don't have a word for it, they don't have the concept of it and they don't understand the stereotype. The closest we could get to the physical characteristics of a trailer park was a campground, but Brazilian campgrounds are nothing like US trailer parks. The closest we could get to the stereotype was a favela but trailer parks and favelas are not comparable in any way. So, I didn't do a very good job telling my story.  It was exciting, however, to get this example of cultural-linguistic differences because we are fast becoming cultural-linguistic nerds.