" Stephen bowed: but when they had put on formal clothes he said, 'Interpret, is it? As I told you before I do not speak - not as who should say speak - Portuguese. Still less do I understand the language when it is spoke. No man born of woman has ever understood spoken Portuguese, without he is a native or brought up to comprehend that strange blurred muffled indistinct utterance from a very early, almost toothless, age. Anyone with a handful of Latin - even Spanish or Catalan - can read it without much difficulty but to comprehend even the drift of the colloquial, the rapidly muttered version. . . "

― Patrick O'Brian , Blue at the Mizzen (Aubrey & Maturin #20)