It was a bunch of teenage Brazilian girls who drew my attention to the poorness of the English language. I was their English teacher, and they asked me how jealousy could mean ciúmes and also inveja. They didn't get it when I explained that North Americans use the same word for being jealous over people and matter.

"But," the girls persisted, "they are two different things!" I began wondering if Brazilian kids are conditioned to become passionate, uninhibited adults by learning a language that helps them articulate the precise nature of a feeling.

The girls quickly caught me up. Inveja (een-vay-jah) is old fashioned material envy. We are jealous of acquaintances with flourishing gardenias and high metabolisms, but our insides don't start churning because of it. It's a nagging, uncomfortable feeling that normally only causes Desperate Housewife clones to suffer.

Ciúmes (see-you-mees) resides in the gut. It arrives in flickers when we see a love object talking innocently with a rival, or in boiling waves when we suspect that the person we dote on has a life that has nothing to do with us. Ciúmes can make us physically sick.

Most Americans I know treat both kinds of jealousy as the green-eyed monster that should be caged, even though it can't be indefinitely ignored. To be jealous is taboo, so our battles with the monster are private affairs.

They don't enter much into conversation unless you're in the company of types who suspect everyone of being jealous of them. For friends, we go out of our way to avoid the word, calling them merely "upset" when they really had a homicidal gleam in their eyes after staking out a rival.

In English, jealousy is a character flaw. It's the mark of an unrefined soul to be jealous over someone who has moved on, just as it is to covet that person's S.U.V. We feel petty in both cases, though anyone with a pulse knows how different it feels to be "jealous" over creature comforts and people. Maybe the language is prejudicial. Because they share "jealousy," maybe inveja has given ciúmes a bad rap.

Living in Brazil for a year meant unlearning the lessons of my American adolescence. A fundamental one is that jealousy is undignified. Ciúmes is rampant among Brazilians. In Portuguese, you say, "Estou com ciúmes" (I am with ciúmes), like it was contagious.

Unlike North American jealousy, ciúmes is egalitarian. It strikes at everyone. It's an explanation for creepy behavior, like following someone to a nightclub to lurk in a corner and keep an eye on his harem of female friends. (It wasn't me, I promise.)

The real criminal actually called her object later to admit what she did, all because of ciúmes. She insisted she was satisfied with friendship, but was with ciúmes because of a particularly treacherous-looking blonde friend of his just the same.

I'm not saying that girls there are given to stalking, or that Brazilians talk so much about jealousy because they are silly. Only that ciúmes is so commonplace that cracking jokes makes more sense than taking it very seriously.

If an American girl followed her heart with such candor, she'd be called a freak, but the Brazilians who knew about my heroine didn't find her so strange. She was just a funny girl who had a bad case of ciúmes like most of her sex.

Making my Brazilian re-education harder was environmental shock. I'd just finished up four years at Yale, where students are constantly reminded of how special they are. If you start having symptoms like jealousy that show an affinity with Small Minds, call it by another name.

Somebody at your favorite coffee shop might set you off because he's hammering away at his laptop while you're stuck on the opening line of your paper, or because he's too busy flirting with the barista to check out the cleavage you've aimed at him. Be upset or tired. Be overworked and undersexed. In any event, don't be jealous.

To redo my adolescence in Brazil, I had to fight my instincts of how to behave myself in public. I submitted to waves of boys and girls kissing me on the cheeks as they came and went, and eventually doled out the kisses without dwelling much on how fake it seemed to be so undiscriminating with my charm.

I stopped flinching when people touched me on the hand or shoulder at the good part of a story, and became so assimilated into their practice that a New Yorker friend had to remind me that she didn't like to be touched when I rested my hand on her knee. After some false starts, I became a big fan of kissing in public.

Paring down the buffer space that Americans mind when we move amongst each other has a spiritual dimension, too. It's easier to understand why someone would confess their ciúmes, their virginity, or their observation that you've gained some weight once you see that the distance separating strangers isn't of American proportions. It can be bridged straight away, after a night of great conversation complimented by rounds of cold beer.

Calling ciúmes by a gentler name would be unrealistic in the close quarters Brazilians keep. Despite the reluctance of English-speakers to call it by its name, "jealousy" is easy enough to spot, and Brazilians are less disposed to be gentle and let it go. But since ciúmes isn't as racy as the American jealousy, people are gamer to own up to it.

True to nature, males tend to be quieter on the subject until they become unglued over their sisters and close friends. Declaring ciúmes on behalf of sacred females, whose infatuation with other men is reasonable cause for much ranting and gnashing of teeth, is honorable. (Out of context, I was thrown by the first few males who told me they were "jealous" of their sisters' boyfriends.) It's normally the sisterhood that discusses conventional "jealousy" with a kind of swagger.

I've heard propaganda from inside the country that Brazilian women are the most ciumenta in the world, and they would have you believe it. Women would tell me how bad their ciúmes was, but using that smug tone of someone who complains about being exhausted after going on lots of dates, as though ciúmes were the price they paid for having such passion.

Declaring one's ciúmes is faintly threatening, which makes it useful. Being a gringa, I sometimes felt like Julia Roberts by virtue of speaking English as well as she does and being the center of attention more often than not. Maybe that's why the girls took care to remind me of their ciúmes, a more menacing cousin of that tepid green monster.

To be just to them, the odds of being touched by "jealousy" are stacked against you in Brazil. Americans aren't so colorful when we become infatuated, and we have a reputation for taking things too seriously. We accept compliments as the tokens of a promise (maybe just for a night), we don't kiss in public, and we insist on privacy.

Brazilian men are mystifying creatures for the uninitiated. They can declare how lovely and special you are with no design besides being nice, or kiss you passionately and then disappear. Minutes later, they can extend these same courtesies to others. There's a saying in Portuguese that goes, "A fila anda," which means "the line moves"; truly, its progress is dizzying. The line might not really be faster than in the U.S. (for some people), but more goes on the public record.

It's true that Brazilians tend to take a more casual view of things, but even so, certain people are bound to make an impression. When they reappear next to someone else, they are missed and despised with a fervor unimagined by a people who don't know what ciúmes are.

I learned how to say, "I'm jealous," in Brazil. It has a funny ring to it in English. Just as I'd feel ridiculous wearing a Brazilian bikini on the Jersey Shore, I couldn't say I'm jealous out loud here. At the risk of sounding like a jerk who goes abroad and then inserts foreign words for English ones she pretends to forget, I will go on being ciumenta.

Better to have ciúmes than be upset. Better to use the right word and understand that you are capable of adoring people without giving yourself permission, which gives them the power to make a fool of you sometimes. I like having ciúmes, but I'll keep them to myself.

Cotton graduated college in May 2004 and spent the next year teaching English in Vitória, Brazil. She lives in New Jersey and can be reached at cotton_delo@yahoo.com.

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