Old Brains & A New Language

I sucked at high school Spanish. In fact, one of the main reasons I majored in Business in college was because it did not require me to take 2 years of language classes. Portuguese is a much more difficult language than Spanish – or many other languages. In spite of our old brains, we are both determined to learn the language of our new country of residence. We feel it will not only help us acclimate, it is also the only polite thing to do. We started with the app Memrise about 8 months ago. Our discipline has varied, but we have been pretty consistently studying (independently) an hour or more most days; more as the move date gets closer. While Portuguese has some similarity to Spanish, it is still very different. We have decided that it is as if the Portuguese consciously want to disassociate themselves from everyone else.  So, the tiny amount of Spanish I have retained just gets in my way.

In addition, we always need to check translations we look up to be certain they are in European Portuguese and not Brazilian Portuguese  – which is quite different – and much more common. Google Translate is Brazilian Portuguese.

It will be interesting to see if what we think we are learning will actually come out in words the locals can understand. The compounding problem is that the majority of Portuguese, especially those under 40, speak decent English. Many speak amazing English. They are also really generous and kind people. So, they are quick to jump in and try to “help” by switching the conversation to English. Other expats report this makes it harder to have opportunities to practice the language. We’ll see. 

The language is full of oddities. There are lots of letters in their words they totally ignore. Especially the o’s at the end. Like thank-you which is obrigado when said by a man. When you say it, just pretend that the o is not there. But, that is not a hard rule. With other words they say it clearly; like in perto. (close.) Yet ignore it in certo (certain.) No logic. Then there’s this: You have the months such as outubro, novembro, and dezembro.  You would expect that ending to be simple, right? Not. The “bro” sounds like a p. At least on our app. Or, the words that end in ir that sound more like ēd (so vestir – to wear -sounds like ves-steed.) Or, the words that start with an r that sound like you are hacking up a hairball. So, our tired brains have to learn: what’s the right word, how is it said vs. how it is spelled, what order to put words in to make a sentence (often defies logic), PLUS which words have which different accent marks. In addition to our regular a to z, they use à, â, ã, â, é, ê, í, ó, õ, ô, û, ú, and ç! I’m sure when we start taking classes with a teacher,  much of the logic and rules will be explained, but so far many of the patterns elude us.

We giggle at the phrases the app seems to thinks we’ll need to know. I already have some favorites: