Oi, como vai? I just completed my first week (and a few days) of Portuguese. The whole process is rather interesting because I am learning it in Colombia so the language of explanation for the class is Spanish instead of English. That means that I am essentially learning Portuguese via Spanish. In some ways, that is very helpful. For example, most of the syntax is the same – or at least the syntax they teach students in the first week is the same! The vocabulary is very similar as well as a lot of the pronunciation. It seems the biggest difference is the use of certain sounds. I really can’t describe them but there are a lot of sounds in Portuguese that are not really used in Spanish or English.
I feel like my fellow students are way ahead of me. They seem to have an incredible advantage. Pronunciations or phrases that I struggle with seem to come very easily to them. It seems like they have already had some Portuguese but then again maybe they are just that much smarter than me.
Yesterday we had to start talking. Yes, we had to come up with phrases and talk about ourselves. The amazing part was that the conjugation of the verbs is so close to Spanish. Sometimes, I would look at my teacher and say a phrase in Spanish that I wanted to say in Portuguese. All he would correct was my pronunciation and maybe one word (like nombre = nome). Maybe he was being generous but I was truly amazed. As ridiculous as I must have sounded, I was still speaking Portuguese!
1 comment:
Wow and good luck. I'm horrible with languages--only two years out and I feel like I've forgotten all the Spanish I learned in Spain. I just don't think I could do it.
I remember being at a bus stop on campus once and hearing someone speaking a foreign language on a cell phone. I understood everything they were saying, but I knew it wasn't French (the language I was studying at the time). Turns out, they were speaking Portugese--though the kind from Europe. These days, I think I'd be lucky to identify even French, let alone understand it.
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