It is with great pleasure that I present you the first guest post of this blog, written by my dear ChanahEmiliania - a very intelligent and kind girl who's learning Portuguese. Here, she tells us more about her experiences with the language.
Thank you again, my friend!
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Oi gente! (Hi people!)
I’m ChanahEmiliania, a friend of BRDisney’s from YouTube. When I saw that BRDisney was seeking guest posts, I asked if I could write one about learning Portuguese. Included in the “yes” answer was a request to also write about why I became interested in learning Portuguese. So this is that post!
I’ll start at the beginning: how I became interested in Portuguese and Brazil. I grew up (and am writing this) in New Jersey near a community of Brazilian and Portuguese immigrants. There are a bunch of Brazilian and Portuguese restaurants and shops, with lots of flags from those countries. Stores are as likely to say “fala-se português” (Portuguese spoken here) as they are to say “se habla español” (Spanish spoken here). I mention Spanish because that’s what I learned in school starting in kindergarten (five years old). It was always my favorite class because I liked learning about different cultures and a different language.
When I was a sophomore in high school (16 years old), I took a career aptitude class and got a top match of “college professor of foreign languages and literatures.” I pondered the results and realized that I wanted to learn more languages, even though I could only take Spanish in school. Since Spanish and Portuguese are very similar, I decided to self-study Portuguese via the Internet. I don’t remember what the name of the website was because I gave up after a month. Quick confession: I was actually learning European Portuguese, not Brazilian Portuguese, because I was told it was easier to learn from a Spanish background. I’m not sure if that’s true.
A few years later, I was visiting the colleges where I had been accepted and was given a list of classes I could visit. On a whim, I chose “Portuguese for Speakers of a Romance Language.” I’m very happy I did! The professor was amazing and the class looked like fun. I still remember that the lesson was conditional with if clauses and we listened to “Maresia (Se eu fosse marinheiro).” I decided almost immediately to enroll at that college, hoping to study Portuguese. (To clarify: my college teaches Brazilian Portuguese, but I knew from my class visit that it wouldn’t be too hard.) Unfortunately, that didn’t happen right away due to scheduling conflicts. I did, however, go to Portuguese table once a week for dinner. Portuguese table is normal cafeteria food with conversation in Portuguese; participants include the professor (who’s actually Colombian), the Fulbright TA from Brazil, students from Brazil, students who have studied in Brazil, and anyone else learning Portuguese (that would be me). It was good practice, though it took a few months to figure out what anyone was saying because they all spoke really fast. I became very good at “portunhol” (mixing Portuguese and Spanish), slowly but surely actually learning Portuguese.
This past year was my second at college. I took Portuguese both semesters. The first semester’s class (Portuguese for Speakers of a Romance Language) met five days a week, one of which was taught by the Fulbright TA. We didn’t have to spend a lot of time on grammar because it’s so similar to Spanish, so we focused on vocabulary. We wrote three essays and did one oral presentation. I wound up with an A (highest grade possible). The second semester’s class (Portuguese Conversation and Composition) met three days a week, plus watching a movie outside of class every few weeks. We learned about culture by reading short stories and discussing the movies we watched. We also worked on grammar and vocabulary by writing six essays and doing one oral presentation. It was much more work, but I got another A.
I also lived in the Romance Language House, a special-interest dorm for people who speak Spanish, French, Italian, or Portuguese (though many of us spoke more than one of those). My two roommates and I were supposed to speak Portuguese all the time; results were mixed in that we tended towards portunhol or just plain English. One roommate had studied in São Paulo the previous semester, and the other will be studying in São Paulo in two semesters. My college’s study abroad program to São Paulo is at Pontifícia Universidade Católica (PUC) or Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV), depending on the major. As a Spanish and German double major, it didn’t make sense for me to do either of those, though I hope to someday visit Brazil!
In August I will begin my year abroad in Spain and Germany. I hope to visit Portugal and practice Portuguese while there! When I return to the US for my final year of college, I plan to take classes on Brazilian culture and keep going to Portuguese table. I will also continue participating in Portuguese Club, which organizes a Brazilian Independence Day celebration and other events.
That’s all I can think of! Thanks for reading and let me know if you have questions! Tchauzinho!
I’ll start at the beginning: how I became interested in Portuguese and Brazil. I grew up (and am writing this) in New Jersey near a community of Brazilian and Portuguese immigrants. There are a bunch of Brazilian and Portuguese restaurants and shops, with lots of flags from those countries. Stores are as likely to say “fala-se português” (Portuguese spoken here) as they are to say “se habla español” (Spanish spoken here). I mention Spanish because that’s what I learned in school starting in kindergarten (five years old). It was always my favorite class because I liked learning about different cultures and a different language.
When I was a sophomore in high school (16 years old), I took a career aptitude class and got a top match of “college professor of foreign languages and literatures.” I pondered the results and realized that I wanted to learn more languages, even though I could only take Spanish in school. Since Spanish and Portuguese are very similar, I decided to self-study Portuguese via the Internet. I don’t remember what the name of the website was because I gave up after a month. Quick confession: I was actually learning European Portuguese, not Brazilian Portuguese, because I was told it was easier to learn from a Spanish background. I’m not sure if that’s true.
A few years later, I was visiting the colleges where I had been accepted and was given a list of classes I could visit. On a whim, I chose “Portuguese for Speakers of a Romance Language.” I’m very happy I did! The professor was amazing and the class looked like fun. I still remember that the lesson was conditional with if clauses and we listened to “Maresia (Se eu fosse marinheiro).” I decided almost immediately to enroll at that college, hoping to study Portuguese. (To clarify: my college teaches Brazilian Portuguese, but I knew from my class visit that it wouldn’t be too hard.) Unfortunately, that didn’t happen right away due to scheduling conflicts. I did, however, go to Portuguese table once a week for dinner. Portuguese table is normal cafeteria food with conversation in Portuguese; participants include the professor (who’s actually Colombian), the Fulbright TA from Brazil, students from Brazil, students who have studied in Brazil, and anyone else learning Portuguese (that would be me). It was good practice, though it took a few months to figure out what anyone was saying because they all spoke really fast. I became very good at “portunhol” (mixing Portuguese and Spanish), slowly but surely actually learning Portuguese.
This past year was my second at college. I took Portuguese both semesters. The first semester’s class (Portuguese for Speakers of a Romance Language) met five days a week, one of which was taught by the Fulbright TA. We didn’t have to spend a lot of time on grammar because it’s so similar to Spanish, so we focused on vocabulary. We wrote three essays and did one oral presentation. I wound up with an A (highest grade possible). The second semester’s class (Portuguese Conversation and Composition) met three days a week, plus watching a movie outside of class every few weeks. We learned about culture by reading short stories and discussing the movies we watched. We also worked on grammar and vocabulary by writing six essays and doing one oral presentation. It was much more work, but I got another A.
I also lived in the Romance Language House, a special-interest dorm for people who speak Spanish, French, Italian, or Portuguese (though many of us spoke more than one of those). My two roommates and I were supposed to speak Portuguese all the time; results were mixed in that we tended towards portunhol or just plain English. One roommate had studied in São Paulo the previous semester, and the other will be studying in São Paulo in two semesters. My college’s study abroad program to São Paulo is at Pontifícia Universidade Católica (PUC) or Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV), depending on the major. As a Spanish and German double major, it didn’t make sense for me to do either of those, though I hope to someday visit Brazil!
In August I will begin my year abroad in Spain and Germany. I hope to visit Portugal and practice Portuguese while there! When I return to the US for my final year of college, I plan to take classes on Brazilian culture and keep going to Portuguese table. I will also continue participating in Portuguese Club, which organizes a Brazilian Independence Day celebration and other events.
That’s all I can think of! Thanks for reading and let me know if you have questions! Tchauzinho!
4 comments:
Dear ChanahEmiliania, I'm so honored you wanted to share your experiences with us! :) Thank you very much!
I didn't know you'd had some contact with Portuguese before you actually decided to learn it. That's very interesting! It's also really cool that you actually had a "Spanish background" - I'm sure it made things easier for you.
I forgot to ask you what you found harder about learning Portuguese. Many Americans seem to hate our nasal vowels, our subjunctive mood, some verb tenses and that crazy "metaphonic plural" (I'm not even sure if that's how it's called). I suppose you don't find Portuguese tenses too hard, since you've already learned Spanish - so what would you consider the hardest thing(s) about the Portuguese language? :)
As for Eu. Portuguese being easier to learn... Hmm, that depends: the European vocabulary is probably closer to Spanish; when it comes to pronunciation, though, I'd say that Spanish is closer to Br. Portuguese, since we don't "swallow" the vowels as much as Portuguese people.
However, Eu. Spanish and Eu. Portuguese do share many phonetic/phonological similarities: for example, in Br. Portuguese, the English "TH" sounds don't exist (at least not in any Brazilian accent I know), while you can easily find them in Eu. Portuguese and in Eu. Spanish.
I'll talk more about Spanish and Portuguese in future posts.
It's really amazing that you've had the chance to listen to Portuguese and even speak it at that "Portuguese table". What an interesting experience!
Hey, so that's why you're leaving us in August?! :D Haha! I'm happy for you! I hope you'll have fun in Spain and Germany and learn a lot of new things!
Thank you once again for your guest post, I'm really happy you did this! :)
You're welcome! It was a lot of fun to write!
The Spanish background was definitely a plus - in fact, my college doesn't offer Portuguese 101, just the level for speakers of a Romance language. Sometimes it became too much of a crutch, but I got over it.
Tenses and moods (indicative vs. subjunctive) weren't hard because it follows basically the same rules as Spanish. The two differences coming to mind are the personal infinitive and future subjunctive, but those weren't too hard. In fact, learning future subjunctive helped me with my Spanish Golden Age class!
The trickiest thing for me was learning the differences between spoken and written Portuguese. It led to me overthinking spoken Portuguese in class and using spoken Portuguese in written Portuguese outside of class (such as writing you).
Learning nasals was also tough...I still don't think I'm good at them! Actually, learning how to say stuff was tough because it's not as simple as Spanish because of metaphony. But it's a question of practice!
If you'd like input for your Spanish vs. Portuguese post, let me know! Actually, let me know if there's anything else this American can contribute!
And yes, that's where I'm headed in August! But keep it quiet on YouTube - epic announcement pending!!
How cool! Yeah, I remember reading something about the future subjunctive in Spanish. Maybe it's just me, but sometimes I feel Portuguese is very conservative, at least in some aspects; we still have things that other Romance languages consider obsolete, found only in old books.
I'm going to talk more about it in future posts, but right now I remember the use of the pronoun "cujo", the synthetic pluperfect and the fact that we've never developed a "present perfect" tense, unlike Spanish, Italian, French, Catalan and Romanian, for example. While the "simple past" is becoming obsolete in some languages, it's pretty much our only option in Portuguese. ;D
(That's why I still have a lot of problems with these tenses, by the way :) The difference between "I have..." and "I did..." has never been completely clear to me, so please tell me off if I make mistakes, hahaha!)
I don't know much about the future subjunctive in other Romance languages, but you can see we use it all the time - you could find some of it even in the short messages I (...have?) recently sent you! :D I think it's far from becoming obsolete in Portuguese.
As far as I remember, Portuguese and Galician are the only Indo-European languages with a personal infinitive; yet, people don't seem to find it too hard to learn :) That's good, because it's very useful and often used!
The differences between written and spoken Portuguese can be hard indeed - even for Brazilians, since we don't really appreciate too much formality and politeness, hahaha! This is something I need to write about pretty soon as well!
Spanish has surely helped you a lot, but I wonder - do you think it's made learning Portuguese harder for you in any way? Some people say it's hard to learn the Portuguese vowels system (oral x nasal, open x closed) once you get used to the Spanish one, which has only closed, oral vowels.
However, in my opinion, the opposite situation can be just as hard: I've never actually learned Spanish, so whenever I try to speak it I end up using some open vowels and even nasals. Argh! :D
And since I'm talking about nasals... Ohh, poor things, you wouldn't believe how much hate they get! ;D Hahaha! But I guess they can be very cruel indeed - you see, sometimes the "lack of nasalization" can even lead to embarrassing mistakes. :P
But you're right - it's a question of practice!
I'm certainly going to need your help, thank you so much for your kindness! :) If you need help as well, just tell me!
And... hahaha, sure! Boca de siri! (lit. "crab mouth" -- that is, "I'll keep my mouth shut", "I won't say a word about it", "I'll keep your secret" :))
I think Portuguese vowels were harder because I was used to the same sounds all the time, such as in the word "todo." Now I'm interested in hearing you speak Spanish!
Another difficulty was remembering that Portuguese isn't "Spanish when you're drunk" (to borrow a phrase a friend's father once said). For instance, it took me a year to remember that the Portuguese word is "pergunta," not "pregunta" like in Spanish.
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