My love-hate relationship with Portuguese

Anyone who knows me knows I am obsessed with learning and speaking foreign languages, so this post was going to come at some point or another.

To be honest, one of my top reasons for choosing this co-op and moving to Brazil was the fact that I would only be speaking Portuguese for six months.  I've always secretly had this dream in which I would be living in a foreign country where everything would be in a foreign language.  (Some people legitimately think I'm crazy because of this).  Yup, that finally came true this year.  Plus I mean, Portuguese is probably one of the most beautiful languages out there.

To start off, I've never studied Portuguese formally.  I kind of picked it up by befriending a bunch of Brazilians and already knowing how to speak Italian and Spanish.  If you want to see me speaking Portuguese, here's a video I made 2 weeks after moving here (I'm currently on my 5th week though! So hopefully I'm making less errors):

Given the fact I'm living in a Portuguese-speaking country (the word in English for this is apparently a "Lusophone" country.  Fun fact)  I need to speak the language constantly.  I need to speak it to get food, make friends, work, date (as if I date at all) - and pretty much anything else.  I would say it's a big chunk of the experience I am having here and if you are moving to a foreign country where they do speak a language that is not your native tongue, it will be an important part of your life.  

If you go to Northeastern University and are considering working for my employer in the city government for your co-op, just know that you DO NOT need to speak fluent Portuguese when you start this job.  A lot of the staff I work with do speak English and they can find tasks for you to do which require you to speak English as you learn more Portuguese.  I just told them at the beginning that I only wanted to speak Portuguese and proceeded from there. 

Now I'll go into some of my Portuguese struggles.

The First Few Days

My first few days here in Brazil were not super easy in regards to the language, especially considering the fact I had to find housing, get a phone, and all of that fun stuff entirely on my own.  I generally had my phone dictionary at my disposal at all times to look up words I did not know.. and I stuttered a lot.. and I said random stuff in Italian.  There were honestly a few times where I ordered a sandwich at Subway and they thought I wanted fish in my sandwich and they had to throw it out.  I thought I said I was vegetarian, but I guess that didn't come across correctly.  It was also hard to make friends given my limited Portuguese abilities, but over time that got easier.  

Tip: To make friends, I usually just say I'm from Hawaii. 

A lot of people tend to use gestures and sounds to get their point across when they don't know a specific word in a sentence.  I've seen it in movies and all but I would probably get super self-conscious about embarrassing myself.  I just tended to say the word in Italian or Spanish but throw in a Brazilian accent.  It worked 50% of the time!  

False Friends

False friends are the most irritating bane of my existence in Portuguese but it makes life hilarious sometimes.  These are words which sound like words in other languages but really mean something else.

Experimentar -  Last week I went to the store to buy my weekly stock-up of Pesto and the lady behind the counter asked if I wanted to "experimentar."  Experimentar is the Portuguese verb "to try."  It does not mean "to experiment."  I was half-asleep ordering the thing so I completely mixed it up and told her "No thanks, I just want the Pesto."  As soon as I ordered, I realized how dumb I sounded and silently chuckled to myself.  A random lady next to me in line though proceeded to start speaking English to explain to me the difference so I awkwardly told her I was Italian and didn't speak English.  Yeah, I do that sometimes.  Is that bad?

Palestra - Palestra is the Italian word for "gym."  My first week here everyone kept talking about meeting at "palestra" everyday and how much they thought their "palestras" were so interesting.  I was genuinely confused and slightly amused by the idea that every seemed to work out so much.  Nope, that wasn't the case.  "Palestra" in Portuguese means "Lecture."  It took me a little while to find this out but afterwards, I couldn't help but laugh.

Academia - When I moved into my apartment, my landlord was telling me about how there was an "academia" nearby.  I didn't really understand why it mattered if there was an "academy" near me so I kind of nodded and told her "Oh cool."  As time and time went on, more and more people kept talking about this "academy."  Apparently "Academia" does not mean "Academy."  Academia means "gym" in Portuguese.  I don't know what crazy person thought of this word but it confused me so much when I first arrived here.

Filme - I really dislike this word in Portuguese.  I'm already sure by the spelling you can tell it means "film" or "movie" in Portuguese, but the pronunciation when people speak always confuses me (the "l" is pronounced more like a "u.")  For example, one friend recently asked me if I had ever seen any "filmes" recently.  The word "filme" is pronounced scarily similar to the Italian word "fiume" which means "river."  I genuinely thought my friend was trying to introduce me into a philosophical discussion on water features, but really he was just asking about a movie.

Puxe - Oh you're gonna love this one.  This word is pronounced "Push-ee."  A normal person would think that it means "push," right?  I mean, it's plastered on basically all of the doors here in Brazil.  No.  "Puxe" actually means "Pull."  You don't even want to know how many times I have tried pushing the pull doors and people thought I was a mental case.

Pasta - One of my good friends is helping me learn Portuguese here and she gave me a bunch of sheets to help me with the grammar.  She then advised me to put them in my pasta.  I thought she was making an offensive reference to my Italian heritage, but then in reality, "Pasta" is the Portuguese word for "Folder."  Oh wait, that makes sense now.

Tchau - This is the Portuguese word for "bye."  In Italian, however, we have the word "ciao" (pronounced the same) which means "hello" as well as "goodbye."  The other day at work, I was calling a school to speak with a director and instead of saying "Alô" I said "Tchau."  So essentially, when she picked up, I told her "goodbye."  My co-workers didn't let that one go.

Grammar

When you learn another Romance language after you already know a few, there are some benefits and setbacks.  Benefits generally refer to the fact that many of these languages share a lot of grammatical rules.  The setbacks are that there are some rules that are not the same and it confuses you a lot.

Ser vs. Estar  - On paper, I know the difference.  It's literally the same exact thing in Spanish: "Ser" is permanent and "Estar" is not permanent (both mean "to be").  However, ever since I went back to Italy for the majority of 2015 (Where "Essere" is used for everything and "Stare" rarely ever), I've gotten into the habit of using the wrong verb at the wrong time when speaking.  It's irritating but I'm slowly overcoming this.

Future Subjunctive - What in the world is the future subjunctive you ask?  It's something that I'm convinced only exists in Portuguese.  You generally use it for verbs that come after words such as "se" (if) and "quando" (when)  in sentences addressing the future.  Like for example, if you want to say "I'll call you when I get back home," you would say:

Vou te ligar quando eu voltar pra casa.  

Voltar is the verb "To Return."  It looks like it's being used in its infinitive, right?  No.  Actually, this is the "future subjunctive" and it's conjugation changes depending on the number and person.  There are also a ton of irregular verbs in this conjugation as well.  There are also other cases in which you would use this tense but I really don't want to dedicate anymore time to this already confusing grammatical aspect.

Other Struggles

Accent - I really do not appreciate my accent in Portuguese at all.  A lot of people here seem to think it's amusing though.  Half the people I talk to tell me I usually have a more American accent when I speak, the other half tell me I have a more Italian accent.  Then a lot of people tell me I have both.  I want a Brazilian accent though, seriously.  I have legitimately told my friends to help me with my accent and to help me with pronouncing words to sound more "Brazilian."   I'm still waiting for the day where someone thinks I am a native Brazilian.. still hasn't happened yet.  When it does though, you will know. 

Listening - There are some people who tell me that they cannot speak or write a language but they understand everything when people speak.  I don't understand these people.  For me, listening comprehension is probably the most difficult part of a language.  At the moment I generally understand 95% of things people say to me - if there is no background noise and they speak at a normal volume.  A lot of times when people speak in low voices or there is a lot of background noise or echo, I don't catch everything they say.   In addition, if someone speaks with an accent that's not from Belo Horizonte or Recife, it's generally a lot harder for me to understand.  With some people I understand anything and everything they say.  With other people, I need to constantly ask them to repeat.  (I don't know if it's just me, but the gateman at my apartment's accent is absolutely impossible to understand).  It's extremely irritating but it's getting better with time I suppose.  

Speaking other Romance Languages - Ever since I moved to Brazil, my Spanish, Italian, and French have been completely out of service.  I called my cousin in Sicily today to talk about my life and I eventually gave up trying to speak and ended up texting him because every other word that came to my head was in Portuguese and I had to think longer about how to respond.  Anyone who speaks more than one Romance language probably knows this struggle too.  It's not that you "forget" the other languages, but at least when I'm here in Brazil, Portuguese comes to my head a heck of a lot quicker since I speak it everyday.. and then if you try to speak a very similar language.. it just doesn't work.  

---

Well anyways, there's my small rant about Portuguese and all.  Hope you enjoyed it.  If it ever happens, you will see a post when someone thinks I am a native Brazilian.  Probably not anytime soon, but I'm determined!   Let me know if you have any similar struggles with languages or any comments!