I was practising Portuguese daily for 10 months and was beginning to struggle with my motivation. I could not understand it when I went on holiday to Portugal and natives were speaking to me, and I could not string a sentence together without spending an eternity trying to conjugate verbs in my head.
So I let my subscription to PP lapse and accepted that this idea of learning Portuguese was just not going to happen.
Fast forward 9 months, where on a holiday to Madeira two weeks ago I had a sudden motivational bost! I was out walking around a small village in the far North Western corner of the island and stopped at this little village shop cum bar. A single room, not much bigger than my lounge, but there were a few shelves with essential foods for sale, and a bar with a chair and two stools and a coffee machine. I clearly remembered previous unsuccessful attempts at using my long forgotten Portuguese, but on an island with every path trodden repeatedly by millions of tourists, I had stumbled across what must be one of the very few remaining ones where the 70+ year old landlady did not appear to speak a single word of English. The entire conversation was brief and went like this:
Me: Bom dia, um café, s’il vous plait… errr, uhmm… por favor (not sure why French words suddently pushed themselves into my brain!)
She: Grande ou pequeno?
Me: Grande, por favor
She: Leite?
Me: Sim, por favor
she proceeded to make me uma chinesa (that words had eventually entered my brain at this time)
She: Aqui tem
Me: Obrigado… tem agua com gaz?
She: Sim… looking through the fridge and finding a bottle of flavoured water… com limão?..
Me: Muito obgrigado. I brought my coffee and water over to the table and asked her quanto custa?
She: um Euro vinte
I did’t believe I could have understood her correct, so gave her a fiver and was very pleasantly surprised when she gave me 3 euros 80 cents back.
It was brief, but it was the most meaningful conversation in Portuguese I’ve had. On previous holidays, everybody responded in English when I tried speaking Portuguese, or if they did response in Portuguese it was too fast for me to understand. But this old lady went out of her way to put her customer at ease by speaking slowly, clearly and with simple words.
That gave me the motivational boost to renew my subscription to PP and start from scratch again, hoping and believing that on our already-booked holiday to Madeira next year, I will be able to actively use this fascinating language.
I also learned PT for a vacation there, and the experience was incredible. For decades, students in PT learn both EN and PT together. The young are bilingual and have no problem talking with tourists in EN.
And yet, perhaps because of this native bilingual proficiency, it often happens that when a tourist makes genuine and sincere effort to learn PT and speak however clumsily but with an open heart in an effort to connect person to person, that effort is rewarded with warmth and respect.
I once slowly overtook an elderly woman on a side street in Gaia. I called out cheerily, “Bom dia!”, to which she promptly glared and shot back with “Boa TARDE!”. My startled reply was “Sim senhora, ja são as trés da tarde. Peço desculpa. Boa tarde. ” And with that she let me pass by on my way.
It is indeed marvelous being scolded by PT ladies in person.
Congratulations. Those little break-throughs are very precious. You will remember it for years to come! Also hats off to you for understanding the Maderense accent. My husband is from Madeira and I struggle to understand his Portuguese - I even end up correcting his pronunciation which doesn’t go down too well!!
I speak French too and also find that when I go to speak Portuguese French pops out. But then the reverse also happens when I speak French Portuguese trips out of my mouth.
I live in the Algarve where English is very much the lingua franca. The moment you falter in your Portuguese the conversation reverts to English. I measure my success (or lack of) by how long I can maintain a conversation in Portuguese.
All that apart, the point of my reply is simply to say I think there is a lot to be said for having short breaks from studying. Whenever I have had breaks from studying such as if we are on holiday in another country, I stress that I am letting my Portuguese slip but quite the contrary. When we return to Portugal I find I am much more relaxed about my Portuguese and it flows a little better. It is as if I have given my head a chance to process and consolidate all the new knowledge. So don’t beat yourself up for taking a break from study.
Bom estudo!
Parabéns, Tomas! I find I have learned the most vocabulary and even grammar as a result of food (e.g. imperative with recipes.) Having a shared context helps so very much. What a delightful experience!
Similar story… stopped… was somewhere in A2. Question: restart from scratch or try something else. I feel I have decent basis… but now I am actually here in Portugal (will be doing the Schengen shuffle). I feel like j can do some basics but quickly feel like I’m in over my head. And thought I can’t just rely on people knowing my language (English) to get by… it actually stops me from doing more, I think. I’ve met several expats that can’t even pronounce the name of the town they are living in. I do not want to be even close to that level.
So start over from scratch or find another method to get back up to speed. I’m retired, so I have the time to begin again
@johnfnewman, starting from scratch could be nice to help you get back into the rhythm without too much pressure to immediately learn a lot of new things. You can get a refresher on already acquired knowledge and maybe spot and close some foundational knowledge gaps
@johnfnewman For me, I went back and added the “new” exercises to complete each unit, finished off the initial A1 sequence which felt like a real accomplishment, and then stalled out.
At this point I have taken and re-taken the A1/A2 sorts of materials for oh, something over 5 years. And I still haven’t mastered them. I’m here looking up “vim” today in particular. My pronunciation remains shockingly bad. I’ve tried group classes, private tutoring, now a small class in person instead of online for the first time, various apps, and Practice Portuguese remains the backbone to my studies. But in the end, I fear I am simply not capable. My language skills are worse today than they were a year ago. Yet I hear about other people who hit fluency in under 6 months.
My belief is that if I could get through a B1 class, I could start to pick more up organically. However, having crashed out of a B1 class, I do not have the ability to do that yet. My next thought was tutoring over the summer to get there. Instead we are right back on maybe day two of an A1 class – and I cannot complain because I am still making basic mistakes and need to review the material. It feels like no matter what I do, I remain stuck. It is a true shame because there is so much more to Portuguese life that is walled off to me as an illiterate in the society in which I live. It is depressing and frustrating.
So stay in school, kids. If you’re making progress, keep going. It seems to all fall away quickly if you pause.
Thanks for sharing this story - hope you had a great time in Madeira.
” And with that she let me pass by on my way.
