Back after unexpected motivational boost

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.

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@Tomas, small steps still push you forward :slight_smile: Thanks for sharing this story - hope you had a great time in Madeira.

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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. :pray:” And with that she let me pass by on my way.

It is indeed marvelous being scolded by PT ladies in person. :joy:

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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!

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