topagraphy

“O-bri-ga-do!”

“O-bri-ga-da!” 

At dinner with her parents, Marilia was mimicking the Brazilian and Quebecois women sitting behind us on our flight from Bogota to Sao Paulo who decided that a seven-hour flight that landed at 2:00am was a great place for an impromptu language exchange.

Marilia contined – “As mulheres falaram por cinco horas – CINCO HORAS!” (The women spoke for five hours – FIVE HOURS) 

As Marilia continued to replay our flight, including the inevitable escalation that occurred between our two groups (before you call me a jerk, the flight attendant told the two women to be quiet and that they were in the wrong), something happened – I understood about 80% of the what my wife was saying in Portugues (which is incredible, given that sometimes I don’t even hear my wife at all when she’s speaking English). 

Now, before everyone at their computers or phones begins clapping (which I’m sure was the plan), this doesn’t mean I’m fluent – not ever close, I’m still on the starting line – but this is a very critical step in the learning process – learning and understanding the language in the context of daily or familiar activities. 

A few weeks ago I found this helpful assessment grid. I’m not sure if this is subjective or not regarding one’s learning progression – I’m sure it is a little bit – but I like how it describes a learners’ journey. 

In the first few months of my language journey, I’ve had a few realizations. First, I am now very skeptical of people when they say “I know ‘x’ language”. I feel that so many people in the U.S. proclaim to know Spanish, saying ‘Oh, I spent two weeks in Mexico City and I picked it up’ or ‘I did a volunteer project in Ecuador for a month and learned it.’ 

While I’m glad those people think that they know the language, I wouldn’t be hiring them as a tour guide. I’m sure they’re able to order a beer or say ‘I eat a burger for lunch’, but they don’t know the language. 

My second realization is that I was (foolishly) very bullish on my goals, and should’ve checked myself to make sure they were attainable, especially with my time and energy also being focused on coding, the markets, and just being a good husband. This is supposed to be a fun journey, and there’s no need to put undue pressure on myself. 

So, without further ado, where am I on my language journey? 

Listening: This is much more difficult than I anticipated, and after communicating with some polygots, it seems like it’s the most underestimated aspect of learning a language. Originally, I wanted to prioritize the ability to comprehend what my in-laws were saying first, then articulate my thoughts. This seems to be backwards from what I have gathered. Currently, I’m able to pull words from sentences, generally get a full sentence or two, but can generally understand topics going on (so, in essence, the airplane story was pretty huge for me). If someone speaks slowly (and with the addition of hand gestures sometimes) and it’s a topic/vocab I’m familiar with, I can generally get the picture. This is where it really seems like it takes a partner to be your teacher, and once again, leaning on your spouse can be overly burdensome for them. My in-laws have been more than open in slowing down when speaking, and this has been immensely appreciated. 

I’ve also noticed that my hearing aid is an immense help in listening comprehension (who would’ve thought?!), but I need to wear it more regularly down here.

In any case, based on what I’m hearing from other people, listening will be the hardest part of the journey, and there will still be hurdles well into B1-B2 in listening comprehension.

Speaking: I feel like I’m getting the structure of the language and with some thought, as I’m able to articulate what I want to say, with maybe asking for a word or two here and there for simple sentences. I can’t hold a conversation but can contribute to the conversation being had in simple ways. 

Example sentences (in English):

“When you were a child, what type of food did you eat?”

“Last week, we went to Argentina and did a 20 km hike. The weather was very hot.”

“My wife is 40 years old but she looks 27.”

I’m even able to throw in some jokes:

“Where’s the kids beer?”

“You don’t like people who work at the bank, I work at the bank.” This, admittedly was pretty choppy and was on a 30 second delay but the point was made.

After coming back from Colombia, I recognize the difference in being surrounded by the language daily, and how valuable that is. 

A big challenge in Brazil has been getting people to engage with you in a public setting. While I’m out by myself, I try to engage with people in small but meaningful ways for me. Even when I’m direct and pointed, I find they respond in two ways: First, they get very flustered and start to ramble on about topics that aren’t related to the matter (Marilia thinks this is because there aren’t too many Americans in her home town). An example of this is when I ordered ‘Suco de milho’ (corn juice – try it, it’s great!) and pointed at it on the menu. The woman for some reason starting to put together an entirely different solid food option.

Second, after hearing me people just start trying to communicate in English. 

I have found that my best situations are small groups of people in a private setting, so I don’t have much anxiety and people do not feel bothered slowing the conversation down for me. 

Tenses: My tenses are pretty bad. I typically talk in the present tense, for example: “Last week I go to the supermarket”. I first read to focus on vocabulary first and tenses second, but after speaking with several people they said this could create even bigger bottlenecks down the road. While in Colombia, I took a bit of a break in studying, but have been focused on studying regular and irregular verbs for 30 minutes a day. I am starting to see the patterns in the regular verbs, as well as patterns in ‘cohorts’ of irregular verbs. I’m not sure why it wasn’t obvious early on, but seeing and understanding these patterns is going to be a big help. 

Reading / Writing: I would say I haven’t done a great job at following through my daily regime. I’m able to read basic information across several sentences (for example, while getting vaccines I was practicing interpreting all the signage at the clinic and interpreting them fairly accurately). I haven’t been practicing writing enough to judge myself, so I need to practice both more. 

As mentioned, while in Colombia for the last few weeks I put my studying aside, as I wanted to focus on my travels. I’m picking it back up now that we’re in Brazil, and going to capitalize on this time before heading to Europe. I am going to hire a tutor that I will be meeting with every week, and I hope I have enough of a framework where we can practice wedding small talk in preparation for the wedding in Porto, Portugal. I’m excited, and way more bullish on my learning than I currently am on the markets, but that’s for another post. 

Ate a proxima.