Why would you want to study Portuguese?

I have often been the recipient of questioning looks when I reveal that one of my favorite languages is Portuguese.  "Why study Portuguese?" "Where do they speak Portuguese?" "Isn't Portuguese just like Spanish?"  Oh, the defense I could make for a language that appears consistently in lists of the top ten world languages and, as a bonus,  is a beautiful, melodious language.

I know why I study Portuguese, but I wanted to find out why participants in my "First Steps to Portuguese" class this summer chose this language. And I received some very revealing answers.

For example, upcoming travel plans!  One participant has a cruise planned that will stop in both Brazil, the largest country in South America,

  and also in Cape Verde, an island country off the coast of  Western Africa.

Another participant has family to visit in the Azores, nine volcanic islands in the Atlantic that form an autonomous region of Portugal.

Still another class member enjoys Europe and would like to visit Portugal,

especially in view of the recent strong US dollar against the euro.

Other class participants displayed an interest in acquiring other languages because they were born in another country (Mexico, Chile, and Japan that I know of) or have studied other languages sometime in their lives.  One person told me she had studied six different languages but spoke none of them fluently.  That's okay in my book, because the journey while studying a language is an exciting experience.

But one of the most insightful answers to the question of why study Portuguese came from a participant who declared, "Learning languages keeps my brain young."  

And that may be the best reason of all!

What are the first steps to Portuguese?

"The Portuguese class I am teaching is starting tomorrow,"  I informed my husband this morning at breakfast, perhaps to warn him that I will be preoccupied for the next six weeks.  

When I told him the title of the course, "First Steps to Portuguese,"  he was polite enough to ask what those first steps will be.  Ah, I'm glad he asked!  Here is what I hope to communicate to participants at the first class meeting.

STEP 1  Understand what you can and cannot learn in a new language in an introductory course.

What a fast-paced, speeded up world we live in.  We want to learn a new language quickly and then move on to the next big challenge in our lives.

This is getting a bit ridiculous!

For most people, language acquisition just doesn't happen quickly.  Learning a new language is a skill to be added to life, probably a little bit at a time for a very long time. It is akin to learning to play a new musical instrument.  Slow and steady wins the race.

STEP 2  Accept the fact that making errors in a new language is a vital part of the acquisition process.

This is a very hard fact to swallow.  No one past puberty age likes to make a mistake.  And yet, if we try for perfection in a new language, we lessen our chances of achieving fluency. Lighten up! Laugh at your own mistakes!  Be a child again!  After all, children work through their language errors and become communicative adults.  

STEP 3  Use your native language to connect to the new language.  Take advantage of cognates,
words that have a similar appearance and sound in two more more languages.

Portuguese is a daughter language of Latin, as is Spanish, so Spanish speakers have some real advantages when learning Portuguese. Spanish speakers can make a good guess at Portuguese words like 'claramente' (clearly), 'amor' (love), and 'atenção' (attention).  English speakers will soon find Portuguese words they can understand immediately as well such as 'inventor,' 'americano,' and 'usual.' 

STEP 4  Recognize sounds unfamiliar to you in the new language.

One of the main frustrations I encounter in new learners of Portuguese is the sound system, which is a bit more complicated than, say, Spanish.  Spanish has a high letter-sound correspondence, so what you see is usually what you get.  

Portuguese, on the other hand, has some challenges in this area.  I'm going to experiment with my new class and see if a heads up about some of the more unusual Portuguese sounds will reduce some initial frustration.  Here's what we will practice:

ç (c cedilha) always makes an 's' sound as in 'caça' (hunt)

nh is close to a Spanish ñ or the 'n' sound in 'onion'

lh is like the 'l' sound in 'million'

ch is a soft sound, like the beginning sound of 'chartreuse'

Now for the really fun sounds that make Brazilian Portuguese distinctive!

The  'r' !  I love this sound because I don't have attempt to trill the r!  For a double r, or an r at the beginning of a word, the sound is like a hard 'h' sound in English or the 'jota' in Spanish.  A single 'r' between vowels is a flap, the same as a Spanish 'r' between vowels.

And 't' and 'd' take on new sounds before an /i/ sound, 't' changing to a hard 'ch' as in church (beginning and end sounds)  and 'd' changing to the first and last sounds of  'judge'.

I hope my new students will feel confident about learning a new language after taking these first steps to Portuguese!