Love and Portuguese

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SophiaMerlin_II
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9 Jan 2022

Postby SophiaMerlin_II » Mon Jan 10, 2022 1:39 am

Not much to say.

Halfway through on Unit 2 of Duolingo Portuguese.

I’m trying to work a little with my tutor, on food words bc he has no interest in learning them in English. Not in a mean way, but he is on a Carnivore diet and already knows basic meat words. But food is important to me.

I told him and he wanted to hear me practice but I was too embarrassed and said no, even when he was trying to encourage me.

He confirmed to me the final position de/te sound shift.

In general, I feel like my understanding of Portuguese is declining rapidly. I set my phone to Portuguese and so now I can’t “cheat” on Tweets with the built in google translation anymore — so I’m not tricking myself anymore.

Also, today marks 2 months since I started trying to learn Portuguese. It’s... a little disheartening. I know I could have made a lot more progress, bit I’ve been enjoying myself instead, and it’s a bit disappointing.
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SophiaMerlin_II
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23 Jan 2022

Postby SophiaMerlin_II » Sun Jan 23, 2022 11:45 am

Forgot to update last week.

Not much to report. Just barely hanging on to my duolingo streak most days.

Portuguese still makes me cry like maybe once per week. My boyfriend keeps telling me to just enjoy the process but there’s not really anything enjoyable about it, as far as I can tell. At least not yet. It’s all kind of terrible.

I did have a few moments of joy with it. The Witcher audiobook, I stopped taking it seriously and instead just play it as I fall asleep, and tbh I can feel myself understanding more.

And I overhear my boyfriend’s aunt answering the phone last night and I understood the very beginning of what she was saying at it made me so ridiculously excited.
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SophiaMerlin_II
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31 Jan 2022

Postby SophiaMerlin_II » Mon Jan 31, 2022 8:58 am

Things have been going a little bit better actually.

I have joined a Portuguese group chat and I'm understanding more of what is being talked about. I even managed to write a few things this week.

I've been too nervous to speak with other people in real time, so I started doing voice tweets on my language learning Twitter.

I found a Portuguese translation of my favorite book series as a kid, and it's right about at my level of reading comprehension, but I vaguely remember the plot and all the "made up" (fantasy) words in English, which helps things along, so that I don't have to google so much.

I haven't cried about Portuguese at all this week, so that's really good!
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SophiaMerlin_II
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11 feb 2022

Postby SophiaMerlin_II » Fri Feb 11, 2022 4:51 pm

Fell off the wagon.

I haven't studied for more than an hour since my last update. My phone broke, so I haven't even been listening to the audiobook before bed.

I bought a cheap MP3 player, though, and so I just finally started listening at night again.
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Re: Love and Portuguese

Postby SophiaMerlin_II » Sun May 08, 2022 1:16 pm

Long time no post!

Things are going pretty well.

Nearing the end of the second unit of Duolingo — one more crown left. I listen to my audiobook every night and understand more and more. I finally have enough vocabulary to watch cooking videos in Portuguese.

I still lean hard on my knowledge of Spanish but it’s getting better. For a lot of things my strength between the two is about equal and I’m starting to mix them up more and more. It’s a little annoying but I see it as a good thing. Eventually my Portuguese will get stronger than my Spanish and then it will be okay. I’m not sad to lose the Spanish at all.

I’m learning more about Brazil culturally and most of it lines up with my educated guesses. But some things I didn’t know enough to even guess about and it’s been interesting.

I’ve been watching videos lately of supermarkets and grocery stores, in both English and Portuguese. There are lots and lots of differences! It’s lots of little things. One thing I noticed immediately is the brightness and cleanliness, as well as the hand written signage. Looking at it reminds me in a nostalgic way of photos my mom took in the 80s & 90s.

And another thing — I grew up quite poor for the US — getting furniture out of dumpsters, only second-hand clothes, food banks, eating food thrown out by grocery stores, half rotten produce etc. but I never lived near other people that were poor like me. But sometimes when I look at pictures of Brazil they’re of very poor neighborhoods and it can be quite scary to me. Like the narrow dark alleys and the low powerlines, crumbling walls. He says living in these kinds if neighborhoods is not an option but sometimes I feel he’s being too optimistic about how far his first salary will go.

He thinks he will earn R$2500/mo. Taxes are about 10% I think, then his school fee is 15%. He says feeding an adult in his areas costs about R$250 for one — so I’ll say R$400 for the two of us. So with some R$1475 we must find an apartment in an okay neighborhood, buy appliances (bc brazilian apartments don’t have them) pay health insurance, and save for a baby.

I admit he obviously knows the costs better than I do, but it seems based on what I’ve read, that it would be difficult to find an apartment in a decent neighborhood that is cheap enough for us. He says we won’t be poor (in the sense of the way I grew up) and these poor neighborhoods I look at but I can’t help but to think it will be incredibly tight and there will be no money to have a baby until he gets a raise.
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Re: Love and Portuguese

Postby DaveAgain » Sun May 08, 2022 1:45 pm

SophiaMerlin_II wrote:
I admit he obviously knows the costs better than I do, but it seems based on what I’ve read, that it would be difficult to find an apartment in a decent neighborhood that is cheap enough for us. He says we won’t be poor (in the sense of the way I grew up) and these poor neighborhoods I look at but I can’t help but to think it will be incredibly tight and there will be no money to have a baby until he gets a raise.
Would you be able to work in Brasil, or are there admin hurdles you need to overcome first?
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SophiaMerlin_II
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Re: Love and Portuguese

Postby SophiaMerlin_II » Sun May 08, 2022 1:56 pm

DaveAgain wrote:Would you be able to work in Brasil, or are there admin hurdles you need to overcome first?


We were not planning on me working after we marry, as we would like to have children quickly and homeschool them. I think the largest barrier will just be my level of Portuguese. But I do not believe there is any legal reason that I would be unable to work.

I’ve considered trying to do some light WFH secretarial work. Making about $250/mo would be roughly equivalent to half his monthly pay. We could save up for a baby really quickly that way. But if we are also depending on my income, we would be in a bad position when I stopped working.

For us, me being SAHM is priority #1. We would like to live on his salary only. Basically, we both think if I get very bored that WHF (or talking some free online courses) is great, but we don’t plan to live off the money. So basically, if we couldn’t support a baby yet on his salary alone, we would wait, regardless of my income.
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SophiaMerlin_II
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Re: Love and Portuguese

Postby SophiaMerlin_II » Sun May 29, 2022 11:54 am

Oh, I keep forgetting to post here more often.

Portuguese is moving along nicely. It could be faster I suppose, but I’ve gotten a second job and I’m making an effort to enjoy it. I struggle with the fact that what I enjoy reading and what my reading level actually is are two vastly different levels. Because of cognates I can cheat to a certain extent, but that can only get you so far in complicated and technical philosophy texts :lol:

It is a book that my boyfriend (fiancé?) wants to discuss with me, so I’m starting to make an effort. I have access to an English copy so I can check my comprehension without having to bother him too much. But he’s very excited by it, and that makes me excited too.
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SophiaMerlin_II
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Re: Love and Portuguese

Postby SophiaMerlin_II » Mon Jun 06, 2022 8:55 am

Frustrating…

I had been feeling I was doing really well, and my audio book is making more and more sense, and I’m grinding through a Libertarian book — going well!

Then I asked my boyfriend a grammar question and he said two example sentences in Portuguese and I couldn’t naturally understand either until he paused between words and exaggerated them. It felt really disheartening. They were really easy sentences too, using words and grammar I already knew.
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