Love and Portuguese

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SophiaMerlin_II
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Love and Portuguese

Postby SophiaMerlin_II » Mon Sep 20, 2021 4:18 am

So I have been falling in love with this Portuguese boy for many months now and it's not a thing but it still kind of is. :oops:

He has lived in the US most of his life, so speaks native level English, that's not an issue at all. But he recently (September) moved back to Portugal to stay with his family for a while (health issues) so we mostly communicate via Twitter, and most of the stuff he posts is in Portuguese.

At first reading it seemed impossible, but I forced myself to try anyway. It's feels like I'm reading Spanish and having a seizure at the same time. I've gotten way better at it than I really expected to, just by trying to read it, guess and check method. And of course I can just message him and ask if I get too confused. I can read about 65% of his tweets at this point without "cheating" but I'd like to be able to do more.

I was looking into the phonetics of Portuguese and... no me gusta :shock: wayyyy more complicated pronunciation than Spanish and to me it sounds really foreign. I thought it would sound something like Spanish or French but instead it sounds really opaque and foreign. I hope that doesn't sound bad, I don't mean it in a bad way.

He knows that I'm reading and interacting with his Portuguese tweets (and is pretty impressed with how I'm doing :oops: ) but he doesn't know I'm starting to try a bit more seriously.

I guess what everyone else on here says is really true: falling in love is the best motivation :lol:

For now it's a secret, but I bought a copy of my favorite book (War and Peace) in Portuguese. It's so long that I figure my reading will be pretty good by the time I finish it :lol: I'm currently looking for a good (free) online resource. I have a default one, but any recommendations are good!


PREVIOUS INTRO:
As y’all know, I’ve had language logs off and on for years now... I always seem to lose steam.

I liked German but idk, it just doesn’t do it for me...

The two languages I always seem to come back to are Spanish and Japanese, which I guess makes sense since I have the most fluency in them.

Some language learning updates:

I got about... 350(?) Kanji into RTK via Anki, so that wasn’t too bad, but then I started working and that fell apart.

Covid should have been an excellent time for language learning but I wasted the opportunity, unfortunately... oh well.

I just had a month’s vacation and spent the whole thing being sick with covid...

IDK that I have any plans or goals or anything like that. But I’ve been spending time on Twitter and I follow a lot of booksellers that specialize in newly translated works and I find it so inspiring.
Last edited by SophiaMerlin_II on Mon Nov 08, 2021 4:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Back on the Horse?

Postby SM_2 » Thu Sep 23, 2021 3:18 am

Well... I tried to post an update on the 21st (my birthday) but the site logged me out.

Tried to reset my password and it said the email was sent, but it never arrived.

So that’s unfortunate but oh well...

Now account, new self control?
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Re: Back on the Horse?

Postby rdearman » Fri Oct 01, 2021 7:54 am

SM_2 wrote:Well... I tried to post an update on the 21st (my birthday) but the site logged me out.

Tried to reset my password and it said the email was sent, but it never arrived.

So that’s unfortunate but oh well...

Now account, new self control?

The email system is currently broken. If you send me a PM from this account and tell me the details of your old account. (the email you signed up with) then I will change your password on the old account, send the password to this one, and after you've logged in successfully I'll delete this account. From this weekend onward I hope to be able to resolve the email problem.
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SophiaMerlin_II
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Re: Back on the Horse?

Postby SophiaMerlin_II » Mon Nov 08, 2021 4:46 pm

Well, I was never able to log back in again with the "new" account I made -- and I was never able to reset the password from this one -- but somehow it allowed me to log in, so I guess everything worked out in the end!

+ updated first post

yay Portuguese lol
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9 Nov 2021

Postby SophiaMerlin_II » Tue Nov 09, 2021 9:12 pm

For the first time I've ever done language study, I'm not under the impression that this will be easy.

When I first started learning Spanish, and Japanese (and to a lesser extent German), I already had a strong base. Portuguese? At least with reading "serious" topics, there's a huge Romance discount, and a Spanish one specifically. He never writes casually in Portuguese so I'm not sure about that.

But hearing it? English is my first language & I struggle with hearing in English a lot of the time, being partially deaf in one ear. (I can't watch TV in English without subtitles/closed captioning -- this is originally what got me into anime actually.) To me, Japanese and Spanish have very clear vowel sounds (even in "muddy" accents) but IDK if it's the nasalization or just unfamiliarity but when I listen to Portuguese and try to follow along the words, I have more trouble than I should figuring out where I should be in the text :/

I don't know what my real goal is here. To speak Portuguese (either kind) seems impossible, but clearly Portuguese and Brazilian people can do it! It's frustrating because I'm all eaten up with butterflies & can't really think straight.

As far as today goes, just going to read some tweets and relax, because it's been a rough week at work.
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Re: Love and Portuguese

Postby AllSubNoDub » Tue Nov 09, 2021 9:20 pm

Depending on how advanced you got your Spanish, L-Ring Portuguese may give you the listening breakthrough you need. I would think that if L-R actually works, one could not pick a better pair of sister languages to use it with than going from Spanish to Portuguese or vice versa.

Nice choice of lenguas btw!
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Re: Love and Portuguese

Postby SophiaMerlin_II » Tue Nov 09, 2021 10:58 pm

AllSubNoDub wrote:Depending on how advanced you got your Spanish, L-Ring Portuguese may give you the listening breakthrough you need. I would think that if L-R actually works, one could not pick a better pair of sister languages to use it with than going from Spanish to Portuguese or vice versa.

Nice choice of lenguas btw!


I technically have gotten up to yr 4 Spanish in HS, but I have basically no productive capacity, written or spoken. I nearly always respond in English, as long as the other person is bilingual. I actually like conversations like this best -- where people are passively bilingual (enough) and talk to each other in two different languages.

My current Spanish isn't as high. I can mostly understand simple readings, but I lose the shades of meaning nearly completely. I've never liked Spanish or wanted to learn it, it's a bit of a sunk cost fallacy as well as being functionally necessary in my hometown. For example I can sell you shoes or take your order for a hamburger, or interact with you about your security alarm, but I couldn't talk about futbol or the weather, or much else.

So I have a Spanish discount, but it could have been better.
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Re: Love and Portuguese

Postby iguanamon » Tue Nov 09, 2021 11:11 pm

My Portuguese is of the Brazilian variety, however; I've probably spent a bit more time in Portugal than Brazil. I was understood everywhere in Portugal and I understood what was said to me. Nenhum problema. Still, with a Portuguese BF, you will want to naturally learn his variety.

I came from Spanish to Portuguese, and yes there's a major discount but there are many falsos amigos and there is a grammar difference- I'm looking at you, ser e estar, future subjunctive and personal infinitive! The languages may be 80% similar but it's that other 20% that punches above its weight and makes Portuguese its own language. It wasn't until I looked at Portuguese as its own language in itself that I began to learn it well.

When I was learning, I took advantage of both Iberian (Portugal) Portuguese and African (specifically Mozambican) Portuguese. The population differential between Brazil and the rest of Lusofonia is hugely in favor of Brasil, which can make finding Iberian learning materials somewhat difficult if you don't know where to look.

African Portuguese is much closer to Iberian Portuguese. There is a great resource available with audio to make your own parallel texts, from Germany of all places- Deutsche Welle Learning by Ear/Aprender de Ouvido. They have a series of radio plays with accurate transcripts in pdf for free download. The language is not beginner level but more like young adult. The topics are wide and varied from African folktales, to sports, health, business, corruption, history. This is the English site, and this is the Portuguese site. The plays have between 10 and 15 episodes per topic, about 12 minutes long on average. The advantages of downloading the pdf transcript (you have to click on an episode and scroll down to find it. they don't make it easy, but it's there), are that you can read first and look up vocab, or refer to the same episode with the English transcript... or listen first in English then Portuguese... or vice versa... Read and listen together with Portuguese audio and Portuguese transcript. There are many variations.

Of course, as with everything, you have to listen a lot to notice a real effect- 50 to 100 hours should start showing you advancement. You'll learn vocabulary naturally. The African accent isn't too far from Iberian standard. Portugal is quite cosmopolitan- especially Lisboa where you will hear Brazilian, African, and even Asian Portuguese varieties without effort, and often through the course of a day. Lisbon was once the grand capital of the Portuguese Empire and it still has that feel to it today.

I started with the African folktales. I still remember them to this day. Here are the Portuguese episodes of Queres que te conte mais? Fábulas africanas para uma cultura de paz and the English episodes are here Shall I tell you something? African fables for a culture of peace. You'll have to scroll to the bottom for the links to the pdf downloads of the transcripts. Some names of characters in the plays are different in English than in Portuguese- but no big deal. I listened and read over a hundred hours and didn't end up with a Mozambican accent. To others who aren't learning Portuguese, the Learning By Ear resources are also available in French, Hausa, Amharic and Swahili.



Also, have a look at the free resources from the Instituto Camões Centro Virtual. It's a clumsy website. You have to hit the back button a lot and scroll to the bottom a lot but there are a bunch of learning resources there, many are inactive, sadly.

For other learning resources with an Iberian focus check out the Wook bookstore in Portugal. They have a wide selection of courses and learners' materials including grammar exercises to work with.

Also, check out our member, lingua's, log, who is learning Iberian Portuguese

Boa sorte, e bemvinda à língua portuguesa!

edit: spelling
Last edited by iguanamon on Wed Nov 10, 2021 2:27 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Love and Portuguese

Postby SophiaMerlin_II » Wed Nov 10, 2021 1:17 am

iguanamon wrote:My Portuguese is of the Brazilian variety, however; I've probably spent a bit more time in Portugal than Brazil. I was understood everywhere in Portugal and I understood what was said to me. Nenhum problema. Still, with a Portuguese BF, you will want to naturally learn his variety.


I am very aware that Portuguese and Spanish are their own thing, and if I wasn't sure of that originally, watching him try to understand Spanish really convinced me of that fact. I actually do better with Portuguese than he does with Spanish :lol:

But yes, thank you for all of the resources! I've read your logs many times over the years and have found them pretty inspirational. I actually wasn't aware that Portuguese was spoken in so many different places! Very cool.
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10 Nov 21

Postby SophiaMerlin_II » Wed Nov 10, 2021 11:10 pm

ep1.png


Not really sure if this is the best resource since it's Brazilian Portuguese, but it's the one I think I'll go with anyways.

He asked me out on a date so I guess it's getting a little more "official" -- we have a date on the 15th (December), so I want to have phonetics down by then, and lesson one in the book.

When I did Japanese and Spanish I tended to focus more on speed, trying to get through material as quickly as possible, but this time I'm going to try to go slower & try to master each step as much as I can before moving on.

So today, just listening to pronunciation videos so I can start putting actual Portuguese sounds to the words, instead of just reading them with Spanish phonetics.
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