This past week, Gabi, Dixon and I worked on reading mostly. It seems that most of our time spent together is not necessarily on learning new things, but more on the repetition and practice of speaking, which I enjoy. Gabi and I read a few short conversations together, and she had me translate into not-so formal terms. I honestly felt very confident in my ability to comprehend the conversations’ contents, which was fairly exciting. I think knowing Spanish has really allowed me to comprehend well. The sentence structures between Spanish and Portuguese are very similar, however they differ in certain words and verbs. The structures are also rather similar to English as well. One example would be describing a noun, and in English, the adjective typically goes before the word unless you are using ‘is’ or ‘are’ or some form of the verb ‘to be.’ In Spanish and Portuguese, the adjectives are placed after the noun unless, again, the form of the verb ‘ to be’ is used. Here is an example:
English: The old man runs. / The old man / The man is old
Spanish: El hombre viejo corre. / El hombre viejo / El hombre es viejo
Portuguese: O homem velho corre. / O homem velho / O homem é velho
Here, one can see the differences and similarities in sentence structure between English, Spanish, and Portuguese. One may also be able to understand how previously knowing Spanish has helped me to understand the Portuguese sentence structure, since they do have such similarities.
As of now, I think the hardest part of this process as a whole is keeping myself organized and accountable for the learning of the language. Sometimes, I feel lost, because I am so used to having professors guide me through the learning process of learning a new language. I have been trying to practice my reading as well as vocabulary and some grammar and writing in order to keep up with the work. Gabi and I have been trying to converse in very basic Portuguese, and she will talk to me in Portuguese, and I will say in English what she is asking of me, and then I will respond in basic Portuguese. When I meet with Dixon, I tend to ask him the more technical questions, because he knows how to teach and strategize how to organize a new language. He has given me printouts for his Portuguese course that he teaches, so I am able to use them in order to guide my conjugating of verbs when I write sentences.
When it comes to the biggest challenge, I have said that the accent is challenging, which it is. However, I think now, I realize that knowing Spanish is both a good and bad thing. I find myself comparing Portuguese with Spanish too often, with the same expectations for Portuguese as I do for Spanish. I tend to ask Gabi about how it compares to Spanish, even though I know she does not know Spanish, and it is not helpful. I want to try and work on getting out of the habit of thinking of Portuguese in terms of Spanish. When I first started learning Spanish, I would always translate back to English in order to understand, and now find myself going from Portuguese to Spanish to English and then from English straight to Portuguese, so I would like to get rid of the middle man of Spanish, and solely focus on Portuguese as its own distinct and unique language, because it truly is.
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