Never say never again or How to learn portugese
“No, No, No – it’s wrong!”, Nuno cried most the time out of the small conference room of the Oficina Juventude da Miratejo. Why? Because of a stupid EVS Volunteers is not able to speak one normal sentence in portugese. But he should. The speak is about me and the language training I have 3 to 6 hours per day in Rato.
Before I will start to say bad things about the training and the trainers I want to say that I am really, really proud of getting so much portugese-lessons and an individual training each day. Thank you Nuno and furtheron thank you nice, nice Claudia 🙂
How can you imagine learning a new language in Rato? First you’ve to accept the Rammstein-method – if you don’t accept this you will get lost, frustrated and angry. [Normally you will get this also when you accept this but…] Rammstein-method is something we called in school in Germany: “Listen and repeat” or “ecoutez et repetez”. So you have to repeat most the time words, phrases and things like this. But not once or twice. Hundred, twohundred times. And that’s no joke! Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. Always. Always. Always. And than you’ll be aggressive. You’ll be so aggressive that you are going to hit Nuno or Claudia. But one second before you want to do this Nuno or Claudia stop the training and talk about other things. Just for a moment but than you can relax for one, two, three minutes. But don’t relax to much. You’ve to repeat once again hundred, twohundred times the words….
One the one hand I think that this strategie ist not very padagogic BUT on this way I am really going to learn potugese. For example the words for the “body”. All the time Nuno show on my hand, arm, head, face….and I’ve to repeat the words for the parts of the body. And whatever you say about this – I already know nearly more “bodywords” in portugese than in german. That’s really cool. And moments like this – that you know some words one or two weeks after training makes you happy makes you lucky and you want to learn more.
There was also another success of learning portugese. Ville and Cabè more or less two “persons” of Rato talked about alkoholshops in Finnland and Portugal. And I understood. I felt really lucky at this moment when they asked if I understood anything and I answer: “Yes, you said this….” That’s a point where you’ll say: “more portugese up to my head.”
BUT
There will be also other moments. For example if you take a coffee with Nuno, Justyna and your girfriend. Than Nuno will ask you where you are going. And you will answer “Belem”. Than he will knit his brows. And ask once again: “Where??” You will answer “Belem” with more pronounciacion. He won’t unterstand this and ask you again: “Where?? There is no place which is called Belem. Sorry!” And you will get angry and feel emberessed that you are not able to say this shity one word in a right way. And than you will spell only the letters of B E L E M. And Nuno will do: “AAAAHHHHHHH BELÉM, now I know where you will go. Have fun there it’s a nice place to be” – And this is a point where you feel emberessed that you are not able to speak Belém not in the right way – and you will move back to Germany and be a teacher at languageschool and get revange in the same way to all people who wants to learn GERMAN 🙂
