I must be honest with you. Learning Portuguese was not my dream ( it became two years ago) and from the beginning, when I was hearing people speaking this language, I was confused. For me it was like French, Polish and Spanish mixed together. It became two years ago.
During learning other languages I met with many different barriers, for example grammar, unfamiliar alphabet or pronunciation of the letters and words. Yesterday I had an occasion to learn new portuguese words from the native speakers and I must say it was not so easy. There are of course many difficulties with pronunciation and some letters in the alphabet are also different but there are also letters that suddenly disappear during normal conversation! I already can see there will be a lot of mistakes, misunderstanding and fun! But practice is a good way to become an expert so lets come back to this topic at the end of my volunteer work in Rato – ADCC.
Learning languages for some people might not be easy and for sure it is always a challenge. By learning another language you may not only learn how to communicate but also understand other culture, specific way of thinking, relation to time and space. There are many examples how different people around the world can feel for example happiness or sadness. Do you know that there are also some feelings that may not exist in your culture? For example: saudade is characteristic of the Portuguese or Brazilian temperament. And there are many more examples in the world. If you are interested in this topic I would like to recommend you three books: Atlas of happiness: the global secrets of how to be happy written by Helen Russell, The Book of Human Emotions written by Tiffany Watt Smith and Babel: Around the World in Twenty Languages by Dorren Gaston. These books are interesting and for sure will help you understand other cultures. A little bit of course, because the best results you may achieve when you are surrounded by native speakers and you need to communicate with them each day for a long time. That is why I am happy to be here surrounded by Portuguese people and beautiful views.
