Although I, whilst still in the Netherlands, went through all the steps of “Teach Yourself Fluent Portuguese in only 10 days”, I did not understand a word of what the locals said after I arrived in Brazil. Obviously everyone in Brazil must be speaking Portuguese incorrectly.
(I mean: I went through all the chapters! I even learned how to count to 21. Ridiculous!)
So, somewhat disappointed, I decided to then try to parrot the locals as good as I could: “Beleza, beleza, beleza, cerveja, né?” (Hello, hello, hello, beer, ain’t it) was the first thing I learned, which turned out to be an extremely successful sentence in the great kingdom of my new father-in-law Luiz Afonso the First. After only my first hours in Brazil, I discovered that the presence of the words “genro” (son-in-law) and “cerveja” in the same sentence almost always meant that I was kindly requested to bring King Luiz Afonso a new can of beer. After a week I also understood: “para você tambem!” (take one yourself).
But where many men would argue that this means you comprehend a language sufficiently, I pressed on to learn more. Not in the least place because Portuguese is spoken by 190 million people worldwide, and in Brazil, which houses 89 % of the worlds Portuguese speaking people, almost by everyone apart from some cannibals in tree-houses in the Amazon and sun-burned Englishmen in hotel rooms on the Copa Cobana. (This paragraph is only added to this story to give it some weight).
So every day (apart from the many days when I am playing football, fishing or getting my “sogro” [father-in-law] beers), I memorise sentences from my Lonely Planet Phrasebook, I read Brazilian children books, I watch a score of Brazilian telenovelas and consult Google Translate for some extremely inadequate translations. Or I speak to my new five-year-old best friend Artur, who is only to be understood by the most proficient of Portuguese speakers. Not necessarily because he speaks academical Portuguese, but mostly because he lifts the art of speaking rapidly whilst pronouncing every ‘L’ as a ‘R’ to a whole new level.
