We’re, quite frankly, disappointed that we don’t speak better Portuguese yet. We’re still trying, and our “Restaurant Portuguese” is pretty solid. We can order anything we want – though, for some reason, whenever they ask how we want our steak cooked we fumble for some reason, even though we know the question is coming. But where we’re still struggling is questions that are asked out of context – that’s still harder for us to piece together than we’d like.
But it’s very much worth it to learn. Here’s why.
Why – practically
You absolutely can get away with speaking only English. You’ll do fine. We’ve met people who’ve lived here for years and speak zero Portuguese at all. They do OK.
And secondarily, you can get away with learning Brazilian Portuguese. I’ve read statistics that say that up to 40% of the people you’ll meet when you’re out and about are actually Brazilian. So Brazilian, which is much easier to learn, especially as a Spanish-speaker, can get you pretty far. Duolingo has Brazilian Portuguese as an option. It’s better than nothing, but I don’t recommend it.
But what you won’t be able to do is talk to your neighbors, the Portuguese-born locals. Especially older folks. Generally, people under 50 or so will speak some English. But Brazilian Portuguese is, unfortunately, a one-way-street – they can understand you but you won’t be able to understand them. And these are old people, who are generally treated with respect here. These are people who may have lived through the revolution. They’ve seen stuff come and go. They’re neighborhood people. I think it’s important to be able to try and communicate with them.
You also won’t be able to understand the TV. You won’t be able to understand public service announcements. You will probably be that stereotypical ex-pat, which I would hope you don’t want to be. You won’t be “here.”
But that’s not even the only reason why you should learn European Portuguese.
Why – linguistically
Why does Portuguese have so many weird accent marks? Why is there a ç? Why are there vowels with hats like ê? The Spanish-style accent á is in use, how does that change things other than just where the accent goes in the sentence? How do you pronounce ã?
And for that, you need the language. You can start to see why you need these different characters to differentiate between different vowels.
But more interestingly, what you’re learning is (allegedly) a language that’s a lot closer to the “vulgar Latin” that was spoken a bajillion years ago. Portuguese can be a real cornerstone in being able to hear other languages, and hear why they sound different.
Why do French R’s sound weird? How do you get to the point of having “silent” letters? Why does Italian have such pronounced, heavy accents on some syllables? Why are there two different types of ‘R’ in Spanish? Where else can you hear the ‘ll’ in Spanish?
European Portuguese has been said to be a ‘stress-timed language’ – not ‘syllable-timed’. Do you know what other languages are stress-timed? English!
And even more importantly, when you learn European Portuguese, you can start to hear other Romance languages and pick up bits here and there. A story @snipe and I have told – probably here on this blog – was that we were watching a show that had parts that were in Romanian, and we were both poking at our iPads as we were watching the show, and not reading the subtitles. And somehow, we both caught a few words that came across – how is that possible? Well, again, according to some, European Portuguese may be a little closer to the original vulgar Latin. And Romanian is a Romance language.
But it’s very interestingly a one-way street. Learning a simpler language like Spanish or Brazilian Portuguese is not like learning on training wheels and then taking the training wheels off. It’s more like learning on a tricycle and trying to move to a 10-speed – what you’ve learned basically won’t help at all. But you can go from European Portuguese to those other languages and it’s a breeze. We’re accidentally understanding a lot of the Italian we hear around us now, without even trying, for example.
Sidenote – Brazilian
We’ve heard some fun stories from various Brazilians who’ve come here (they have a fast-track to residency here). One was from a server, soon after he got here from Brazil. He was talking to his new boss at a restaurant (who was European) and quickly got frustrated, finally saying, “I’m sorry, can we just please speak in English? I really can’t understand you.”
I went to a lovely café at a park here (this place is absolutely lousy with them) and was talking to a server and speaking OK-ish European Portuguese. The guy was really struggling to understand me and I started to gaslight myself – am I really this bad? I tried to order an “Aguardente” – a liquor. And the guy started to ask me if I wanted lemon on my cup, which was really weird. I had the feeling that I wasn’t being understood at all.
Finally I had to just point at the menu to get what I wanted.
Eventually we figured out that the guy was Brazilian and couldn’t really understand what I was saying. I was ordering “AH-gwar-DENT” – and he was hearing (in Brazilian) “AH-gwa KENT” – meaning warm water.
When he came back for a refill I flipped my accent over and asked for “AH-gwar-JEN-chee” and was immediately understood.
So European can still be kinda hard for even Brazilians to understand, though it’s the same language and generally the same nouns and verbs.
I’ve been trying to come up with a metaphor for how far apart the accents are and it’s like, Louisiana Cajun versus Cockney? Or Midwesterner versus Scottish? I’m not even sure if those do it justice.
There are, roughly 20x more Brazilians than Portuguese. 200 million to 10 million. So much of what you’ll see and hear out in the world is all Brazilian.
How to Hear
We already have resources listed on how to learn European Portuguese. And generally, what we’ve said is that, in order, here are the difficulties:
- Reading Portuguese.
- Speaking Portuguese.
- Hearing Portuguese.
It’s generally not that hard to read, especially if you have any Romance languages handy. Especially Spanish. And then, speaking it, you just need to sound it out, knowing some of the rules about R’s and accents and all that stuff. And, in general, most people can piece together what you’re trying to say.
But the hardest part – and what we’re still struggling with – is hearing it. The problem is that the language is “stress-timed”. So not each syllable gets the same treatment. The general rule is that if there’s an accent on a word, then yes, of course, do the accent. But the vowel is going to be ‘open’ – and is the focal point of the word. So “obrigado” – meaning “thank you” coming from a man – is not pronounced “oh-bree-GAH-doh“. It’s more “uh–brih-GAH-duh“. The short vowels actually remind me a lot of Japanese, like how you say “desu” – which ends up sounding kinda like “dess.”
When @snipe and I were down in the Algarve, and we were on our “scouting mission” to come here, we were at the oldest bar in Faro (The Anchor Bar – lovely little local spot), where there was a very nice young gal who was serving. @snipe asked for a “vinho verde” – green wine – which is our go-to. They didn’t have it. So she then asked for “espumante” – sparking wine. She pronounced it the way Duolingo (Brazilian) taught her. “Eh-spoo-MAN-chay.” The bartender didn’t understand. @snipe tried a few other ways to say it. No dice. Finally she said “vinho com….” and made a sparkling gesture with her fingers saying “bloob-bloob-bloob-bloob”?
“Ah!” The bartender said. “SHPOOMNT“. The initial E gets clipped, the S turns into SH, it’s a little weird – but there are rules to it. It actually does make sense, and is consistent.
So that’s generally how you need to listen here. Find the accent in the word, work your way around that accent to find the rest of it and find the dropped or clipped or closed vowels. Apparently in some regions it’s even more pronounced than in others, with the Açores islands (Azores) being very hard to parse for the mainland folks.
Once you can hear it, you can try to replicate it.
And, in our opinion, it’s worth it, even though it’s very, very hard. If you’re coming here, you really should at least try.
Boa sorte!
