A foreigner’s Portuguese language journey

I arrived in Brazil earlier this year and knew that I would need to use Portuguese to survive here, but my attempts to learn the language while I was still living in London were beset with problems.

First, it’s hard to learn in a classroom in London when you have no need to use Portuguese outside the class. Of course, some artificial situations can be created, such as going to Brazilian bars, or getting my wife to only use Portuguese, but it’s not ideal and sometimes does not work – I once went to a Brazilian bar in London where the waiting staff were using Spanish. Figure that one out.

So I was hoping to pick up the language once I arrived, and I did enrol on a classroom based course at PUC-SP once I arrived. I spent a few months attending the course twice a week. It helped me get up to speed with some basics, but I had two major problems with it:

• The pedagogy was very much based on rote learning and I did not enjoy this at all. Imagine being tested on verb conjugation when you have never even seen the verb before. My feeble protests that the test would work a lot better if they gave me some notice of what they want me to learn fell on deaf ears, often making the classroom experience very poor – endlessly getting something wrong doesn’t give you a lot of reason to turn up for the next class;
• The fixed nature of classes twice a week always at the same time conflicted with a lot of my work commitments. I was often having to attend evening functions for work or travelling for work and therefore missing classes. After missing several in a row, I made a firm commitment to go to the classes whatever functions I should be attending for work – then I was invited to dinner with Bill Clinton in São Paulo. I went to the language class because I had resolved to not change my plans, only for me to realise later what a stupid decision that was.

So, I quit the formal classes and started using a combination of language training books and reading books designed for children to try improving my Portuguese. Of course, there is also the daily exposure of visiting cafes, bars, and even people stopping me in the street to appreciate my dog.

To a certain extent, it has worked. I’m capable of many things that I could not do when I first arrived, such as travelling the city alone, shouting at the bus driver if he does not open the door at my stop, and confidently ordering a beer or negotiating a menu. But I’m yet to become confident about working in Portuguese.

Of course, working mainly in the IT sector I am spoiled somewhat. Most executives in the IT sector can use English as a working language, so I have been able to network with people in Brazil quite easily in my own field. But it’s obvious that to get closer to these people I need to use their language, and there are many meetings I have attended – outside of the pure IT sector – where I have struggled because the participants cannot use English.

Here at IT Decisions, we have often commented on the importance of IT employees understanding English and we are negotiating with an English school so we can soon offer our own English language training completely focused on the needs of IT professionals.

But as an English person resident in Brazil, I do want to improve my own Portuguese skills and so I contacted one of our contributors, Sam Watten. Sam is British and runs a Portuguese language training school for foreigners in Brazil. He gives private classes, but unfortunately he is in Rio and I am in São Paulo. However, he also has written an entire course that focuses specifically on the needs of foreigners trying to do business in Brazil. This sounds just like what I need.

I’m going to spend the next few months working my way through Sam’s course and blogging at least once a week about my progress compared to the various other methods I have used.

I’m hoping it’s a positive experience, but only time will tell and I hope that these forthcoming comments on trying to learn the language of Brazil are of interest to other foreigners keen on doing business here.

Photo by Pascal licensed under Creative Commons