The language

My attempts to learn Portuguese before coming here via the Pimsleur method was the subject of an earlier post. Now that I've been here for a couple of weeks, I freely admit that what I learned amounted to practically naught in terms of helping me in day to day work or life. A few sentences I learned from Dr Pimsleur have stood me in good stead, such as "uma cerveja, por favor" ("a beer, please") and after using that four times, I break out my "onde fica u banheiro ?" ('where is the men's room ?").

Many have told me that Portuguese is similar to Spanish, and I can see the similarities - but there are many differences. First, the "j" is spoken more like in English than in Spanish. For instance Brazilians "Jorge" is more like "George" than the Spanish "Hor-hay". The combination of "rr" is pronounced "ha" - examples include "forro" (say "fo-ho") and "cerrado" (say "say-ha-do"), both of which are words I used in previous posts. "De" is proncounced "ji" - the best example is "cidade" (city) being pronounced as "ci-da-ji". "Te" is "che" - "Belo Horizon-che" is the way the city name is spoken. "X" is "sha" often, but not always. The nearby town of "Araxa" is pronounced "Arasha".

I've discovered several nouns that are nothing like the Spanish version. Dog is "perro" in Spanish, but "cachorro" in Portuguese. A child is a "crianca" and not a "nino". Chicken is "frango", not "pollo".

You like Patata, I like Batata ... so let's call the whole thing off

Another notable thing about language. Many business people and professionals here understand English, but few speak it with any degree of fluency. The person on the street that we encounter understands not a word of English - so ordering food and getting cabs have been a creative mix of furious gesturing and repeating our words in English louder and louder.

#ibmcsc brazil