"What's this, then? 'Romanes Eunt Domus'? 'People called Romanes they go the house'?"The Centurion immediately launches into a very intense (and dare I say, hilarious?) Latin lesson for Brian, correcting his appalling grammar and finally makes him "write it out a hundred times." Just for the fans, here's a link to the scene, with some enlightening comments underneath about how the Centurion's grammar is still wrong!
Well that's exactly how I feel when it comes to learning Portuguese. I learnt how to speak English by just kind of soaking it up when I was little, which is I guess, how most people learn their primary or dominant language. The first time around the grammar just kind of seeps into your brain by trial and error. When my kids say, "Dad, I've eated all my vegetables", I put them straight and tell them how they should have said it and over the years they gradually assimilate enough examples to somehow get it right. Learning a second language is much more difficult and I feel exactly like Brian, struggling to properly conjugate verbs and get the correct tenses on everything. I have nobody following me around 24/7 correcting my every mistake, putting me straight and supplying me with a plentiful supply of good examples for me to learn from.
It is often said that 70% of communication is non-verbal, which becomes very obvious to anyone who has tried to buy something in a shop in a foreign country. There comes a moment at the checkout when the attendant asks you if you'd like a bag, and even though you cannot understand the language, their tone of voice and the fact that they have just pulled out a plastic carrier bag from under the counter makes it absolutely obvious what it was that they just asked you. Buying stuff at the Farmácia is usually not too much of a problem either, providing you go in to it with the understanding that most Pharmaceuticals have Latin based names anyway, or at least are very similar to their English counterparts. Of course it often helps if you look up the name of the product you want to buy before you go out to the shops, and for that a good bilingual dictionary is invaluable. For months I have been driving around with a petrol car and refilling with "Sem Chumbo" (literally, "Without Lead") and now I have had to look up the Portuguese word for diesel, "Gasóleo." Initially I pronounced this incorrectly, putting the stress on the "eo" where it should have been on the "ó" and when corrected by the pump attendant, he helpfully informed me that I could quite adequately get away by simply asking for diesel. So, for the most part, buying stuff is usually quite easy; a combination of preparation, persistence and a fair amount of gesticulation usually wins through.
The moment when the shop assistant talks back is when it all goes wrong and the problems start. That moment after I ask for the item I want and they reply with an incomprehensible babble leaving me stunned, speechless and decidedly off balance. They probably only asked me if I wanted it gift wrapping, or if I have a loyalty card, or if I would like a small or a large box of whatever it is that I'm buying, but the honest truth is that I really don't know. I haven't got the faintest clue what I've just been asked. I only know that it was a question from the tone of voice, but other than that, no clue at all. At this point there is often a choice to be made. Do I say, "Yes, please", "No, thank you" or simply explain that I don't understand? It often depends on the situation, and sometimes there may be other clues to help me decide what response to give, but more often than not, I struggle.
So should I really worry about how bad my grammar is? Need I worry that I resort to wildly gesticulating over my shoulder to signify that something happened in the past? Well, no. That's the short answer. Whatever the linguistic barriers I've been faced with over the last year, I've coped, somehow. Truthfully though it would be really quite nice to be able to have a conversation with my neighbours about what they did last weekend and where they are planning to take their children this weekend with no doubt as to the sequence of the events. Telling my wife that I'd bumped into a neighbour yesterday and that he had something to say about going or coming back from the Algarve but not knowing which can be very frustrating. When I am at the bar, I'd like to be able to join in the conversation a little and do more than simply repeat the football score and saying how good it was. I guess it will come. I guess it would come along a lot quicker if I got myself some Portuguese lessons. But as the Portuguese saying goes, "Burro velho não aprende línguas", which literally means, "Old donkey does not learn languages."
I'm planning to go to the municipal swimming pool sometime soon and book my kids in for some swimming lessons. My eldest son is a little nervous about it because he only wants the lessons if they are conducted in English, and I can understand his anxiety, however, I do feel that it would be really good for him if the instruction was in Portuguese. That aside, the first problem for me is that I have to manage to book the lessons, and that means that I need to sit down and figure out some key phrases, and then hope and pray that I have figured out the right key phrases to get the job done. Wish me luck!
