getting some language skills easily before return to south america

[gulliver]

Having had such a great experience in rio, I am getting ready to return at the end of the month. since lost passport nixed my weekend in BA (wonderfully planned by Roberto-our man in BA) - i will include four days in BA. While I was there, i wished I would have spent some time learning Spanish or Portuguese. It seems like many of the boys at the rio saunas who could not speak english seemed to indicate that they were able to communicate in spanish to a fair degree. Is this assumption correct on my part? Since I work with spanish speaking people I have commenced learning spanish since i can practice daily and have some familiarity with the pronunciation. Do you think it will be of much use in Brazil? Will it make it easier to pick up basic portuguese?

 

i found a site on the web (http://www.studyspanish.com) that is absolutely working for me. It is free but for 14.95 you get a premium membership for one month (all the time I have before going). For whatever reason, I find it no problem to spend hours a day learning on the computer (there are audio segments) where i procratinated using tapes. Have not found a extensive portuguese site similar to the spanish one though.

 

also want to recommend the sevices of Roberto (our man in BA). He had done extensive planning for my coming to Buenos Aires which totally fell apart with a lost passport problem. I felt horrible and emailed him wanting to pay for his services and received a nice email back with an amount that was unbelievably generous considering his time. thank you roberto, I will make it up to you when i get to BA.

 

If you ever lose your passport in Rio - it will take a full day to solve the problem as you need to go to the tourist police in Leblon clear to the other side of rio for the maritime police to retrostamp you new passport as well as a trip to at least one airline office to get a letter documenting your arrival. Even though there was no crime you still need to fill out a Police report.

 

if any of you have any advice on my idea of learning spanish first and whether it will be of any use in rio, let me know.

[Guest Gringo]

RE: getting some language skills easily before return t...

 

A web site that i have found very helpful is transparent.com. u can elect 2 receive a word a day of brasilian-portuguese used in a sentence & spoken by a native. it's free. step by step, one word a day. keep in mind that the average speaking vocabulary is only 800 words!

[Guest Deweywop]

RE: getting some language skills easily before return t...

 

As someone who has studied a lot of Spanish, I found that my best communication consisted of me speaking my typically slow, non-native Spanish to a Brazilian and asking him to speak slowly in Portuguese. I have had long, relatively complex conversations this way. I also tried to pick up some Portuguese, and the Brazilians were remarkably charitable with my atrocious butchering of their language.

 

I think native Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian speakers can understand each other very well. Portuguese is in some ways very different from Spanish and in some ways very similar. But overall, I find it a much more difficult language, in pronunciation, spelling, grammar, etc.

[trilingual]

RE: Tri's Hints For the Linguistic Newbies

 

From one aspect, it probably doesn't make any difference whether you learn Spanish or Portuguese first: the languages are so similar in grammar and vocabulary that after learning one the other will be very easy to pick up.

 

Of course, Spanish is spoken by more people in more countries (including the U.S.) than Portuguese, so it's probably more useful over-all. It's also easier to pronounce than Portuguese. Spanish is widely understood (if not well spoken) in Brazil because the language is so similar to Portuguese. These days it's also widely taught in Brazilian schools. It's quite easy for Portuguese-speakers to understand Spanish; it's less easy the other way around because Portuguese has more vowel sounds than Spanish, which confuses Spanish-speakers, at least until their ears become accustomed to the different sounds.

 

The grammar and syntax is virtually identical in both languages, with only a few variations (although they're significant). Probably 95% of the vocabulary is identical, even though the pronunciation may be different. However, there are quite a few differences in the core, everyday vocabularies, as there are lots of words in Brazilian Portuguese of African or Tupi-Guarani origin, especially for foods, household and kitchen objects, etc., that are totally different from their Spanish equivalents.

 

By the way, everyday Argentine/Uruguayan Spanish, which is what Brazilians are most familiar with, also uses a lot of non-standard words for foods and common objects (like "palta" for avocado, instead of "aguacate," or "frutillas" for strawberries, instead of "fresas"). River Plate Spanish uses a unique "vos" verb form, instead of the usual "tu," to address people in the familiar. In B.A., people think you're being formal and stand-offish if you use the "tu" form! Also, in the River Plate basin the Spanish "ll" and "y" are pronounced "zh," so "calle" is pronounced CA-zheh, and the pronoun "yo" is pronounced "zhoh."

 

Because the languages are so similar, it's quite common to see a Brazilian and a Spanish-speaking visitor having a broad-ranging conversation, with each speaking his own language to the other person yet understanding each other perfectly! However, they prefer not to actually try speaking the other language for fear of making mistakes, mispronouncing things, etc. As long as everybody understands, who cares? (The same phenomenon occurs with Italian/Spanish or Italian/Portuguese. They're so similar that it's easy to understand the other language without making much extra effort.)

 

So, yes, Spanish is very useful in Brazil. You may find that fewer people in small places understand Spanish, but in any of the large cities you should be able to make yourself understood, and especially in any city that has a large tourist trade, because people there are accustomed to dealing with Spanish-speaking visitors. When their economy is OK, Brazil is for Argentines what Mexico is for Americans or Canadians: the friendly and convenient country close at hand with palm trees and beaches, so during tourist season Brazil is usually flooded with Argentines. There haven't been as many the past couple of years because of the economic crisis in Argentina, but now that the two countries' currencies are almost identical in value there will be more Argentines visiting Brazil again. So you're likely to see more of those Spanish-Portuguese conversations I mentioned.

 

By the way, if you're somewhat familiar with both languages it's easy to fall into "Portunhol", which is a mixture of the two languages. Portunhol is practically the lingua franca along the border between Brazil and Uruguay, where adjoining towns in the two countries are separated from each other only by a street, with no restrictions on crossing back and forth. Personally, I try to avoid mixing the two languages, but it's inevitable that it'll happen as you grasp for a word you don't know in one, so you borrow from the other hoping that it's the same in both. Most of the time it is, but sometimes you end up with very funny manglings! Brazilians who've never really studied Spanish but try to speak it anyway almost always end up speaking Portunhol, so you'll undoubtedly experience it if you try speaking to Brazilians in Spanish! It may not be elegant, but as long as you understand each other, who cares?

[gulliver]

RE: Tri's Hints For the Linguistic Newbies

 

guys, thank you for responding to all of my questions. tri- your information was quite extensive and i really appreciate it. I am going quite rapidly thru the http://www.studyspanish.com site and find it so user friendly. i have a feeling this next trip will be a totally different experience having invested time in language skills.

[CT Dick]

RE: Tri's Hints For the Linguistic Newbies

 

>Of course, Spanish is spoken by more people in more >countries (including the U.S.)

 

A recent article in the NYTimes said that the USA has the 5th largest Spanish-speaking population in the world. And, there are more Spanish speakers in NYC than in the capitals of 14 Spanish American nations.

 

Dick

[CT Dick]

RE: getting some language skills easily before return t...

 

Gringo, http://www.transparent.com is a corporate home page. Where did you find that new word?

 

Dick

[Guest Gringo]

RE: getting some language skills easily before return t...

 

scroll down a bit & u will c the word a day option. the address is correct-----www.transparent.com