Eai Beleza!

Sarah (my teacher) and I sharing a light moment during one of the Portuguese classes

When a boy is seriously interested in a girl from another tribe, in my culture, you will notice how hard he works to learn her language. Maybe, in preparation to have a good first impression to his to-be in-laws. I once fell a victim of that, but luckily or unluckily ours did not last long, and there was no need to meet my to-be in-laws. 

However, I have to learn Portuguese if I am going to survive here in Brasil. This time though ain't looking for a `in-laws' first impression`,but rather a possibility to make my communication with Brazilians a little bit more effective. Brazilians study Portuguese, Spanish and English while in primary and high school levels, but only speak Portuguese as their national language, both officially and casually. English is spoken by those who take interest to be fluent, but generally, it is almost impossible to communicate with it even in government offices.  Spanish is closely related to Portuguese so they find it easier to use it when necessary.

Every Monday,Tuesday, and Wednesday between 1pm and 4 pm (that is about 3 hours) I spent time in one of Brazilian Universities studying Portuguese. My classes are facilitated by Sarah, a 19 year old lady studying Letters (Languages) in the University. Eva and I commonly call her Professora (meaning teacher in Portuguese). Our classes are semi-formal, or largely casual, though they involve serious Portuguese grammar content. 

A class session 

Portuguese grammar is nothing close to English (My official language), or Kiswahili (my national language), or Kamba (my mother-tongue/dialect), though there are some similarities.

For instance, in Portuguese we have masculine and femine words. For example, a girl is garota (F) and a boy is garoto (M); a pen is caneta (F) and a glass of water is copu (M). Basically, most of the words ending with `a`are feminine and those ending with `o`or `u`are masculine. 

Also the pronouns in Portuguese have a plural. 

Eu-------------I

Você---------You

Ele/Ela-----He/she

Noś----------We 

Vocês-------Plural for You (not found in English)

Eles/Elas--Plural for He/she (not found in English)

An example in a sentence would be: 

Deus abençoe vocês

God bless you(plural)

There are more differences I have observed apart from the two I have mentioned. 

There are three lessons I am learning from this experience: 

1. When I ever find yourself in a brand new culture,I need to acquaint myself with appropriate resources to make me relevant and appropriately part of the new system. Language,inevitably,is one of the cultural ingredients.

2. To be proud of my language and seek to speak it more often. 

3. Portuguese is a tough language to learn and speak.