John Fitzpatrick

 

Almost a year after writing an article for Brazzil on living and working in Brazil, I am still receiving e-mails from readers seeking advice. I have made the point incessantly that, if you do not know Portuguese or are not prepared to learn it, then do not waste your time coming here. Otherwise you will be as isolated as an expatriate executive on a two-year contract who speaks English all day and lives in a walled enclave far from local people.

Since very few people here speak English and few are interested in learning to it is, therefore, incumbent on you to learn their language. One frustrated reader told me that he had spent a fruitless two weeks in Rio de Janeiro, during which he was unable to communicate. He compared this with a three-month stay in China where he met a large number of people who spoke English.

Learning Portuguese should not be a problem for two reasons: Brazilians are a friendly, talkative lot so you will have plenty of opportunities to listen and learn, and Portuguese is not a particularly difficult language. Let's take a brief look at these two points.

During the days of the British Empire, the unofficial advice to soldiers, administrators, planters etc was to find what was called a "sleeping dictionary." Although the term sounds rather coarse, it just meant that a personal relationship with a local person was a good way of learning a language.

If the other person does not speak your language, this is even better since you are on your own. This will enable you to become used to talking the language and pick up the accent. If you come to Brazil with some knowledge of Portuguese and get to know someone then you are already on your way. Not only will your new-found friend talk to you but will almost certainly introduce you to other people and to another excellent way of learning a language, which is through music.

I have never become friendly with a Brazilian who has not introduced me to a singer or style of music I had never heard before. Listening to music will help you with the language and introduce you to Brazilian culture at the same time. The first word you will learn will probably be "coração" because I doubt if there exists a Brazilian song without some sentimental reference to the heart. Brazilians will be pleased and flattered and you will become acquainted with some of the greatest music in the world.

Your friend will also be extremely proud of the region from which he or she comes and this will give you an added insight to the culture and language. Regionalism in Brazil is much stronger than in the United States, I believe, and the differences are much wider. The lives of an Amazonian river dweller, who depends on catching fish and forest gathering, and a gaucho cowboy herding cattle on the Argentinean border are so different that it is difficult to believe that these people share the same nationality.

The people of São Paulo are of such a broad ethnic mixture that getting to know one of them means becoming acquainted, not only with Brazilian and São Paulo cultures, but with the cultures of their forefathers who could have originated in places as far apart as Lithuania, Japan, Italy or Syria. Learning Portuguese will not only give you an entry to Brazilian culture but to many others, whether Indian in the Amazon, African in Bahia or German in the south.

Portuguese, Brazilian Way

One essential piece of advice is to concentrate on Brazilian Portuguese. If you have any guides or grammars from Portugal then throw them away. They are of academic value only and if you try and talk like a Portuguese, Brazilians will laugh at you. I know this from personal experience since I learned much of my grammar from a book called Portuguese in Three Months written by a Portuguese author and published by Hugo's Language Books of London.

I found it almost useless in Brazil where the grammar is simplified to an extreme. Almost 20 years later I still have my copy of this book, which has been annotated and changed by Brazilians who have had had a good laugh at it. (I know Portuguese readers will be annoyed at that blanket statement but, as I keep telling them, Brazil is not Portugal and has not been its colony for almost 200 years, so keep your Lusitanian shirts on.) A good Brazilian book is Falando, Lendo, Escrevendo.Português: Um Curso para Estrangeiros, published by EPU of São Paulo.

Brazilian Portuguese is much easier to understand and pronounce than the version found in Portugal. The nasal sounds, in words like "não", "verão", "pão" etc are not normally pronounced as strongly in Brazil as in Portugal. You won't need to pinch your nose before speaking. The slurring "s" of the Portuguese from Portugal, which makes a name like "dos Santos" sound like "dosh Santosh", is only really found in the Rio de Janeiro area, probably because so many Portuguese emigrated there.

The Brazilian grammar is much simpler and at times similar to English. For example, there are differences in conjugating the present or imperfect tense. The equivalent of "I eat" is "Eu como" in Brazil and Portugal. However, if you want to say "I am eating", then in Brazil the present participle is used, as in English, giving a literal translation: "Eu estou comendo."

In Portugal, though, the infinitive is used: "Eu estou a comer". "I was eating" would be "Eu estava comendo" in Brazil and "Eu estava a comer" in Portugal. The Portuguese are also more formal than the Brazilians and use various forms for "you", such as "tu" (familiar) "senhor/a" (formal, singular), senhores/as (formal, plural). Brazilians, on the other hand, generally use "você" for everyone, reserving "senhor/a" for occasions when they are being extremely polite or talking to an older person who deserves respect.

Brazilians are also a bit lazy with grammar and at times their version of Portuguese sounds like the "Amos `n Andy"-style of speech used by black Americans in pre-politically correct days, such as "I is" for "I am". A good example is with pronouns. If you were to say "I see him" in Portugal you would use "Eu o vejo" but in Brazil people say "Eu vejo ele," which translates literally as "I see he".

This is not necessarily a bad thing because the Portuguese way is often ambiguous and, in some cases, you don't know immediately to what the pronoun refers. The same occurs with the possessive where "seu amigo", for example, can mean "his friend", "her friend", "your friend" or "its friend". In these cases Brazilians will generally specify and say "amigo dele" (his friend) or "amigo dela" (her friend) etc.

To be fair, the Portuguese also use this format to avoid ambiguity but Brazilians will generally simplify or take shortcuts. Another example is seen in how Brazilians throw out the rules with indirect objects in personal pronouns. To say "I want to give him a book" would be "Eu quero lhe dar um livro" in Portugal but a Brazilian would say "Eu quero dar o livro para ele," which translated literally is "I want to give the book to he".

This casual approach might enrage a language professor in Lisbon but it is the norm here and, since it simplifies the language, makes it easier for a foreigner. Brazilians always find ways to overcome problems in their daily lives so it is not surprising that they do so with language as well.

Vowels Beat Consonants

These are just a few points which I hope will show that Brazilian Portuguese need not be approached with fear. If you know another Romance language like Spanish, French or Italian you will already have the basic grammatical structure in your head and it will be much easier. Do not, however, think that a knowledge of Spanish means you can speak Portuguese.

Whereas the written languages are similar there is no similarity when spoken. A Brazilian might understand a Spaniard speaking Spanish but he will not understand the Brazilian speaking Portuguese. A hideous, bastardized so-called language known as "portunhol" is generally used on these occasions. However not only is it painful on the ear but inefficient and business meetings will generally be held in English.

Whereas Spanish is truncated and abrupt, Portuguese is more mellifluous and sinuous. Compare similar-looking words like "coração" and "corazon", "mulher" and "mujer" or names like "Gonçalves" and "Gonzalez" and you will see what I mean. The softness of Brazilian Portuguese, where consonants are stressed only lightly, can pose a problem to the beginner who finds it difficult to separate words. This was one of my main problems at the beginning, simply because Brazilians talk so much. However, if you train your ear you will eventually pick it up.

This is no more than a brief canter through a highly complicated area but I hope it might give a bit of encouragement to those who are serious about coming here to visit or stay. One final comment which I hope proves my point is that, of all the foreigners I know who live here and are fluent in Portuguese, not one has learned the language formally. They have all picked it just by talking to people, listening to the radio, reading the papers and being forced to speak every time they meet someone. Learning a language is like cooking—the proof is in the eating.

 

John Fitzpatrick is a Scottish journalist who first visited Brazil in 1987 and has lived in São Paulo since 1995. He writes on politics and finance and runs his own company, Celtic Comunicações - www.celt.com.br,   which specializes in editorial and translation services for Brazilian and foreign clients. You can reach him at jf@celt.com.br

© John Fitzpatrick 2003