How’s my Portuguese so far?

The thing about me is that I’m more of a listener than a talker.

So just like when I was learning English, even though I could understand, read and write properly, my speaking level was ‘meh’ 😣

I was too afraid to make mistakes and I didn’t want people to laugh at me 😓

Just so you know, when I was a teenager (around 2000-2006) I could already read the Harry Potter series in English but it’s only in 2015/2016 that I had enough confidence to speak. Traveling alone and meeting Davidson were definitely a boost.

But anyway… back to Portuguese.

It’s been almost 3 months that I’m using Duolingo.

Although there are sentences that I will never use in a conversation such as ‘o lobo gosta de bolo de chocolate’ 😂, I can tell I’m expanding my vocabulary and learning some grammatical rules.

Also listening to Davidson talking to Ellie helps, although this is more of a passive learning.

Few weeks ago, when going to the local market, I met with a grandma and I surprised myself by talking to her. It was a very quick conversation but it was the first time I felt like I was definitely learning Portuguese and not just playing on some mobile app to be #1 in the Diamond league.

And by the way, since I reached that goal, I’m using less Duolingo. I used to play for 30min to 1h every day. And now I’m doing one or two lessons a day which is less than 5min.

So what now?

I’m experimenting new ways to learn.

• I’ve started (just today actually 🤓) to listen to Brazilian music with the lyrics by checking on YouTube the most trending songs.
• I intend to learn the 1000 most common words in Portuguese because I’ve read that learning them allows you to understand 80% of a casual conversation. This will be boring but if I do just a little bit every day it should be ok.
• I’d like to listen to an audio book or a podcast. For that I’ll check with Davidson if he has any recommendation. Otherwise I was thinking I could listen to Harry Potter audio books 😄

Maybe by the end of this year I’ll be able to have a normal conversation in Portuguese with Davidson….

Quem sabe? 😜