In the months leading up to our trip to Madeira, we’d been trying to learn some Portuguese, and I actually felt like we were doing ok. I’d been to Portugal in the early 2000s, but only for a week or so, so I never progressed much past Bom dia and Obrigada. I’d wanted to do a bit better this time.
I’d printed out a bunch of useful phrases and stuck them on the fridge. John was listening to Portuguese podcasts for Spanish speakers. We’d put together a Spotify playlist we could all caterwaul along to (ballads are best – they’re sloooooow) – with this being our particular favourite (turn it up loud! 😂):
And we’d subscribed to some pretty cool YouTube channels (Talk the Streets, Practice Portuguese, Portuguese with Anita) – all focusing on pronunciation and everyday language.
But things got busy in the final couple of weeks before we left home, there was the serious jetlag during our few days’ stopover in the UK and – boom – all of a sudden we were landing at Cristiano Ronaldo International Airport (yes, it’s called that!), feeling completely unprepared. Alfie said he couldn’t even remember how to say ‘thank you’.
Not overly surprisingly, all the people we had interactions with that first afternoon – immigration officer, taxi driver and AirBnb owner – all spoke far better English than we spoke Portuguese, so we didn’t even have to try.
Day 2 dawned and we wandered down to the local supermercado. We tried a Bom dia! and were immediately met with a ‘Hello. Good morning!’ For the rest of the day, we stumbled along, and whenever we tried to speak any Portuguese, the response was always in English. It was pretty disheartening. The boys didn’t even want to bother anymore.
But we persevered.
And people have actually started to respond to our attempts in Portuguese. Some even take the time to help us by repeating things, correcting us and not immediately reverting to English. Sure, there’s still plenty of English flying around, but it feels like our mixed-up mutterings are at least appreciated and not completely pointless.
And with the awesome headcold I’ve developed this week, I think I might’ve (albeit temporarily) cracked those tricky Portuguese nasal vowel sounds!
