Today’s WordPress daily writing prompt caught my attention.
I envy those fluent in any language beyond their mother tongue. I probably have about thirty words of French because our daughter and two of our grandkids live in France, and as for Portuguese, it is very much a work in progress. It’s not that I haven’t tried to learn Portuguese; I have. I’ve spent thoussssands of euros on private lessons, and I’m currently attending the AI/A2 course down in our local town.
The class includes Nepalese, Dutch, German, and Romanian, and then there are us three English-speaking students who sit there and try to look intelligent while our fellow pupils gabble away in Portuguese.
I listen as the teacher reads some text. I try to catch an odd word for context but words float over my head in a jumble like code. Why? because several words flow into one and they could be casting spells as far as I am concerned. At least with written Portuguese, you get some idea… but spoken not a chance.
But if you don’t speak the local lingo, how can you fully integrate into the indigenous community? The simple truth is you can’t so we keep trying.
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Piglet in Portugal 
Like you it sounds “greek” to me. Definitely a weak subject for me. My Canadian friend just learnt Italian from French….😳
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I only speak English even though French was my mother’s first language, and she didn’t speak English until she went to school. There is a large Franco-American population in Maine and New England, and back in the day, there were enclaves, called little Canadas, where French was the main language. My great-grandmother, born in Maine, never learned to speak English. Good luck with Portuguese.
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English and kiswahili and kinyarwanda and same time french
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