Welcome to a Language Barrier

Because why only know one language?

Americans seem to be stereotyped as a people who only speak one language, American English. I wouldn't say that's an accurate stereotype for the Americans living along the Eastern sea board (or at least northern New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia and New York). There are a lot of different people and cultures.

My roommate is Brazillian. She speaks Portugese and English (and I think she also knows Spanish). A lot of her friends are also Brazillian and though they also speak English, their friends and family who come to visit don't. This can lead to difficult conversations.

Today, I went to visit my roommate, who has been working at an Itallian cafe (it's a neighborhood cafe in Nutly New Jersey). A friend of her's was also at the cafe with her family visiting from Brazil. Everything that we said to each other had to be translated. I really wanted to be able to communicate with them, but I didn't know enough. I even accidentally said "good morning" instead of "good afternoon". 

My roommate's family is coming to visit and I don't want to sit there awkwardly while they're staying here. Therefore I've decided to learn Portugese. 

It's not the most difficult language I've tried to learn and thankfully I have a background in Spanish that helps a little bit. That doesn't mean Portugese the same as Spanish. I'm already noticing a lot of differences between the words. It does mean that the sentence structure is familiar and I can figure out a lot of the vocabulary with context clues. It's easier than learning Japanese (and some of my family members have been trying to teach me Japanese since I was young). 

I've been studying Portueges by using an app call Duelingo and listening to my roommate and her friends speak. So far, I can understand a little bit, but whenever I go to say something, I almost always end up saying something in Spanish. 

But I can't give up. If I want to be able to master a new skill, I have to keep practicing. 

Until next week.

If you enjoyed this post or it really pissed you off, please like, share or leave a comment. I like hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me. Now, back to the studying.