Studying Portuguese in Bahia

Tue, 29 Aug 2000 14:31

From Salvador da Bahia, Brazil

Welcome back to the infamous Amos update list

Yes, I know that some of you must be worried that you haven´t received any
updates lately. Others are probably breathing a sign of relief that they
haven´t been pestered by my silly email lately. Never fear, I am still in
Brasil and ready to clutter your box with another deletable missive.

I have been living in the lively city of Salvador, Bahia for a month now.
Bahia is like no other place in the world. Imagine a place where millions
of African slaves were dumped on to sugar plantations and worked to the bone
for several generations. They brought with them african religion and dance,
then over the next several hundred years they misceginated with Indians and
Europeans. Strange amalgams arose such as candomble religion and capoeira
dance. A very interesting place to spend 2 months studying Portuguese.

Bahia was the center of the sugar cane monoculture in Brazil, and Salvador
was the colonial capital of Brazil until gold was discovered to the
southeast in Minas Gerais in the 18th century. The city has a lower city by
the bay, and a high city 70 meters above on cliffs overlooking the coast.
There are about 2.3 million inhabitants to the city making it the 3rd
largest city in Brazil (Sao Paulo has 20 million and Rio has 10 million).
It chock full of beautiful colonial buildings and cobblestone streets. The
historic center of Salvador has been beautifully restored, but the rest of
the downtown area is crumbling and wonderfully fascinating. There are a
number of very ornate churches, including one with 2 tons of gold leaf
decorating very crevisse and cranny of the baroque sanctuary.

My language school is 3 blocks from the ocean and I hang on the beach most
afternoons. In general, I have been very happy with the environment,
although it is winter and drizzles almost every day. Unfortunately, I was
placed with an unpleasant host family. The mother is away in Austria, the
28 year old sister never talked to me, and the 24 year old brother speaks
perfect English. The brother was very friendly, but we had little to talk
about. He was only interested in playing Quake on the internet and having
love-fests with his girlfriend. We shared a common interest in computers
(he is studying computer science in the university), but our conversations
quickly bored me. Even worse, we always talked in English. I never even
had a desire to party with him and his friends. Because he lived 35 minutes
away from the school by bus, I tended to never come home except to sleep.
There were no stores or restaurants nearby, so I was forced to stay away
until after dinner. We are only given breakfast by our host family, lunch
and dinner are our responsibility.

Finally, last week I decided to move out. Now I am with a charming family
who live within 5 minutes of the school. The mother is a biologist who
workes for the state educating city planners about environmental issues.
Quite a fascinating lady and very intellectual. She has two children my
age, who are both still in school. We live on the 7th floor in an suite
overlooking the bay. I have a spectacular view of the sun set every
evening. My new phone number is: (71)264-2813 (in case anyone is crazy
enough to want to pay Brazilian long distance charges).

After a month at Dialogo institute, my Portuguese is still a miasma of
jumbled Spanish with strange nasal sounds thrown into the mix. It took me 2
weeks just figure out how to pronounce the language. It looks like spanish,
but sounds like a bunch of "pissed Russians", in the words of an English
friend. I am having to retrain my mouth to say even the simplest words.
For instance the Portuguese and Spanish word for OF is DE, but they are
pronounced totally different. An english speaker would hear DE as:
DAY (from the Spanish speaker)
GEE (as in GEE-WHIZ, WALLIE, from the Portuguese speaker)

Other words are even more confusing. Radio is spelled the same in english,
spanish, and portuguese, but pronounced totally different. If a Mexican
heard a Baiano say RADIO, he would think he had said JAGIU and an American
would think HAJEEOO.

Portuguese vowels can change their sound depending on their position in the
word. Even worse, they have that hideous French habit of nasalizing
everything. There are several ways to pronounce Es and Os. Unfortunately,
I can´t hear the difference, much less pronounce the difference. The word
for grandfather and grandmother is AVO, only the final O is accented with a
circumflex (grandfather) or a acute (grandmother). If you don´t say the O
correctly, everyone gets really confused. Whoever decided to write down
portuguese for the first time had a real ball. He (or she) thought throwing
very kind of diacritical mark known to humankind would be fun. So
Portuguese has circumflexes, acutes, graves, double dots over vowels, and
tildes. Add in the strangest set of dipthongs (ae,eo,ao,ei) and you have a
real mess. The only upside is that Portuguese is very close to Spanish. I
can generally get the gist of any conversation, so I have a real head-start.
After a month, I can get around pretty well. I have learned to fake
portuguese by adding AO and ADE to every noun and changing the end of the
verbs.

The language school I am attending tries to teach through dialog and games,
rather than drilling and homework. Unfortunately, I am a systematic learner
and I need structure. I simply can not hear a word and remember it.
Lately, I have been doing a lot of self study with flash cards. I copied a
grammer book and have been laboriously going through it. I´m not completely
happy, with the school, but it is a very fun place and I am very comfortable
speaking in class. Most of the students are here to vacation as much as
study, so the school runs on a much more relaxed schedule. If I hadn´t
already paid for 2 months, I would probably choose a different school.

I have made several weekend excursions to outlying areas of Bahia over the
last couple weeks. Three weeks ago I visited Itaparica Island. Last week I
visited Cachoeira for an Afro-Catholic religious festival, and the week
before I went to Praia do Forte. I even caught a Candomble ceremony one
Saturday night. Yes, I feel like a good little tourist. I have been
dutifully going to see all the museums and dances. It has all been very
fascinating, but I think the most interesting thing about Salvador is
hanging out with the locals and dancing to samba drumming in the street. I
have never lived in a place where everyone dances and sings at the drop of a
hat (or for any other excuse). Brazilians are very musical people and they
really know how to enjoy themselves despite their many problems. All that
being said, Salvador is a big city and does have a lot of big city problems.
Its not the safest place to hang out in the middle of the night (although I
like to walk the streets at night anyway).

Well that is the news from Amos in Wonderland. As always I hope that y´all
are doing well.

Cheers, Amos.