A new endeavor

Howdy all,
As many know I am living in Portugal a country where they speak Portuguese.  In an effort to learn and document my understanding of the language. I will be posting about the 90 grammar lessons found in my grammar book.  So if you are not careful you may learn something.  Of course there is much to say about the language and I am not pretending to be an expert (note I did not say fluent) speaker.  I would say that I am already fluent (in a small range of topics I can hold my own in Portuguese) but I am not fooling anyone with my accent (I have heard it described as a bit Rio and a bit Spanish and a bit Italian) but there it is.
I am not going to worry about my accent.  I figure my accent is the way that I can tell people to be gentle, it may not be dignified to have the giant "L" on the car but as long as the coffee does not get spilled we still get to pass. Or at least the Governator does not have to worry about it so why should I?

Portuguese - the language

I was reading The Language Hacking Guide website put together by Benny Lewis. I went ahead and bought the book he has put together based on his experiences learning to become fluent in a language within three months as an adult.

I am about half way through the text in English and I would describe it as good but not fantastic. I would say his 'new' idea is not to let the polish of speaking in a native fashion get in the way of enjoying connecting with people in another language. Then he follows this up by identifying (correctly in my mind) that the difference between the polyglot and the monolingual is not some innate talent or brains but rather treating language learning as a project with specific, actionable and time sensitive goals and a classroom setting may or may not be helpful towards those goals.

So the first step is broadcasting one's goals, so here they are for the month of March:

1) Complete grammar book, Gramática Activa nível A1/2 by end of month. That is 35 additional worksheets and I must complete them with 95% or better.
2) 1 random interaction on the street in Portuguese every week day for a month.
3) Find two additional language partners - enough to meet 4 times a week

Learning Portuguese (European)

This idea for a blog has been kicking around for a while and now I think it may be time to inflict it on the rest of the world. About 14 months ago I readily and heartily agreed to leave my job and pack up our new household (newly minted toddler and 3 year old dog) to move about 1/4 away around the world to start a new life in Lisbon Portugal. Never mind that neither I nor my spouse had any connection to the land or familiarity with the language. Such is the power of the suck of my job that I would do anything legal to leave it.

So now it is nine months after the big move; we have been settled into our apartment for about two months (that is another few posts) and I feel a bit cut off from the people and the language. Of course I am bit of a detail person with a genetic make up that predisposes people to think that I am Portuguese, or rather I am pan-European by way of Kansas. This means that I am not getting the slower and louder treatment - instead it feels like I am drinking from the linguistic fire hose each time I have an unstructured interaction and I feel flustered and overwhelmed. My reaction is Não falo português .

Side bar: once while in the park with my child (my toe headed child) I came across a woman speaking English with one of her children. Seeking to start a conversation I asked how old her child was in English. She responded in Portuguese because as she later stated "when Portuguese people come up to me and talk in English I think they are just being polite, (not that they can understand English that well)". This is probably one of the most telling statements about the Portuguese. They (stereotype alert) speak some English but not well enough to speak at a normal pace with a fluent individual but are exceedingly polite about the whole thing. Of course the same could be said of many people from the US without the whole polite thing, we'd say "I'm sorry I don't get it".

So I wanted to catalog my Portuguese progress while I am here for the amusement and entertainment of those who aren't trying to speak to me in Portuguese.

I have a few books about language learning in general and Portuguese in particular.

1. How to Learn Any Language by Barry Farber
2. The Quick and Dirty Guide to Learning Languages Fast by AG Hawke
3. The Loom of Language by Frederick Bodmer
4. Teach Yourself Portuguese by Manuela Cook
5. Larousse Concise Portuguese English Dictionary
6. Acordo English to Portuguese and Portuguese to English Dictionaries
7. Lonely Planet Portuguese Phrasebook
8. Essential Portuguese Grammar
9. A Frequency Dictionary of Portuguese by Davis and Preto-Bay
10. Using Portuguese by McGovern and Ganho
11. Portuguese, Essential Grammar by Hutchinson and Lloyd
12. Rosetta Stone Brazilian Portuguese 1
13. Pimsleur Brazilian Portuguese 1
14. Michel Thomas Method Introduction to Portuguese
15. Michel Thomas Method Portuguese Foundation
16. Rick Steve's Guide to Portugal
17. Vocabulearn Portuguese Flash Cards
18. Accelastudy Ipod Application
19. Portuguese Word of the Day Ipod Application
20. itranslate ipod application
21. Various Podcast in the Portuguese Language
22. The kind people of Lisbon