Can I become fluent in Portuguese in 1 month? – A Language Learning Speedrun

In one month and 2 days, I will fly to the Azores archipelago for a two weeks trip and I want to be fluent in Portuguese by that time. This is why I decided to start a language learning speedrun using my personal method featuring a knowledge in linguistics, phonetics and phonology.

As a linguist and polyglot who already speaks a few Romance languages, this should be easier for me than the average person. I will show you the advantages of having a solid knowledge of phonetics, phonology and linguistics when it comes to learning a language and how, using all the knowledge I have, I can easily make connections between languages in order to facilitate the task.

If you want to follow me into this journey, I’ll be glad to share my techniques with you. Feel free to do the same things that I do, but don’t hesitate to add or modify things, if you see that something doesn’t work for you. As long as you stick to the original purpose of the exercises and you keep up with the discipline, it should work.  

Before we start, we should try to focus on what we already know. Our brain is way more powerful than we imagine and you might be surprised as to how many things he might have learnt without you even noticing. Let’s close our eyes and think about all the words that pop up into our mind if we think about Portuguese. This is the time where we start making room in our brains for this language. It is not something very straightforward, but if you have enough imagination, it shouldn’t be a problem and if you don’t, this could be a good exercise to train it, because yes, imagination can also be trained and it has a lot of benefits. 

Disclaimer: I am not following a conventional path and I am a linguist but not an expert of Portuguese. It goes without saying that if I share with you my journey, you will find plenty of mistakes, especially at the beginning. Because this is how you learn: making mistakes, correcting them and keeping track of your progress.

Preparation

Let’s imagine the most Portuguese place we know. The one that would shoot us there in no time. For me, it will be the Azores, but you can feel free to imagine anything else and once you visualise the place in your head, you can try and visualise yourself in there. Just keep in mind that once you open the door to the Portuguese room, you’ll have to force yourself to only think in Portuguese and if you don’t have the words, then simply shut that interior voice and enjoy the view.

We’re on the coast, observing the gigantic waves crashing on the rocks. Then we can imagine some native speakers, I met a few Portuguese native speakers so I will add them and you can do the same with the ones you have met; but if you haven’t met any native speakers yet, I bet you know some famous people whose native language is Portuguese and that will work perfectly fine. Those native speakers will not just be part of the decoration, they will become useful in order to activate memories of moments in which you saw them speaking and you might take example from them and their way of creating sentences and pronouncing words. They will be your tutors.

For some reason, I have, at some point of my life, learnt the sentence “Possu dansar rapidamente”. I have no idea of how I should write it correctly, but when learning, making mistakes is the most important thing to do, as long as you’ll do your best to correct them. This sentence doesn’t make much sense (it means “I can dance fast”), but I can already see that adverbs can be formed by adding the suffix -mente to an adjective. This means I also know the adjective “rapido”, but I will have to check for the gender declension to know how I should write it properly. I can also tell, that just like Italian and Spanish, it is possible to omit the pronouns and just go with the verb. “Possu” is just like the Italian “posso”, more similar than the Spanish “puedo”; if the first person singular’s declension goes by “u”, it still works the same as in Italian and Spanish, except for the fact that the /o/ sound changed to a /u/, which is not weird, since both vowels are pronounced with rounded lips and the tongue positioned in the rear of the mouth. We’ll check if it really is the case. We can also see that modal verbs work just like in all other Latin languages, with the conjugated modal verb that accompanies an infinite verb. 

Well, as you can see, that’s already a lot for just a stupid sentence. 

Now let’s move on to other words we might know. And obviously I can’t help but think about one of those summer hits that played day after day until it made us sick and it goes like this: 

Sabadu na balada

A (missing word) commençou a dançar

Y paso a menina mais linda

Tome curage y commenceu a falar

Nossa, nossa, asi voce me mata

Ay, si eu te pego

Alright, I am feeling ashamed of knowing this song by heart, so I’ll just stop there. 

As you can see, I don’t know how to write those lyrics, maybe most of the words are spelled correctly already, but before the end of the day, we will have to make sure the proper spelling is solid in our heads. 

Here again I hear a /u/ sound for “sabadu”, which is probably wrongly spelled, but this already tells me that the <o> letter is pronounced more like a /u/ which makes a tiny difference from Spanish and Italian where the /o/ sound is pronounced by lowering the tongue more in the mouth, but it already gives us a hint as to how Portuguese phonology works. 

You saw how I analyse the words from my head, you can try and do the same exercise with the words that surface from the ocean of your memories. If you don’t have any and you’re an Italian, French or Spanish speaker you can try and test your knowledge in linguistics and try and guess what the words of this mysterious song might mean.

Don’t underestimate this exercise, it is important to push your brain to make an effort of recollection. If you don’t, it won’t make enough efforts to memorise vocabulary and sentences.

If you’re still with me, don’t hesitate to follow the day by day challenge by reading the day 1 post.