One of the things that interests me is learning a little bit from a lot of languages. I don’t mean in the hyper-polyglot type of way but more a snippet here, a word there, a greeting, a rhyme, how to say hello, maybe count to ten and so on.

Another thing that intrigues me is learning slightly more than a snippet, just to get a feel for or idea of a different language, and again I don’t mean necessarily learning a lot. Some of the most useful expressions (hello, goodbye, how are you doing?), counting to ten, and some very basic grammar.

I’m keen on the idea of sufficient basic grammar to be able to modify phrases from phrasebooks, munge them together and make new ones. I.e. a few basic verbs (present tense only), possessives (my, your and so forth), maybe a demonstrative or two, articles and some simple sentence structures.

And so I’m currently learning what I can about Brazilian Portuguese during November. So, to recap, in a short period of time, a good (or at least enjoyable) approach is to learn useful expressions, very basic grammar, and specific expressions that you are likely to need.

If for example, you are travelling to watch the World cup in Brazil your group of specific expressions might include football related phrases and eating, drinking and travelling type phrases.

If you are hanging about with your Portuguese mates, then maybe your group of specific expressions will include phases to amaze and amuse like ‘England are going to win the (football) world cup’.

Hmmmm. Well, who knows.

As I’m not travelling anywhere, only have a few hours to spare, and am just interested in learning a bit about the language, I’m just going to learn some useful expressions and some key grammatical points.

Naturally, I will get translations completed where appropriate – as can be seen by the deliberate mistake on the SL home page where I link to a Brazilian course that doesn’t yet exist. I hope somebody else will find these useful in days to come. One of these somebodies will probably be me, as once we move into December I will almost certainly forget what I have learnt.

Probably retaining only a snippet, a word or two! Hmmmmm.

I’ll leave you with a *snippet* of Polish, which is after all the language I’m supposed to be learning. Maybe it is true – I lack focus ????

ślimak ślimak pokaż rogi
dam ci sera na pierogi.

Peace,

MoOnFaCe