What Interests You...

by Jordan
(Queenstown, New Zealand)

As I came into 2007 it was my first year out of school. I was interested in car, music and computer at the time. I met a group of people out one night and they were Brazilians.

Now for me, this came as a shock. I live in shelted New Zealand where being introduced to people who dont speak English or Maori is just amazing, so I got to know them a little more. Ended up going to work with one of them and I became really interested in their language. I stupidly thought they spoke 'Brasilian' but in actual fact they introduced me to 'Português'.

As time went on I start to find the twists and turns this language had in it, for prononciation it wasn't difficult. To learn how to understand on a basic level it wasn't too difficult, but to learn how to speak was a different story with the variation of the use of verbs and nouns being very different to English...So I needed a solution. I went home and thought about it and I realised using my interests as a base to all my learning will help me rememeber a lot more things, a lot faster than before. So I started off I got a little note book and I start to relate everything back to cars.

They taught me tomato, I related it like this, "the tomato was on the car". Looks difficult but I knew how to say "car,was and the" at the time so I was learning tomato and on at the same time. Saying, writing and using it in different ways will all help you retain something. Having a book with you at all times helps even more and dont let people think its stupid because you carry a little red book around like I did for part of last year.

Just remember...learn a language can be fun, if you relate it to everything you are interested in. I learnt the language, I went to Brasil and spoke it. I'm back home now after one year, still learn new things everyday about Portuguese.