Prccerpt from In with the East Wind: A Mary Poppins Kind of Life - Brazil
My experience in getting to know Brazil was very much like
my experience in getting to know the USA, my home country. Like the US, Brazil
is large—and I was lucky to be able to work in cities in nearly all regions. That
allowed me to hear a lot of regional dialects, and, like in the USA, I could
understand some better than others. (My favorite dialect was that of the area around
Porto Alegre; it was so lyrical and easy to emulate. But then, I have a very
special place in my heart for Porto Alegre, where I worked at many different tasks.)
Before going to Brazil, I decided I needed to be able to
understand and use the language, so I picked up a language learning book and
some tapes. Unfortunately, I did not get a chance to spend dedicated time in language
learning, so I had to resort to a crash course on the airplane there.
Little did I realize in advance that it really would be a
crash course. I took Delta Airlines from San Francisco through Los Angeles to Sao
Paolo. BUT, it was not quite that simple. On that first leg, I found myself
sitting beside a friendly—and chatty—businessman.Ricardo, from Sao Paolo who
did not speak English, but he did like to speak. I did a lot of listening, and,
thanks to my proficiency in Spanish and French and my knowledge of Latin. Italian,
and Moldovan, I could surf through his conversation and make some monosyllabic
responses, which he accepted as my participating in the conversation. When he
was not looking, I looked up some things I could say in my tourist Portuguese
book and English-Portuguese dictionary. It worked.
I don’t know what would have happened on the flight from Los
Angeles to Sao Paolo—whom I would have been seated beside and what language
that person would speak—because that flight never flew. Instead, Delta Airlines
announced that no crew was available for the flight, so, it being late we would
have to spend the night in LA, fly to NYC, and catch the non-stop NYC-Sao Paolo
on Varigi, a Brazilian-owned airline that I would fly often and come to really
like, the next morning.
The kicker was that all the hotel rooms were filled. No vouchers
were going to help. So, Delta found a large private area, passed out night-time
snacks, and gave us blankets for sleeping on the floor. I spread out my blanket
and pulled out my alarm clock from my carry-on that would serve as my pillow.
(Hey, it was what it was.) It was very late, and we would have to get up very
early to catch that flight to NYC. A ringing alarm would help—and no one would
complain because they all had to do the same thing. Seeing the alarm clock,
Ricardo came over to me and asked if he could put out his blanket next to me.
Of course.
The alarm went off awfully early. Well, actually, it went off
right on time. It just felt awfully early. Ricoardo and I picked up our stuff
and hustled onto the plane. With first-come, first-served seating, Ricardo and
I ended up sitting together once again. Four hours to NYC gave me another four
hours of informal Portuguese lessons. Ricardo did not flinch when I had to take
a Spanish word and change the ending to Portuguese (often, it turned out to be
a real Portuguese word, and when it was not, Ricardo often just naturally used
the proper word in response). Everyone should have such a natural introduction
to a foreign language.
When the plane landed in NYC, we had a couple of hours to spare
before Varigi opened, so we dropped into a café in that area for some wake up coffee
(for Ricardo), orange juice (for me), and some breakfast nibbles. We went in together,
and the waitress seated us together, asking us how long we had been married.
What? Ricardo played along. “Not long,” he said. So, he did know a few English expressions!
The waitress responded with a big smile, “Ah, newlyweds!”
She gave us the best seat in the house, near a window that overlooked the tarmac
where we could even see our waiting Varigi plane.
At the appropriate time, we left the café and approached the
Varigi counter. Now, this was Portuguese-speaking turf, so it was helpful to
have Ricardo with me.
“Do you want to be seated together?” the agent asked.
“Yes, of course,” Ricardo replied with a smile and a sense
of humor I had seen in him earlier. “After all, we were just married this
morning in the café.”
And so, we set together on that very long trip to Sao Paolo.
Lots of time to talk, and my Portuguese started to take root. The stewardess, a native Brazilian fluent in
English floated down the aisle offering food and beverages. She spoke English
to the people in the seats in front of us, but when she reached us, she switched
to Portuguese. Clearly, the businessman was Brazilian, and I, well, I can pass
for any number of cultures where tanned skin and dark hair fit in. When she
asked what I wanted, by then, I could understand what she was asking and could
reply; she never knew I was an English-speaking American.
When the plane landed, Ricardo and I parted, he to the
natives-returning-home entry line and I to the foreigner-with-visa line. I
never met him again, but he was an excellent if accidental and incidental language
teacher! My first language and culture lessons.
Once past customs, I stopped in a magazine shop, looking for
something more from which to learn Portuguese than the little tourist phrase
book and compact dictionary. There I found the Portuguese edition of Goleman’s
Emotional Intelligence, a topic I knew well. Perfect!
As I emerged from inside the airport, the driver from the US
Embassy, which was hosting my visit, introduced himself and asked me to wait
while he went to get the car. He had brought his two young grandchildren with
him, and they wanted to know how this big lady was who spoke Portuguese so
poorly. Nonetheless, I managed to answer most of their classrooms in a few more
words than just monosyllables.
During my first two weeks, I devoured that book. The descriptions
gave me the present-tense forms of the verbs; the history of the theory gave me
the past-tense forms; the plans and suggestions taught me future tense, and the
suggestions and conjectures provided examples of subjunctive forms. I had no
need of a language course. I had the language in real context.
At the end of those two weeks, during which I participated
in a number of meetings, most of the formal ones, at the Embassy, in English, I
attended a conference on national language planning in which the plenary
session was conducted bilingually and the follow-up working groups were conducted
exclusively in Portuguese. As one of the keynote speakers (in English), I presented
a concept of learning language in context and teaching learners how to manage
their own learning experiences and contexts. Since some of them had spoken with
me during the pre-plenary meet-and-greet activities, where Portuguese dominated,
one of the questions was how long I had studied Portuguese. My answer: two
weeks. The shock that followed gave me the platform and credibility I needed to
make my point about metacognition, use of context, and other aspects of
language learning.
Following the plenary, attendees were broken into small
groups to discuss various aspects of national language planning. If I remember
correctly, I ended up in the policy-making session. There, we were broken into groups
of 4-5 people. Somehow, maybe because I was a keynote speaker, maybe because I am
used to leading small-group discussions, or maybe because I was the closest to
the butcher block paper and markers, I ended up organizing the group output on
the butcher block. After 45 minutes, every group as ready to make a
presentation on their work to the larger group and had selected their speaker. Our
small group asked me to make the presentation. Really? I declined, explaining in
Portuguese that I did not speak Portuguese. Really? It was their turn to be
surprised. And yes, really, I did not. I had been able to participate with
short phrases, short questions, and those made-up words (Spanish with
Portuguese endings) that often turned out to be real Portuguese words. Mostly,
I managed because I was writing down what others said, rather than holding the
floor on my own.
And that was my introduction to Brazil!
Volume 1: ABC Lands
by Dr. Betty Lou Leaver
For more posts about and from this book, click HERE.
For more posts by and about Betty Lou Leaver, click HERE.
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