I haven’t posted to this blog in a long while, …mainly because I finally became more or less fluent!
Several months ago I walked up to my boss and told him that either I quit, or he can allow me to take a 3 month vacation. He said I could take the vacation! So, I went to join my girlfriend in Minas Gerais. She returned to Brasil after her US visa expired, we had met nearly a year prior when she first arrived in the US. So, I spent 3 months with her in a town near Ouro Preto and took a class at UFOP. I even taught some conversational English classes at a school in town!
So, now I’ve been back to my real life (Arizona) for some time now. Just to make one last blog post, I’ll explain how I keep up on my Portuguese these days.
- Friends on MSN. Duhh, right, you already know this. But this time, I have friends who don’t speak any English at all, …they’re not even interested in learning! But anyway, it’s good because now I have more friends to visit in Brazil. …No friends? Go to one of the many language exchange sites I’ve talked about. Hell, go to a dating site! Or join a community on Orkut. It’s not hard! There are lots of Brazilians willing to help you as long as you help them.
- Friends on Skype. This helps the most. Any fear you have of speaking will go away after a couple of weeks. Probably the best thing I do to keep up on my Portuguese.
- Spell checker! Anytime I write an email, Firefox always checks my spelling. I would suggest you install the Portuguese spell checker.
- Movies
Unfortunately, I can’t watch movies or TV on Mogulus anymore. Somebody put an end to that, but it would be nice… It’s difficult to find movies in Portuguese that are quick and easy to download. - MP3’s. I listen to some music from Brasil, but not too much. When I want to download something, I usually use www.4shared.com
- Orkut! Another obvious example… Everyone in Brasil uses this. But just keeping up on the latest pictures from your friends can teach you a lot. …Ok, so the Portuguese they use sometimes isn’t the best example, but you’ll have that some problem on MSN. What’s really annoying is when people know I’m American and they still continue saying things like “axei” instead of “achei“, “kra” em vez de “cara“, “naum/ñ” em vez de “não“, “xau” em vez de “tchau“, etc…
- I still read some blogs, for example, blogs with funny/disgusting pictures with just a few words: lolhehehe.com , blogs about learning english: teclasap.com.br , interesting blogs with beautiful pictures: avenidacopacabana , etc. Osmosis actually works!!! Just be sure to supplement your reading with actual conversations.
Good luck to all of you!




