Hey!
What's up guys?
My name's Gavin.
I'm from the United States, and in 2011 I started to teach myself Portuguese, to learn
Portuguese by myself.
And this is my sixth vlog, so today I'm gonna be speaking in English to you about why I
chose Portuguese and what this process was like for me.
And in a future vlog I'll talk about what I did to teach myself Portuguese.
But I wanna to talk to you about the process leading up to when I chose Portuguese.
I'll put subtitles below in English if that will help you follow along, but this will
be good practice for everyone.
But yeah, so I get that question all the time, from, you know, friends and family members,
from a lot of you guys in the comments, from Brazilians and Portuguese people in the comments,
and also from Americans or, or Brits, or Australians who are native English speakers and who wanna
learn Portuguese possibly, too, and ask me: "Gavin, why did you start learning Portuguese?"
I'm not married to a Portuguese or Brazilian woman, I don't live in a country where they
speak Portuguese, and I'd never even been to a Portuguese-speaking country when I chose
to start learning Portuguese in 2011.
So my lingual journey starts waaaay back in 2002.
That was right when I was entering high school here in the United States.
So we have four grades of high school: 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th.
And when I started 9th grade, I was about 14, and that was the first time in the curriculum,
in our school's curriculum, that students were required to learn a language.
So our school offered Spanish, French, German, and Latin, actually.
And my dad ended up convincing me to choose Spanish because there's a large Spanish-speaking
population in the United States and maybe someday it could help me get a job.
And I still remember my first day of Spanish class and joking with my friend how cool would
it be if you could just take a pill and all of a sudden, blbeulbaloubblah, you'd be able
to speak that other language!
Now obviously it's not that easy, and I was never very inspired in, in Spanish classes.
I, I was able to memorize words and, you know, I did okay in tests or anything, but I was
never truly inspired, never passionate about learning Spanish.
I did four years of Spanish though through high school, and then when I went to university,
when I went to college for the first time, I went to Valparaiso University in Indiana,
and I only had to take one language course in order to fulfill that requirement, and
after that I could focus on my main degree, which is atmospheric science, and I actually
just got my doctorate in atmospheric science (ciências atmosféricas) a couple months
ago.
So I was very excited to get this "prereq" they call it, this requirement, out of the
way so that I could focus on science.
And I enrolled in a basic Spanish class and it was taught by a professor from Colombia.
Now all of my Spanish classes in high school were taught by also Americans, okay?
Not people from Spanish-speaking countries.
This class..
this teacher first of all, her name was Nelly, was absolutely fantastic, a really good teacher,
and, and really motivated the students.
You could see that she was passionate about her native tongue.
But besides all that, seeing that I could learn a language and interact with someone
in their own native tongue, for the first time seeing her, that was the first time that
ever happened in my life.
And that's when I fell in love with the idea of learning languages, and that was when I
started to, to become more passionate about learning languages.
So in the case of Spanish, I ended up taking so many classes throughout university that
I got a minor in Spanish in addition to my major degree in atmospheric science.
So I graduated with that, still only speaking English and Spanish; again, it's very uncommon
for Americans to speak another foreign language, and that's why we didn't start learning a
language until we were in 9th grade.
And so I was kind of unique amongst my peers for being able to speak Spanish, for graduating
with a minor in Spanish, although I didn't really feel like I could speak Spanish!
Sure, I had a minor in it, but after four years I did not feel comfortable still speaking
with a native in Spanish, and I didn't feel like I could conjugate verbs, or describe
something that happened in the past or that will happen in the future.
And so I decided that for six weeks I wanted to travel to a Spanish-speaking country so
that I could work on these Spanish-language skills, to actually be in a country - an immersion,
you know - in a country where Spanish was spoken.
I went to Peru for six weeks and I volunteered in a kindergarten there.
The kids would correct my bad Spanish all the time, but they are still your, your best
friend at the end of the day, you know?
And, but they're not afraid to tell you when you make a mistake, and that was really helpful
for me.
And I also had a conversation partner; she and I every day for an hour would speak in
English and then an hour in Spanish, just walking through the city of Cuzco, where I
was, just talking and, you know, helping each other get better at the languages.
And leaving Peru, I finally felt that I was capable of holding a conversation in Spanish,
and that was a really awesome feeling.
And interacting with so many Peruvians in their native tongue was very inspirational
to me.
Passing through Lima on my way out of Peru, I stayed at a hostel, and on the bookshelf
at the hostel was a little tiny book about Brazilian Portuguese phrases.
It was a Lonely Planet book.
And when I saw that, I ended up taking it from the hostel, you know - it's just a hostel
bookshelf, it's not that big of a deal!
Don't tell anyone though...
But piecing through the.. leafing through the pages and, and seeing this different dialect
and realizing I had the ability possibly to connect with other people in their native
tongue really in.. got the wheels spinning, started to inspire me.
And, because I spoke Spanish, I could understand somewhat some of the phrases that I saw in
this book.
In 2010 I moved out here to Fort Collins, Colorado, where I started my masters degree
in atmospheric science.
Something they don't tell you about your PhD and your masters, at least in the sciences,
is that you actually have a decent amount of free time.
I felt like I had more free time here, working on my masters in Fort Collins, than I did
as an undergraduate at college for the first time at Valparaiso University.
And so, you know, a lot of my friends decided to focus on sports, or focus on, I don't know,
you know, watching Netflix all the time, or on art, or on, you know, biking.
I decided that I wanted to learn a third language: so English (native tongue), Spanish, and then
I decided that it would be Portuguese.
I absolutely...
it...
I wouldn't say it was completely random, but because I, I knew that Brazilian Portuguese
perhaps would be easier because I knew Spanish ahead of time, and there were some resources
for native English speakers who already know Spanish who want to learn Portuguese.
I'll have to actually take you over here.
I have a book that I bought right when I decided that I would be doing this.
And here it is: "Pois Não - Brazilian Portuguese Course for Spanish Speakers with Basic Reference
Grammar."
And so seeing that resources like this existed, and the fact that I wouldn't have to be starting
from scratch, really motivated me.
And I started listening to Brazilian radio and, and thinking man, one day maybe I'll
be able to understand what they're saying!
And it was a very..
I found, found the rhythm and the sound of the language very beautiful.
But besides that guys, it was pretty much just the decision that I wanted to learn a
third language.
It wasn't that I really wanted to learn Portuguese.
And it's funny how, how these things kind of randomly happen.
You could call it the Hand of God, you could call it completely random, whatever you believe.
I, I firmly believe that there was a reason why I stumbled upon Portuguese, and I haven't
looked back.
It's been absolutely amazing, and I can't wait in a future vlog to describe to you how
I started to, to teach myself Portuguese: the resources that I used, and how much time
I would dedicate, and how long I thought it took me to get to fluency.
But the last thing I want to say is that when you're learning a language for the very first
time, other than your native tongue - so in my case it was Spanish - when I'm learning
Spanish, you're learning two things: you're learning Spanish (in my case), but you're
also learning how to learn a language.
So with your first language that you learn, you're learning both the language and you're
learning how to learn a language.
With that second skill, the "how to learn a language," already completed after I had
learned Spanish, starting from Port.. starting with Portuguese for my third language was
a lot easier because I already knew about having to memorize, you know, conjugations,
and linking sentences, and knowing that sentences aren't always able to be translated "ao pé
da letra" - literally, you know?
And so once you have that foundation laid, it's a lot easier to learn your third, your
fourth, your fifth languages, I firmly believe.
And I can't wait to learn another language here soon and share that journey with you,
and I hope that this encourages you too to the fact that you don't have to stop at just
English.
You can, you know, for.. talking to you Portuguese native speakers, you can continue to learn
languages.
Just know that when you're learning English, you're both learning English, if it is your
first language, and you're learning how to learn a language.
They're two skills that you're developing at the same time.
It's a beautiful thing!
So I hope that answers some of your questions about how I started to learn Portuguese, kinda
starting in 2011 with roots a little earlier than that, and I look forward to describing
more about my process of teaching myself to you guys soon.
Have an awesome weekend guys, and keep it real, keep up the good work with your own
lingual pursuits.
Peace!