[Steve] Do you speak better French or Spanish? [Gabriel] I believe that I speak French better now because I practice it more often. Everytime I speak Spanish
it's maybe more like "Portunol" (a mix between Portuguese and Spanish). I need to practice more everyday. I need to read more.
I really like Spanish. It's a very beautiful language. [Steve] All languages are beautiful. [Gabriel] It's true! [Steve] yes, all languages.
The thing is that if you speak several languages, it's impossible to practice them all everyday.
And if you learn another language, it will become even more difficult to practice all the other languages. But try to maintain a certain level.
I was practicing a lot of Russian and because of that I was practicing less French, Spanish, German...
languages I already speak well, and I was also practicing a lot of Italian, and because of this
there was a huge blend of words in my head [Steve] Well, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian... [Gabriel] For example, whenever I wanted to say "something" in Spanish
I would say "qualcosa" (something) in Italian. So it's always interesting to change from (one language) to the other.
If you'd like we could also speak in German a little bit.
I think that usually I try to read a little bit in German and also watch TV but of course I find it
interesting always to try to speak a bit of German here in Vancouver, there are a lot of people from Switzerland
but of course
I can understand standard German a lot better
than dialects (or other variations of the language), that could pose a problem [Steve] of course [Gabriel] what do you usually do to practice German? Which (methods)... Do you have...
[Steve] unfortunately nothing, I have no time. I must say I rarely speak German but sometimes when I for example read some newspapers online, an article
I don't know, perhaps about [Gabriel] Maybe "Der Spiegel"?
[Steve] Maybe about the situation in the Ukraine. Not a lot. Unfortunately I don't have the time to practice all my languages
it doesn't work. [Gabriel] That makes sense. [Steve] If I had time I would like to also learn Ukrainian and Korean
[Gabriel] you can also read Chinese and Japanese very well, right? [Steve] Yes [Gabriel] I find that awesome! There are so many... One must learn 3000 or 4000 (characters)...
[Steve] Yes, 4000 [Gabriel] That takes time, eh? Yes I don't know the name of those in German
[Gabriel] Characters? Yes, "characters"! But it's just a matter of time.
Time, of course. It's not difficult, that's just a lot of work to learn all these symbols.
but unfortunately I have no time
if I had time I would practice all my languages but that doesn't work. [Gabriel] maybe together, some German [Steve] ok
yeah I think that was a bit of a medley but I think the important message, I think there for your audience is
it doesn't really matter how well you speak [Gabriel] absolutely [Steve] there are so many monolingual
people in North America... I don't know about Brazil people who only speak English so
maybe in Brazil there are a lot of people who only speak Portuguese [Gabriel] there are certainly
if you speak English
as a Brazilian or as an American if you speak French
doesn't matter if you speak well, fluently [Gabriel] absolutely [Steve] you're doing something that's really quite remarkable
and you should congratulate yourself regardless of your level but still
continue to work to improve
because you can improve, it's a matter of putting in the time [Gabriel] absolutely, and I think the same
goes with an accent, or whatever, a lot of people say "oh, my accent is so bad" in French or Spanish or
whatever I think that it's cool to have, it's good to have that philosophy or
just a mindset "ok, no, I can try to develop (it). I can just gonna put
effort and improve it. And it takes patience, it takes time. [Steve] without feeling badly
about the accent that you have [Gabriel] absolutely [Steve] work on improving it
[Gabriel] yeah, no stress. [Steve] you shouldn't feel inhibited because you have an accent. So you have an accent! Communication is what it's all about. [Gabriel] That's true
Again, a pleasure to speak with you Steve [Steve] as always