Funny Failures & A Fluent Success: How My Portuguese Skills Paid Off

By Bhavi Jariwala

Back in 2016, I was fresh out of high school with a one-way ticket booked to São Paulo. It all happened too fast for me to process, I was just a teenager who had no idea what she was in for. 

For my exchange student programme, I chose a country that wasn’t a popular choice back then. So I tried reading up as much as I could about Brazil. Like most, I turned to Duolingo to linguistically prepare myself, only to land there and realise I have the words right, but the pronunciation and usage is all over the place. 

For example, non-native speakers have a hard time pronouncing the ã/õ sound. I wish someone had told me how pão (meaning bread) is pronounced. Because that teeny tiny difference in pronunciation (pão vs pau) meant that when I thought I was asking for bread, I was actually referring to male genitalia. An embarrassing error to make in crowded supermarkets. 

I just had to learn the damn language, because you’re also not doing proper justice to the whole experience if you’re not really interacting with the locals. Some give you constructive feedback, others just giggle at your face. But you have to keep pushing yourself, even if it's embarrassing at times. 

Everything is challenging in Portuguese, and has genders to it - verbs, nouns, adjectives etc. I managed to learn it all, and yet my biggest enemy was the translation of the word ‘development’. It made me furious how I was so fluent overall, but I could NEVER properly say this. ‘Desenvolvimento’ is the word. Now this was eight years ago, so forgive my broken memory, but I don’t remember if I ever cracked it. 

Life really comes full circle though. A couple of weeks ago, I ended up interviewing a few Brazilian founders for a project I was working on. One challenge I didn’t anticipate here was their local accent being very different from what I was used to. Second challenge? My nemesis ‘development’ was back, this time in numbers, and bringing with him an even bigger villain - sustainability. Try saying ‘Sustentabilidade’ once and you’ll understand my plight. 

But this is a story that ended happily. 

In my first ever meeting with one of the founders, I felt so suave when I was interviewing them and suddenly the word desenvolvimento just rolled out of my tongue. Finally! How did I get it right? In one go? With my dusty Portuguese unused for months? Not just that, but I also took down sustentabilidade. Man, I was on a roll. When you tell them you speak the language, almost nobody ever expects you to be that good. To be sustainability & development level good.  

And so I realised, that’s the thing about always learning new skills - you never know when they might come to use. Back then I was struggling to get this one word right, and I would’ve forgotten that along with everything else had I not been consistent in practising it from time to time, ensuring I don’t lose my touch.   

Hence, my mid-year resolution is to keep teaching myself new things - because I may occasionally feel like there’s no good reason for me to be learning this, but life has a funny way to surprise you.