Portuguese, Among Other Things

This time last year, I started learning Spanish to improve my Portuguese. It sounds like an elaborate way to become confused in two languages. I wanted to deepen my Portuguese and spend less time translating in my head, so I studied Spanish through Portuguese. Portuguese would be doing the explaining. It worked. That decision is part of a much longer education.

My larger goal has always been cultural fluency. It remains an aspiration, although it looks quite manageable written on one line. I am now two election cycles and two World Cups into that education. I want to understand what people mean, what they leave unsaid, and what everyone else in the room seems to have received in advance.

You can understand every word in a sentence and still miss what just happened. Sometimes the missing part happened long before anyone opened their mouth. An election result is easy enough to look up. Understanding why the person beside you hears relief, danger, or a very old insult in the same announcement takes considerably longer. You begin following an explanation and find yourself in history, then family history, then a conversation about something you had barely considered. Understanding football fandom is another thing entirely.

I brought years of West Coast corporate training into this education. Much of it has proved less useful here than I expected. A surprising amount of what I thought of as “how people work” turns out to depend on which people, in which setting, under which arrangements. There should probably be a small geographical disclaimer on common sense. Some of my confident explanations have needed revision. Others have had to sit quietly while I listen.

Learning Brazil has drawn my attention toward its neighbors and northward through the Americas. Every time the reading list begins to look manageable, another country turns up in the margins. I even read English differently now. I want to know where an explanation comes from, what experience sits behind it, and how well it describes the people who have to live inside it. This includes explanations I once found perfectly satisfactory. Especially those.

There is a chasm between knowing about something and knowing it. That is the kind of generalism I want: a few things learned deeply enough that they give me somewhere to go next.

Now, with another year to plan, I’m looking at the season of life I’m actually in. What, if I learned it well, would make the rest of my life easier? Before next year fills itself with perfectly reasonable appointments, give that pursuit a regular place. What would it need from you: time, instruction, honest feedback, the willingness to go beyond the parts you already do comfortably?

Familiarity can feel like a foundation until you ask it to carry some weight. For me, Portuguese is worth staying with. I am still finding out where it can take me. I have faith that learning the tongue of my chosen home has legs.

Next week: what would we need to build around the things we want to know well?