Practicing Portugese in Porto Alegre

´Rua Lima e Silva,´ I repeat for the third time. ´Por favor!´ The cab driver understands and we set off.  ´American?´ He asks. ´Não Búlgaro,´ I say. ´Eu sou da Bulgaria´. The cab driver turns round in astonishment, ´Sêrio?´ - we almost crash and I grab the puta merda handle. ´Sim,´I reply. ´Da Sofia´… I smile to myself, now I have a captive listener to practice my Portugese on. In the following 10 minute cab journey, I manage to articulate the enormous differences between Brazil and Bulgaria in the food, weather and geography all in my best pigeon Portugese! The cab driver is genuinely interested as I tell him my own story of how orphaned in the Great War I grew up in a forest, making a living as a chess hustler until I was given a place at the prestigious Sophia University of Espionage. All lies of course, I´ve never even been to Bulgaria and am pretty sure their currency isn´t Dumplings, but we´re not talking English, we´re talking Portugese, the language I´ve spent the last 2 years learning and until I invented my alter-ego Englebert hardly ever got a chance to use.

Typical reaction when I try to speak Portugese

You see being a native English speaker in Brazil is a blessing and a curse. One´s as surrounded by friends wanting to practice their English as a lightbulb besieged by moths. You´re held in very high esteem: you´re an ambassador, a philosopher, a wordsmith and raconteur. You´re all these things and more, while you´re speaking English. When you open your gob and mangled Portugese comes out, then you can see the smiles drop, interest snap, you´re suddenly a dolt, a burden, a malfunctioning robot. How many times I´ve had my friends beg me to ´Speak English!´?  How many times do they let me get halfway through an anecdote before detonating my grammar mistakes, leaving its ending hanging in the air? I have one friend with superlative English who translates everything I say in Portugese back to me in English. ´Me passa um copo´ ´Pass you a cup?´  Yeh, thanks mate.

Oooô lariá laiô obá obá obá

One night I was invited by some friends to watch them play Dungeons and Dragons. Yes, surprisingly, it´s as popular over here as say football. For five hours, I listened and understood almost everything they said to each other in Portugese. For five hours, I journeyed through towns of vampires, battled giant worms and watched spells being cast and mice having sex. All in Portugese. The only time the magic of the roleplay was interrupted was when one of the gamers would speak to me, and when they did they spoke in English! Come on guys, what the hell? 

Some of my friends have begun humoring me with the odd five minutes here and there, and for those brief spells my shackles are lifted and I can see the light of day, but then it´s suddenly over and it´s back into your hole you wretched troglodyte. And thus Englebert was born, the bane of shopkeepers. As myself I would shyly mumble for paracetamol only for the shopkeeper to look in a bread oven and tell me ´no more´, leaving me to shuffle off dejected. But Englebert doesn´t give up, he talks over those who would speak English at him. He wants not your pity. ´Uma maça´ ´An apple?´ ´Não eu quero uma maça, droga!´

People here seem taken aback that you´re trying to learn Portugese. In London, we´ve developed a facility for understanding peculiar pronunciations of the Queen´s.  Porto Alegrenses and Brazilians will also need this listening skill because while English is now the world language, many non-English Engleberts will descend in great waves upon this city in 2014 and 2016. Moreover, they need to be considerate of the few lonely expats who already live here and see grasping the lingo as the key to a richer life in this wonderful city.

Some tips for practicing your Portugese:

- Go to the church, synagogue, mosque or espirtualist temple and join in with prayers out loud

-Teach English to beginner students where a bit of translation is acceptable

-Find a Brazilian girlfriend or boyfriend, preferably someone who has never tried to decipher the lyrics of their favourite band

- Go to Subway or a supermarket where you can assemble your own sandwich

-Commit to memory the following volumes: dungeons and dragons – livro do jogador and livro dos monstros