Sunday, January 2, 2011

Do I speak English, Portuguese, or neither?

When I left Brazil in 2005 I spoke Portuguese with only the slightest accent; however, I could barely write an e-mail. Over time, my reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills have pretty much balanced themselves out and I consider myself fluent although my Portuguese language skills are no match for my English language abilities. I don't just mean because English is my native tongue, but I am college educated in English and I know that although I can write well in Portuguese, my ability is not even close to what I can do in English.

With that being said, I feel that I confuse the two languages (and don't even get me started on my Spanish language skills). When I return to Brazil I want to devote time and energy to improving my Portuguese, especially my writing. Maybe I'll finally make some use out of the grammar book(s) I own.


I used to be so adamant about not code switching when I speak Portuguese. But as E becomes more fluent in English and I speak less Portuguese on a daily basis, it's just kind of happened and I don't bother avoiding it. Code switching can be fun. I mean, who doesn't want to say "VocĂȘ vai fazer laundry?" ["Are you going to do laundry?"] or "Vou pro office". The issue I have with all of this language confusion is that I occasionally forget words that I want to use in English and I'm not even living abroad (yet). It wouldn't be such a big deal to me if I could instead remember the word in Portuguese. I can't help it - second language acquisition is very interesting to me (and part of my Master's studies). 

I guess what I need to figure out is how to separate English from Portuguese (and Portuguese from Spanish) in my brain. In the meantime, I'll just enjoy my multilingualism.

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