Learning to learn a new language or “it cannot be that hard”

Being born in Colombia, Spanish is my mother tongue. I learned that we have five vowels, three so-called open or strong vowels namely, “a”, “e” and “o” and two closed or weak vowels, “i” and “u”. Moreover, we have twenty-one consonants. I also learned that the tonic syllable changes the meaning of the word. Thus, it isn't the same to say: "mama" (breast) rather than say “mamá” (mother) or “papa” (pope) instead of “papá” (father).

Up until I was 24, I had never left Colombia, and although I studied (but didn’t learn) English at school, I was never forced to speak in another language different from Spanish, but when I finished my undergraduate studies in physics, I earned a scholarship to study my Master’s degree in Brazil. And even though I had never taken a single Portuguese class, I thought: “Portuguese is almost Spanish, it cannot be that hard”. 

They're pretty similar, but not that similar.

After a few weeks in the country of the “Garotas” and “Samba”, I realized that Spanish and Portuguese are similar, but at the same time they are quite different. They have five vowels like us. However, in Portuguese, the open vowels can also be closed vowels. Therefore it's different to say "avô" (grandfather) than to say “avó” (grandmother) or to say “sede”(headquarter) with open “e” and “sede” (thirsty) with the close “e”. To complicate the things a little bit more they have nasal sounds, in most cases represented by “~” above the “a” or “o”, in words like “lã”(wool), “rã” (toad) or “canções” (songs), and you need to use your nose in addition to your mouth to pronounce them correctly. I also learned the two shades of the “s” because depending on how it appears in the word its sound changes. If before the “s” we found a consonant the “s” has the same sound as in Spanish (like “s” in the word “case”). On the other hand, when the “s” is in the middle of two vowels, it sounds like “z” in the word “zoo”. Thus, words that we write in the same way such as “mesa”(table), “casa”(house), or “presa”(prey) sound different in Spanish and Portuguese. As if these issues weren't enough, Portuguese has EXCEPTIONS like “trânsito” (traffic) when the “s” is pronounced in the same way as “mesa”. All this stuff, instead of discouraging me from learning the language of Camões, made me embrace the Portuguese as the very challenge I needed to overcome. And now, after six years of living in Brazil, I can say that I tamed this language in at least 95% of it (my friends from Brazil may feel free to argue about this in the comments LOL).

The language of Molière

With my current level of Portuguese and motivated by the power of ignorance, I decided to learn a new language. Since a friend of mine was studying French, I thought: “ah perhaps learning French is a good idea, it's a romance language and I speak two of them... It cannot be that hard”.

My friend used to tell me all the time how French and Portuguese are similar because of nasal sounds, open and closed vowels, the shades of “s”, and certain exceptions. Moreover, I was trying to apply to a scholarship in Canada and I thought: “if I go to the French side, maybe the turnout will be less since most candidates try to go for the English side”.

Exceptions become the rule

Some weeks later after I started to study French, I realized that it is true, there are similarities with Portuguese and also with Spanish. However, two vowels are pronounced in a new particular way the “e” and “u” (I recommend to use google translate to hear how these vowels sound in French). This does not mean that the Spanish/Portuguese sounds of these two vowels do not exist in French. They have the diphthongs, accents, or some specific set of words for this task. Thus, the diphthong “ou” sounds like the “u” in Spanish; “ê”, “é” or “es” sound like a close “e” in Portuguese and “ai” sound like an open “e”. Thus, it is different to say for example “poule” (chicken) than “pull” (sweater) or “les” (the) than “lait” (milk). Another interesting thing is that in French the “y” is considered a vowel and generally acts like two “i”s, making for example that the word “pays”(country) sounds like if it was written “paiis”. There are a lot of rules in French that foreigners need to follow in order to speak correctly. One of them is very interesting, at least for me, in that in a general way the last letter in a word isn't pronounced (as examples, there are the french words that I wrote before). Nonetheless, if the word finishes in “r”, “l”, “f” or “c” we have to pronounce it, as examples we have the words “neuf” (nine), “avec” (with) or “ouvrir” (to open). At this point, you probably think this language is full of grammatical rules, and in the name of truth I have to agree, but things do not end here. The most interesting thing about the French language is not its set of rules but the number of exceptions to those rules, in that practically every rule has one or more exceptions. I would like to show you only two examples:

1. “Ouvrir”(to open) and “manger”(to eat). According to the rule we have to pronounce the “r” at the end of these words. However, there is an exception, in a general way (probably there is an exception for this exception!!!) if before the last “r” we found an “e” we must pronounce “er” as “ê”. Then, we pronounce the last “r” in “ouvrir”, but no in “manger”.
2. “Neuf”(nine) and “clef”(key). Here, the first word we pronounce the last “f” according to the rule, but the second one, we pronounce as “clé” with the close sound of the “e” in Portuguese. The reasons for this seem to be historical and at present, this word can be written in two ways “clef” or “clé” (two graphics for the same word, vive la langue française!!!).

Currently, I have been studying French for one year and a half, and the good news is that I'm in Quebec, I obtained my scholarship to study in Canada. My level of French is reasonably moderate, and I can have short conversations with native speakers.

Come through

Recently, due to the current world situation, I defended my Ph.D. online (yes, I’m a Doctor) and I received an employment proposal in Poland. Thus if everything goes well, I have to go to Warsaw in August… in light of that, I started watching some videos about the Polish language and I think that you’ll know what I think about this: “it cannot be that hard”.

Thank you for reading my first post, I hope that you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it… Feel free to leave your comment about what you think about learning languages and follow me in the next posts :0).