Lost in Translation..?

---

Hi everyone,

This week I have been working at the SEN school in the afternoons where I have been lucky enough to spend time with some really special people, students and staff alike. I have previously told you of a few of these young adults but there are so many more of them that I have found this week very emotional. Nearly all of these children and adults find reasons to smile every day and if I am honest, many of them seem happier than many of us do at any given time. The classes that I have spent yesterday and today working with had no pupils who could speak and only a handful who could make any sounds at all but all of the pupils from the last two days know how to give really good cuddles! Somehow that seems so much more important to me now than speaking does.

The staff there have all been very understanding with me aswell, they have so much patience just doing their day to day job, let alone having to deal with my very broken Portuguese! None of the staff at the SEN school speak English at all so I am finding myself incredibly tired at the end of day after trying to translate everything that I hear and to find the words to put together to make myself understood! But with perseverance, their understanding, international sign language and my strange Portuglish somehow it is working very well! I now have a much better understanding of how it feels to listen to someone for a whole lesson and to only understand a few words, it can be so disheartening but then when I understand a whole sentence at a time I feel like giving myself a big round of applause! I also now realise just how big a difference there is in the levels of learning a language as I can read most Portuguese but cannot understand very much when I am listening to it. This is being helped a lot by the good old television. I can watch american programmes such as ´Friends´ and ´Two and a Half Men´ with Portuguese subtitles and I can listen to brazilian programmes with a frown on my face and a blend of concentration and guesswork! Slow but steady improvement is the name of my game!

Speaking of languages I started my second volunteering project this week which was a real relief as there they are really happy to speak English to me and all they really want is to hear me speak English back to them, a real dream when coupled with the intense Portuguese of my other shifts. I am working in a school that specialises in teaching language. They are able to do this as here children only go to school for the morning or afternoon, so in addition to their compulsory schooling where they learn Spanish as their second language, they also have time to attend this school to learn English. I work in many different classes, working with a whole variety of levels of understanding. Although, even those classes with a higher level of comprehension find it a challenge at times to interpret my accent as they have learned American English. Actually, they taught me a new phrase as well, maybe you already know it, ´Mouse Potato´? Apparently it is similar to a couch potato but means you spend all of your time on the computer. How strange that I come to Brazil and learn some English! The best part of speaking English here is that for the very first time in my life, my accent has been described as elegant and beautiful, yes it is true! They say that I sound like Harry Potter and they love the way that I pronounce ´water´, yes Mum I put the ´T´ back in it for this audience!

In exchange for my help with English, the lovely people at the school are going to give me some Portuguese lessons which I am really looking forward to. The staff here at the hostel and some of friends who are locals here are also helping me so really there is no excuse for my lack of understanding any longer! I have been given lots of homework, the main piece is practising the sounds of all the letter combinations, I have been singing to myself all the time, ´Bah Beh Bee Boh Boo Ka Seh See Koh Koo...´ it is no wonder that I have been getting some funny looks on my walk to and from work!

I have been teaching my friends here some funny English sayings and phrases as well. For example, ´kick the bucket´ which apparently in Brazilian Portuguese means ´to give up on something and do whatever you like´, another one that was difficult to explain was ´cheeky monkey´ which sounded like a real insult to one of my friends here while I tried to explain the affection behind its use. The main one though has to be ´Oi´ which the brazilians use constantly instead of ´Hi´, explaining to them that using it on our sunny shores would land them in trouble is quite tricky!

Well, I shall dilly dally here no longer and instead I will go and finish the rest of my homework! It is funny how when you take a step back from your own language, you suddenly realise how strange and entertaining some of your phrases are!

Cheerio me ole muckas,

take care,

Tasha

---