Last year when I took SPAN -394PI with Luis, we had a few former UMass students join our class in a zoom meeting to talk to us about their experiences as a Spanish Major at UMass, as well as what they are currently doing for a career. The one thing that piqued my interest the most though was when one particular UMass alum talked about a Portuguese course that had been offered when they were still a student. The course being offered was PORT-246, or Intensive Intermediate Portuguese. It is a 6 credit course for students with a background in a romance language (in my case, Spanish) and meets only 3 days a week. Many of the former students had praised the course and highly recommended it, some even said that they wish they took the opportunity to take it when they had the chance. As an avid language learner, I thought this was the perfect opportunity to begin learning a new language, so, I took their word for the course and enrolled in it for the next semester.

On the first day of class, I was overwhelmed with excitement, I could not wait to begin a new chapter in my language learning journey. Right as I walked into the room, I was greeted by Professor Amaral, in which he asked me, “Tudo bem?”. Immediately panic overcame my excitement. I was mentally freezing up and had no idea how to respond. So in response I just awkwardly smiled a took a seat at my desk. Once everyone took their seats, we immediately began class by repeating whatever Professor Amaral said. We practiced simple phrases like “Tudo bem?” and “Qual é seu nome?”. Soon after, we began grouping up with whoever was sitting next to us and started practicing these phrases over and over again. It was a very nerve-racking experience for me on the first day of class, but my excitement persisted. Over the course of the semester, I noticed that there were a lot of patterns going from Spanish to Portuguese, and as a Linguistics Major too, I found this particularly exciting as well. One such pattern is that in some words going from Spanish to Portuguese, the first letter goes from “h” to “f”. Here are some examples:

horno –> forno

hambre –> fome

hablar –> falar

hacer — fazer

Since this was an intensive course, we were moving through material very quickly (mostly due to the fact that everyone in the classroom had prior knowledge of Spanish). One of the more interesting things that I learned from this course though was that the grammar actually slightly differs between the two main dialects of Portuguese (Brazilian and European). I found it interesting how the grammar would differ in the two dialects, and thought back on how the grammar between Spain Spanish and Latin American Spanish does not really differ all that much and is more or less the same. In order to help understand this better, I tried to practice speaking using both dialects. Personally, I do not think it went as well as I had hoped, as I mostly stuck with the Brazilian dialect, as the pronunciation was a bit easier for me. I felt like I was seeing constant improvement (even if it was just a little) everyday from the way I spoke, to the way I wrote, and by the end of the course, I was very proud of how far I came after learning a language in only 4 months. After the course ended, I decided to do a Portuguese Minor, Since I would only need to take 3 more courses (15 credits total). My next Portuguese course that I would take (which I took this semester) would be PORT-301, or Conversational Portuguese.

Now obviously since this was a conversation course, there would be a lot of talking, but aside from that, I learned a lot about Brazil and current events as well. The conversation topics were well-picked and thought out, ranging from argumentation and debates, to job interviews. One particular class that stuck out to me was when we were reading news articles and talking about topics like the economy and archeology. Before taking this course, I never would have fathomed being able to hold a conversation with someone in Portuguese about the economy, but now I am able to talk a little bit about the stock market and observations from economists. One of my personal favorite topics from this class was learning how to debate. Now, debating is not always an easy task (let alone in a non-native language), but the way that Professor Amaral organized the classes made it seem a lot easier than it is. We talked about fallacies in arguments and how to refute the statements of others, and at the end of this segment of the course, there were 2 huge debates held between us classmates. Now with the current semester coming to a close, I can confidently say that my conversational skills have greatly improved, and I feel more confident in my speaking than I did when I took PORT-246. Looking back on the course now, I have one piece of advice that I would like to share. Now since this was a conversational course, your knowledge/speaking skills will greatly depend on how much you participate, in other words, you get out of this class what you put into it, and as a language learner, I feel like this applies to other languages as well.

Now that I’m going into my second semester of Junior year, I have decided to add Portuguese as a third major, since I am finishing up my Spanish and Linguistics majors. As I was speaking with Professor Amaral about my Portuguese major, I was told that it’s actually possible to have two Spanish courses count towards the Portuguese major, meaning I would only need to take 12 credits of Portuguese courses instead of 18. To sweeten the deal even further, If I were to do an abroad program during the summer semester of 2023, I would be taking 9 credits, which leaves me with 3 credits left to take next Fall.

To any Spanish Majors considering studying another language, I would highly recommend studying Portuguese if the opportunity arises. the fact that taking PORT-246 almost puts you half way to getting a Portuguese Minor is amazing, and if possible, going for a secondary Major in Portuguese can be done just as quickly when you can have 2 Spanish courses count towards the major.