15 hours of in-person language lessons later, I feel somewhat less lost in Portuguese. The thing this has helped the most with is sounds. Just hearing the language and needing to respond is very helpful.

I’ve been “ssh!”ed more in this class than since I was practicing with my heavy metal band in the high school library (which is to say: never). Remembering to turn trailing “s” sounds into “sh” sounds requires breaking a lot of habit from Spanish. Surprisingly, another problem is pronouncing the word e like the Spanish y. You’d think carrying over the “and” word would be easy, but the similarity between e (and) and é (is) trips me up when I’m reading.

The grammar is mostly familiar, and a lot of words are just a sound-transformation away from Spanish, if they’re different at all. But, of course, the words that have changed are the ones that get used all of the time.

I’m working on building an Anki deck based on what we’ve covered.