I studied Spanish in high school.
And by the word "studied" I mean I was in the class for two years, I got straight A's, and I didn't learn a single thing about how to communicate with someone using Spanish.
So when it came time for me to learn Portuguese, I was lost. I knew that other languages were different from English; not just in the fact that they had different words but also different sentence structure, different grammar, different pronunciation, and so on. What a daunting task! I really needed to find a different way to look at it if I was going to figure out how to communicate in Portuguese effectively.
The very first thing I needed to do was completely change the way I thought about other languages. I figured, I have been in school for so long and even during my studies for my second Master's degree I was still learning new words that were more specialized for my field. I was constantly adding to my vocabulary and a lot of the time these words described things I already knew, but had always explained in a different way. New words in another language had to be thought of as just that; new words. An expansion of my vocabulary. It wouldn't be easy, but it could be done!
Honestly, after that the rest was just a matter of repetition, plus reading, writing, listening and speaking practice. I felt the need to master the basics on my own before contacting any native Brazilian; I didn't want them to feel like they were wasting their time on someone who didn't even know their colors or how to count to ten. I made it a goal to get to an elementary level by myself and then find a "teacher" with whom I could converse.
Here come the resources. Rosetta Stone was first, as everyone always raves about its effectiveness. Yeah, no. I learned like four words and I didn't understand the why or how of anything because there weren't a lot of resources to back it up. Luckily, I only did the trial version because that would have been a HUGE waste of money if I had actually invested in the program. After some research, I found Duolingo. I don't know how it took me so long to hear about this because it's the most amazing program, app, website, and so forth all in one - plus it's FREE. Playing through that gave me an incredible base of vocabulary and simple sentence structure.
Pronunciation is difficult with a new language when you try to learn from an electronic voice. Though Duo's voice is much better now, it was a lot more harsh when I first started learning so I made a little investment into a $7 Learn Brazilian Portuguese CD from Amazon.com. I popped that into my CD player in the car and basically just listened to it on the way to and from work every single day. It was seven hours of content and made the ten minute drive more interesting. I wish there was a level two and so on because I would love to learn more words this way!
Finally, with the basics in hand, I took to italki.com to find myself a free language exchange tutor. There are THOUANDS of people online looking to practice languages they are learning and who would love to help teach you their native language... all for free. This is where I met Jean. I talked to a lot of people on italki of course, but Jean and my schedule just worked really well together so we spent a lot of time chatting in our spare moments. This is what really helped me excel in my education was being able to actually apply my language skills in real life. And he was learning English (although a little faster than I was learning Portuguese) so it made the whole process really fun and educational for both of us.
The key, though, is taking that first step and changing the way you think about language learning. Oftentimes the media makes a big deal out of people who are "multi-lingual" and there's really no reason to sensationalize this. I have met SO MANY people on my travels who know 4-5 different languages and are fluent in all of them! It only takes a small amount of time every day of practicing to get the basics down, and with the rate that people send me Facebook game requests I know there is a lot of free time that is getting wasted out there in the world!! :-)
<3 Jackie
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