Tuesday 28 May 2013

In the beginning, part of the purpose for writting this blog in english was that I would practise my writting skills - foreseeing the amount of letters and business paperwork I would have to do in my volunteer job.
And that's going well. Apart from almost sending Christmas Cards to all embassies saying "Dear Embassador" instead of "Dear Ambassador" I didn't make any major mistake.
(I still think "embassador" makes much more sense and they should change the dictionary)

the thing is,
contrary to when I was living in Budapest, now I'm not hanging mainly with native speakers. 
Back then, it was common for me to be the only person in the room speaking english as a foreign language. I felt somehow pressured to say everything well and conjugate all the verbs properly and would feel very embarrassed if I made a mistake.

But now, everyone around me is speaking english as a second language: with all the mistakes, weird grammar, and funny pronunciations that come along with it.
That made me much more relaxed and sometimes find myself saying things that AREN'T CORRECT AT ALL and just shrug and be like "who cares? as long as you get my point..".
My spoken english is probably much worse than a year ago.

The problem is.. so is my portuguese.
I few weeks ago I called my mum and was seriously having trouble remembering some really simple words. I talked slower and carefully.
She was looking at me like I was retarded.



I'm worried that if both my portuguese and english continue to decline, soon I'll only communicate with sounds and gestures.

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