Language Laughs

A few thoughts role through my brain this morning as I sit down to share a funny story from our week of language study. I am thinking about my sister's blog which has kept us up to date with many of the exciting things that happen in a family of five kids under 10. The story I am going to tell could be found on her blog, coming from one of her kids. But as further proof that we are reliving our second childhood as toddlers in grown up bodies (though the communication difficulties being the only form of which said "toddlerhood" is expressed), here is an example from the conclusion of yesterday's class.

We were doing our "talking exercise" where at the end of our class, for however much time is remaining, when we have finished all the grammar, verb conjugations and sentence creations, we simply talk about a something off the top of our head. This is where it gets interesting because our true understanding of the language and our ability to use it in communication is unveiled. Though spelling errors in our daily exercises can be equally as telling, like the time I was trying to say the people rode in boats but instead I said, the people rode in boots (botas instead of botes). Back to our story, I was attempting to communicate to our teacher how that the missionary who rents our apartment and who owns our car returned this week from her furlough and has graciously allowed us to remain in her house and use her car until we leave this July for south Brazil (missionary Ellie Dreisenga, see her blog on the link to the left). Then I attempted to say that we are very grateful for her and the ministry she has to us in this way. I wanted to say, "Estamos muito agradecido para ela." Meaning: "We are very grateful for her." Instead I said, "Estamos muito engracado para . . ." but the look on our teacher's face (and Denielle's too) told me I'd gotten something wrong. Instead of saying "We are very thankful . . ." I had said, "We are very funny . . ."

More truer words have not been spoken. As the saying goes, "Out of the mouths of babes."

We've had a couple of good weeks of class and feel like we are learning a lot. This week we tackled our fifth verb tense called preterito mais-que-perfeito (which utilizes the past participle of the verb to have). Being able to read the various tenses that we have learned and pick them out is becoming more and more fluid, being able to spit them out in conversation is still challenging. I find myself starting with each verb in its infinitive form, reminding myself which ending it has (ar, er, ir) and then working through all possible choices depending on which person is performing the action. Along those lines, we are also looking at increasing our study hours each week by having someone come to our house to spend some time just speaking with us. It is a little more complicated than just having anyone come over for a while because communicating with us can be a challenge (see our previous post entitled "To Tell You a Story"). They will need a lot of patience.

We have gotten to know the neighbor a little more as we have spent time in their apartment and she in ours. Last week Raquel was in our apartment for about two hours, jabbering away. I'm not sure how much we were able to communicate with her but she did eat supper with us and was very curious. We have been able to visit with them in their apartment too a little bit and they love giving ElliAnna cookies. This has been fun. Pray for Raquel (Rachel) who told us she is a charismatic Catholic. We would love to have more success in communicating with her about what is really important in our lives.

Here is a brief summery of where we are at these days:
Some of the things that are most difficult: talking on the phone, listening to a Brazilian preach or lead a Bible study, being disciplined to talk in Portuguese in our home
Some of the things that are coming easier: reading, reading with comprehension, surface conversation, ordering our drinking water, talking about ElliAnna.