Yesterday I was reading a book by Clarice Lispector in Portuguese and I got overwhelmed. It was me, a regular Ukrainian guy looking at pages of a book written in Portuguese and being able to understand it.
Here is that book. Why is it so special?
A year ago my girlfriend had gifted it to me and wrote on its pages: "I hope one day it will encourage you to study Portuguese".
Did I believe I would study Portuguese one day?
Of course, not.
I was living in Italy, already could speak Spanish and Italian that are quite similar to Portuguese. So, why would I study it?
The thing is that back then I did not know where my life would bring to.
By the way, here is me looking at this book for the first time.
I just came to Lisbon for vacation, received my Christmas gifts, I am happy.
A month later I would be spending a freezing night at the airport of Bergamo. I could not sleep and so few hours before the sunrise I opened this book. 90% of the words I was looking at were absolutely new for me and I could barely follow the story. Unfortunately, at that moment it was the only entertainment I had, so I was blindly reading the book, which was rather a mystery for me.
Now let's move to March of 2021.
Gabriela, my girlfriend, who once was born in Brazil and moved to Portugal, was coming to visit me in Turin for a few days and celebrate my birthday.
She was going to stay for about a month at my place but somehow ended up living with me for 5 months. During that time I heard a lot of conversations in Portuguese while she was talking to her family or friends. If you heard a Brazilian talking on a phone at home you will understand why I had no choice but to hear all those talks. Expressive, emotional people, what can I say? "Smiling gently"
That is the reason why I speak Brazilian Portuguese.
The culmination of this story happened in July 2021, when I decided to leave all my life behind and move to Portugal.
Therefore, here I am, trying to build my new life in Lisbon and, of course, constantly studying Portuguese.
One day I will write a post about how I have learned Portuguese in 5 months, but that is gonna be a completely different story!