“Pastry of poop”: Learning Portuguese means embracing embarrassment

One morning, I said I’d like a “pastry of poop” and two other times I ordered “toast with frozen” at Carla’s, the café near our Alcobaça apartment. Learning Portuguese is not easy, but we’re mastering the art of embracing embarrassment.

Pronunciation is the trickiest part. I wanted a coconut pastry but mispronunciation was my downfall. “Coco” means “coconut” and is pronounced “koh-koo” while “cocó” means “poop” and is pronounced “koh-koh.” Tiny little accent – big difference in meaning!

The thing is, I’d been warned about the difference and practised in my head as I approached the counter. But at the last minute my tongue panicked and reverted to muscle memory. I said “koh-koh,” just as any Anglo would.

The biggest challenge of learning any language is getting past that fear of embarrassing yourself. We’ve learned, over our years of travel in non-English-speaking countries, that you must dive right in and be prepared to laugh at your mistakes. Speaking and then understanding when someone answers you are the hardest parts; reading and writing are much easier. 

But there are specific challenges to learning Portuguese:

• When you see it written, it looks a lot like Spanish, and we know just enough Spanish to get confused.
• You can’t use Google Translate – it uses Brazilian Portuguese, with differing pronunciation and many words that are just different. Instead, we use a translation app called DeepL, although it’s not infallible.
• Portuguese drops a lot of syllables and adds random sounds that don’t make sense to us. Think for a minute about the English “I’ve got you.” When speaking quickly, we’d say “I gotcha” or simply “Gotcha!” Where did that “ch” sound come from and where did the “vee” sound go? It’s the same in Portuguese.
• Pronunciation is hard. Take, for example, bread and sticks. “Pau” means “stick” and is pronounced “pow” while “pāo” means “bread” and is pronounced “powng” – almost the same but with a strong nasal ending. I realized I’ve been confidently asking for a loaf of sticks at the corner store every other day for a month. No wonder the ladies smile when they see me coming! “Estou embarasado” in retrospect. But embarrassment is just part of learning Portuguese.

Portuguese is an official language in nine countries (Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, Equatorial Guinea, São Tomé and Príncipe, and East Timor) plus Macau (an area of China).

But all the Portuguese people we’ve spoken with say that learning Portuguese is challenging, and that learning English is much easier for them. Many say they cemented their school learning by watching TV. In Portugal, American TV shows and movies are not dubbed into Portuguese; instead, they are subtitled. So, if they turn off the subtitles, they can listen in English and learn. (Side note: that makes it easier for us to go to movies here, since we can simply listen to the English dialogue. And if we watch the subtitles, it helps us learn Portuguese.) 

When we go into shops or restaurants, the staff can immediately tell we’re Anglos and often offer to speak English or bring us an English menu.

“Necessito de praticar o meu português,” I say, which always gets a smile and usually an impromptu Portuguese lesson.

• At Pratu’s restaurant, our server Marco taught us something new every time he came to our table. When I ordered the duck, I got a lesson on “rare,” “medium” and “well-done.”
• When we toured the Alcobaça Monastery, I asked the woman in the gift shop how to pronounce “Mosteiro.” We’d been doing it all wrong. It’s “Moosh-TIE-row.” I learned that pretty quickly, but Bill still struggles.
• At the library, the children’s librarian helped me choose a suitable book and then guided me through the first few pages, correcting my pronunciation and explaining the words I didn’t understand. He invited us to come back every day for a lesson!

Back at Carla’s, for two days I asked the clerk for toast with jam but received just toast (buttered on both sides). Finally, I looked up “jam” and realized my mistake. “Jam” can be “compota” or “geleia” or “marmelada.” I had been overconfident, hadn’t doublechecked, had combined the “com” with “gel” and “ada” sounds and ordered “torrada com congelado,” which means “toast with frozen.” Pride goeth before an embarrassment. The third day, I ordered “torrada com marmelada” and finally got toast with jam… and on both sides!

With that success behind me, I attempted on another day to order that darn coconut pastry.

“Gostaria uma pastel de coco,” I said, and pronounced “coco” correctly!

But the clerk looked at me blankly. “Show me,” she said in English.

Dejected, I walked down the counter to point out the elusive pastry.

“Ah, um jesuita!” she said.

Turns out, it has its own special name based, I think, on the long thin shape – like a Jesuit monk.

We began learning Portuguese when we were here for three months in 2019. We could order coffees, decipher a dinner menu, shop for groceries, and follow road signs – the basics for short-term travellers. But then we forgot a lot during Covid when we were back in Canada.

We resumed learning Portuguese in the winter of 2021-22 while living in Osoyoos, B.C. in Canada, where there’s a sizable Portuguese community. We found Tina, who had immigrated to Canada as a teenager in the 1950s – an economic downturn in Portugal when many families came to North America. She tutored us weekly for five months and our understanding improved greatly.

Tina taught us a lot of vocabulary we’d need when we arrived in Portugal and began to set up our household: words for banking, furniture, bedding, appliances, kitchen ware, transportation and more.  

Now, after a month in Portugal, we realize we could survive here on the minimal Portuguese we already know. But we want more than just to survive – we want to know what’s really going on, make phone calls to utility companies, read the newspapers, make Portuguese friends, and feel part of the community. That requires working hard on learning Portuguese. We’ll take lessons once we’ve settled in more. For now, we learn using a variety of strategies:

• Watching YouTube videos. Our favourite “learning Portuguese” video series are Talk the Streets, with Liz Sharma, and Practice Portuguese, with Joel and Rui.
• Reading Portuguese children’s books we’ve bought locally. Grade 1 seems to be our level.
• Chatting with storekeepers in Portuguese every day.
• Reading the grocery flyers stuffed into our mailbox and buying newspapers. We get the gist of the headlines and captions now, but the details still elude us without resorting to DeepL.
• Tackling phone calls – they’re the most difficult because you can’t use gestures or pointing or faux sign language. When Worten (a store like Best Buy) called about our appliance delivery, Bill managed half the phone conversation in Portuguese before switching to English. I was proud of him! Later, when the appliances did not, in fact, arrive, we asked for help from a Portuguese-speaking woman (she works for the company that helped us find our apartment). The third time, Bill wrote out what he wanted to say in Portuguese and started with that, before asking “Fala inglês?” and switching. (Side note: we have our fridge, oven and clothes washer but still await the cooktop.) He’s braver than me about phone calls.
• Getting library cards, thus opening a whole world of Portuguese words to learn. We started in the children’s section.

We celebrate our small successes. We’ve managed to make all our purchases at the mercado [market] in Portuguese. I successfully bought stamps at the post office, even though the DeepL translation app gave me the wrong word for “stamp.” It gave me “carimbo” as in “stamp in your passport” rather than “selo” which is for mail. The woman wrote “selo” on my receipt while explaining the difference.

Most of our Portuguese requirements have been for shopping. (Our trip to Ikea was the easiest since we speak fluent Ikea: Hauga, Kallax, Tisken, Melltorp…)

But to meet Portuguese people and make friends, we must be brave and initiate conversations. After meeting Joāo Paulo Ferreira, “the opera guy” who sings outside the Opera Café every day, my goal had been to have a proper, longer conversation with him. And I have! Many, in fact. It turns out that he and his husband are neighbours of ours. We see them frequently and were even invited into their home one evening.

“Somos vizinhos e novos amigos,” he said to us. [We are neighbours and new friends.] I was honoured.

Not to be defeated at Carla’s, I tried again to order that elusive coconut pastry.

“Gostaria um jesuita, por favor…. com coco,” I added tentatively, willing my tongue to pronounce it “koh-koo.”

The clerk nodded (with no signs of shock on her face), punched buttons on the cash register and I received my pastry!

“Congratulations!” Bill whispered. “You’ve graduated!”

I’m making progress.

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We began learning Portuguese in earnest in July 2022. Find out where we are right now by visiting our ‘Where’s Kathryn?’ page.