700 Days

 Yes, I recently blew by 700 straight days on Duolingo. I've mainly moved on to Pimsleur, which is both a much better (read: you have to pay for it) site and one that actually features Iberian (as compared to Brazilian) Portuguese. Most language sites automatically default to Brazilian Portuguese mainly because of math (our ancient enemy): there are over 200 million Brazilians and only around 10 million Portuguese. Happily, Pimsleur offers both, so I can focus on the original Iberian version. I don't think that my time on Duolingo has been a total waste, however, because I've learned (according to the site) thousands of words and I've learned a lot about the inherent logic (or illogic) of Portuguese sentence structure. I knew the biggest difference would be pronunciation (although not the only difference, obviously) and, wow, what a difference. I've been reading a couple books on Portugal and one of the authors described Portuguese as windsurfing between consonants (and I would add, hard consonants). All those soft flowing Brazilian consonants are a thing of the past. For example: good morning/day, bom dia: goodbye bom gee-a (almost more of a shee, actually), hello bom Dia. And where , onde: goodbye onjee, hello onDe. It also tends to mush everything together, while cutting off the ends of words quite dramatically. Take good night, boa noise, for example: Brazilian is more boa noiche, where Iberian is boa noiT. So, quite a challenge. And the s's at the end of words are dramatically turned into sh's (hence the wind-surfing). And the pronouns are routinely dropped. Still, I'm enjoying myself, and maybe I'll actually make myself understood in Portugal, but don't bet on it.

Happily, we're heading back to Portugal over spring break, so three weeks from today we'll be back in the convent in Evora.