Language Are Difficulty

The last time I saw my uncle he asked me about what it was like to learn a foreign language, this is a very belated response to his inquiry. I think my entire linguistic experience (for those who don't know, I lived in Brazil for two years and basically learned the language as I went along) can be summed up in three conversations, each of which I've translated here into English:

• This is what I said to the clerk of a grocery store with whom I had checked my backpack and large care package filled with crafts my little sister had sent me: "Do you have a big package?" Yes, it means the same thing in Portuguese as it would in English.
  

• A Brazilian was telling me how much he loves beans and rice. Of course, every Brazilian eats beans and rice every day, so it reminded me of this cartoon (scroll to the bottom), which I tried to explain to him. After a lot of back and forth I learned that gorillas don't eat bananas in Portuguese (they probably eat beans and rice, I don't know), so none of it made any sense to him. Humor in general I found never translated very well.

• "What time is it?" This is what every young kid on the street would ask me, hoping to hear my goofy accent in response. I quickly learned to always answer "5:20", a time that didn't have any difficult-to-pronounce sounds in it, regardless of the actual time. I imagine that among the hundreds of times I told sometime it was 5:20 there were probably one or two who actually wanted to know the time. I hope I didn't make them late.

Written and spoken Portuguese are very different, much more different than written and spoken English. A majority of Brazilians (the average level of education among the Brazilians I knew very well was probably something like six or seven years of school) also spoke "incorrectly." As a result I spent a LOT of time just trying to figure out who I should emulate and what learning a new language even means. Should I try to talk like the examples in my grammar book or like the locals? Which locals? Does using slang sound ridiculous with a thick accent? Does using more polished verb endings than everyone else sound condescending or respectful? How much of my speech can be lifted verbatim from the Bible without making me sound like I'm from another planet? Once I answered these questions (the answers are: very little slang, purposefully make only the most common conjugation mistakes, and go easy on the Bible) actually leaning the language wasn't that hard.

( Additional reading. I love this article about the merits of descriptive vs. prescriptive linguistics. Reading this before I left for Brazil could have made my life a little easier.)