"Two beers, please!"
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I don't speak Portuguese. But here's what I learned last week on holiday in Lisbon:
how to say "two beers, please"
it's olá, not hola.
a "thank you" with a smile is worth three "thank you"s with no smile
i need to add "this please" to my Survival Japanese course as a central key phrase.
learning words in a new language is a lot easier when you can read the words already (hurray for the roman alphabet!)
you can delete social media apps for a week and put the out-of-office on, and the world will not end
sometimes a very short blog post is fine
Like many people in the UK, I studied French in school. I liked French. I thought it was really fun to speak another language, to talk with people, and to try and listen to what was going on in a new country. (Still do!)
When I was 14 we went on a school exchange to the city of Reims, in northeastern France. I was paired with a boy, which I’m sure some 14-year-olds would find very exciting but which I found unbearably awkward. He was very sweet and we completely ignored each other.
That was nearly 20 years ago, and I didn’t learn or use any more French until, at some point in lockdown, I decided on a whim to take some one-to-one lessons with online teachers. Here are some things I learned about French, about language learning, and about myself.