Brazil! And I can't speak Portuguese..

So far, travelling as an independent overlander with H, we visited Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. These countries are all Spanish speaking, so, as I am rather fluent in Spanish and H is multilingual, we haven't had much bother. 

But now we are in Brazil and neither of us speaks Portuguese, although speaking Spanish helps. We been here a week and we are getting by, but I'd like to get by a bit better. 

So, I've signed up for some private Portuguese lessons, starting today. For this I am fairly excited. H isn't going to join me, he believes it is unnecessary and he'll get by without it. 

Of course, he will get by better than me without lessons. His native tongue is Dutch, and he also speaks the other 2 official languages of his country: French and German, and he speaks English and quite a bit of Spanish. This all helps. In Spanish, I am better schooled than him, so I speak more and have better grammar, but I take much longer than him to adjust to a dialect or an individuals way of talking. In a nutshell, he will understand more Spanish than me with new acquaintances, but not if I've had time to 'get' their accent. The same is likely to be the case in Brazilian portuguese. He'll just pick it up, (and mostly just keep talking to them in Spanish). 

Actually, travelling in South America as an overlander I've been surprised to find just how many overlanders don't speak Spanish, many couldn't even claim they had beginner level Spanish. And, many of them didn't speak English either; they'd get by using their native tongue, typically German or French. 

So, for me it's back to school. I don't have much time for it, just this week, because the Brazil visa is rather time restrictive, but at least I'll have something to work on. And H? He's doing mechanics on the car.