Getting Testy

It turns out I spoke too soon when I said you have hunger or thirst in Portuguese. This is what you do in French, and when I saw similar constructions in my Portuguese book, I assumed it would be plus la meme chose (more of the same thing). But it turns out things are a little more complicated on the Iberian peninsula.

In Portuguese, you have two choices about how to express hunger, thirst, and medical pain. If you're talking about what generally happens, you use ter (to have). If you're talking about what you're feeling at this particular moment, you use estar (to be).

I've started putting sample sentences on my flashcards to make the vocab stick more easily in my brain, and it seems to be working. I guess this proves the value of communicative approaches to language learning. The communicative approach is the fruit of a long series of development in language learning over the past century. It puts practice in using language in real situations at the center of the classroom experience, rather than teaching of grammatical minutae. It's good to know I can sort of communicate in Portuguese, at least with the limited vocabulary I now possess.

A friend of mine, who teaches English in Korea and is working her way through Korean, told me to check out what resources exist on the Internet. Today, I took a look and found a pretty extensive site designed by a woman trying to peddle her own textbooks. The site includes grammar sections, explanations of frequently confused words, and even some tests. Just for kicks, I took the first three out of five tests.

Amazingly, I was able to guess what a lot of stuff on the second and third tests meant, even without having actually studied the grammar.

Right now, Portuguese could either prove much more confusing or much easier than I expected.