Report - Portuguese Lessons

PORTUGUESE LESSONS

During the week we were invited by the core-group teachers Dyson and Willie to give Portuguese lessons to their students.

This idea arose since the team 2015 are close to a new period in DNS studies, a unique experience full of stamina and challenges – the period two – Bussing our continent.

They will be on the road for three months traveling along a route where they will explore some of the neighborhood countries like Mozambique and Zambia.

In Zambia it will not be a problem, easily they can express themselves, both Zambians and Malawians speak English.

Besides that, one of the Zambian local languages, Bemba, is very similar to Chichewa, the Malawian Official language.

On the other hand, in Mozambique, the official language is Portuguese and almost no one speaks English. Despite of 40 local languages that are spoken in the country, none of them are similar to Chichewa. For this reason, they invited us to give them some tips since we are Portuguese.

We started by teaching them some greetings and expressions. In that way, they could start to interact with Mozambicans, and so making friends and discover new cultures.

Olá that means ‘Hello’, Tudo bem? that means ‘How are you?’ and Estamos juntos that literally translated means ‘We are together’ but is an expression used in Mozambique to say ‘See you later!’ meaning that we are going to separate now but we are going to be together again, and until that moment we are together.

We taught how to present themselves: O meu nome é Margarida. That means ‘My name is Margarida’ and Como é que te chamas? That means ‘What is your name?’

The students were curious about some expressions and useful words for their journey. How to ask for accommodation, for instance, or how to ask for some particular food. And then we explained: “Feijão” means beans, “Arroz” means rice, “Mangas” and “bananas”, those ones are easy to guess!!

We explained them a simple Mnemonic that could help to memorize hundreds of Portuguese words. So let us explain: almost all the English words finishing in “-tion”, in Portuguese finish in “-ção”, so information translated to Portuguese is “informação” and for instance, organization translated to Portuguese is “organização”, cooperation is “cooperação”, definition is “definição” and so on so forth.

Some words that by coincidence or not, since Portugal was the first country to trade with Malawi, are just the same in Portuguese and in Chitumbuka, the local language here in the North of Malawi. For example trigo that in English means “wheat”, sapato that means “shoe” and bola that means “ball”, are all spelled in the same way in Portuguese and in Chitumbuka.

But, for instance, in Chitumbuka, pepper is ‘sabola’ but in Portuguese ‘cebola’ means onion. Don’t mistake!