Becky and I are planning to travel to Brazil this fall, and we are very much looking forward to the trip. We will spend about half our time visiting our friends, some of whom we have known for 25 years, in Belo Horizonte and the other half playing tourists, which we have never done in our many trips to Brazil. Specifically, we will be staying near Iguazu Falls (seen in the photo above) in the south of Brazil along the border with Argentina and Paraguay.
In addition to getting various reservations in order, both of us have gotten out our figurative oil cans to lubricate our rusty Brazilian Portuguese before the trip. Old CDs (remember them?) from long ago and some remarkably good You Tube courses that, like You Tube itself, were not around when we first began to learn some basic Portuguese nearly 25 years ago.
The vocabulary lists are like meeting a friend you haven’t seen in a long time. “Oh, yeah,” we say. So many things come back quickly. The grammar is still grammar. I will concentrate on past, present, and future tenses. The past imperfect subjunctive will have to wait for another trip. Continue reading