note: this is a recording of your private coaching session with Foster. No one will see it except you, Alexia, and Foster 🙏
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Session summary
Almost the whole hour in Portuguese today. We covered the tornado warning that sent your café down to the porão, Hannah's last days and everything she's been cooking, the Colombian couple who caught you mid-Portuguese and got a scrambled mix of three languages, your question about estar com versus ter, and why you still hate making mistakes even though something has clearly shifted.
Here's the honest read. You asked the estar com question yourself, off a Duolingo sentence you noticed. That's the good sign. Then you named your own pattern without me prompting you: you don't want to errar, so you plan the sentence before you say it, and the planning is exactly what slows you down. You said something opened up. I agree. Before next class, use the café. You told me Portuguese comes out faster with Brazilian customers because it feels low-stakes. That's the feeling to chase everywhere else.
⛈️ Tempestade, tornado e o porão
A tempestade — the storm
Um aviso de tornado — a tornado warning (already touched down)
Um alerta de tornado — a tornado watch (conditions are right, stay alert)
O porão — the basement
O sótão — the attic
O vale — the valley
O trovão — thunder
O relâmpago — lightning
A inundação — the flood
Estranho — strange, unusual
Não é normal / não é comum — it's not normal / it's not common
Aconteceu há dois anos — it happened two years ago
Abafado — humid, muggy, stuffy
You reached for furão first, which is a ferret. Porão is the basement. Worth keeping those two apart. You also worked out the warning versus watch difference on the spot, in Portuguese, which was not a small thing to do while telling the story.
The reason Cincinnati almost never gets hit is that you're in a vale. And on lightning: raio exists, but relâmpago is what you'll actually hear.
🍲 A canja, o brigadeiro e o Skyline
A canja / a canjinha — chicken soup / the affectionate diminutive
A carne moída — ground meat
O molho — the sauce
O cachorro quente — hot dog
Chocolate amargo / chocolate negro — dark chocolate
Setenta por cento de cacau — seventy percent cacao
Fino — thin
Crocante — crunchy
Enorme — enormous (instead of grandíssimo)
Da Inglaterra — from England
A caneta — the pen (canela is cinnamon)
Tem o sabor de — it tastes like
Hannah's canjinha was made with pork, and you said it tasted like the soup your mom never made. That sentence was better in Portuguese than it is in English.
The brigadeiro discovery was yours. You'd used Hershey's before, Hannah brought 70% cacau, and you noticed the difference without anyone telling you. Chocolate amargo is the usual word, and chocolate negro works too.
Jungle Jim's gave us the best vocabulary of the day. You described Pocky as fino e crocante before you had the words handed to you. Nibbly Fingers da Inglaterra. And Skyline: cinnamon and chocolate in the molho, which is why nobody outside Cincinnati understands it. I'm looking it up.
🗣️ Três línguas ao mesmo tempo
Um casal — a couple (nasal vowel: ca-SAL)
Eles são da Colômbia — they're from Colombia
Pouco antes / logo antes / justo antes — just before
Esquecendo — forgetting (olvidando is Spanish)
Estou enferrujada — I'm rusty
Preciso praticar — I need to practice
Five minutes of Portuguese with Hannah and then you couldn't get back into Spanish, with people you always speak Spanish with. That isn't a problem, it's evidence. Portuguese is taking up room now.
Enferrujada is the word I use every single time I come back from the States. Keep it.
✍️ Correções da aula
Eu preciso memorizar — I need to memorize (precisar takes no de before a verb)
Depende da frase / depende da situação — it depends on the sentence / on the situation (depender always takes de)
Errar / fazer erros / cometer erros — to make mistakes (and it's erros, not errores)
Se ela fizesse sopa, teria o sabor disso — if she made soup, it would taste like this
As cores — the colors (feminine)
A gente comeu / nós comemos — we ate
Eu percebi / eu me dei conta / eu descobri / eu aprendi — I realized, I found out, I learned
Animado — excited (ansioso leans closer to anxious)
Two of these are worth a card. Precisar takes no preposition before a verb, but depender always brings de with it.
And look at fizesse and teria. You built the imperfect subjunctive and the conditional together, in the middle of a story about your mother's cooking, while telling me you're still learning how to form the subjunctive. You already have it.
📖 Estar com vs. ter
Estar com — fome, sede, sono, frio, calor, pressa, sorte, medo, raiva, saudade
Ter — anos, filhos, um carro, dinheiro, tempo, paciência, certeza
Estou com fome / tenho fome — I'm hungry (both are natural)
Estou com a sua mala — I have your suitcase (on me, right now)
Tenho trinta e seis anos — I'm thirty-six
Good question, and I'd never once thought about it. Rough version: states and feelings lean estar com, possessions and age lean ter.
Where ter clearly wins is ownership. Eu tenho a minha garrafa. Where estar com wins is company and whatever is on you at the moment. Eu estou com a Alexia, never eu tenho a Alexia. For everything in the two lists above, pick the one that feels more natural to you and let it become your default. Ninety-six percent of the time either one lands.
💭 Errar e ter vontade de falar
Algo abriu na minha mente — something opened up in my mind
Tenho vontade de falar — I feel like talking, I want to talk
Sinto mais confiança — I feel more confidence
Coisas do coração — matters of the heart
Mais superficial — more surface-level
Custa um pouco / é um pouco difícil — it's a bit hard for me
You said you don't like to errar because you already know the right answer in your head and it doesn't come out of your mouth fast enough, so you think and think and think, and then you don't speak. That's the whole mechanism. You found it yourself.
The other thing you said: with Brazilian customers at the café you have vontade de falar, because it's lighter. Coisas do coração are harder. That's true for me too. I do everything here in Portuguese except therapy.
Nine classes in, right around the three months I guessed at in Class #1, and you're holding real conversations. Faster than I expected.