Communication in a Portuguese Company, a Story

Date: 29/02/2024 14:41:52

#personal

So, I got a job at a Portuguese IT company almost a year ago (update at the time of moving this blog to Medium: a year and a half ago). Just to get it off the table: yes, the pay is shit, it’s a long-term contract, and I was prepared for a drop in money and reputation on the market in a totally new country.

For a long time, I was the only non-Portuguese-speaking person in the project. Every other person was either Portuguese or from a Portuguese-speaking country. Fortunately, my project required me to supervise stuff in English, and everyone spoke it.

But, if all your colleagues are Portuguese speakers like you, what language would you use casually at brainstorming sessions and for quick discussions? Right. So, I realized I needed something better than the community centre group course on day one.

I signed up for private online lessons on Preply with a Portuguese teacher who lives in Angola and offers a lower price for his services.

One thing I know well about education is that you’ve got to have a very clear, quantifiable goal. I needed to be able to maintain a tech-level discussion with my colleagues for 15 minutes. He gave me a deadline: December (we started in March).

So I worked and studied and did my best not to get discouraged with so much to do, win sympathy and recognition, and fit in. By May, I could fit some words into conversation here and there and got much better at understanding people.

Speaking was a skill that was the hardest for me, as it required thinking on my feet, which stumbled me every time. Starting with short phrases, though, helped, as well as learning colloquial expressions and dozens of ways to say hello or express irritation.

The flip side was that now, people sometimes took me for a proficient speaker. But, as I already had little trouble understanding them, so I faked being not very talkative and gestured a lot :)

So, progress went in leaps and falls. One day, I could flake off at work or have a nice night’s sleep, and suddenly, I could discuss some stuff in Portuguese at a call or explain directions on the street without sweating and stressing.

The graph of confidence in your Portuguese
The graph of confidence in your Portuguese talking skills

On other days, I’d be so tired that I hoped that nobody would talk to me, please, dear god. On those days, I didn’t go to the local Brazilian bakery because it required that I talk to at least two people: the nice lady behind the counter and a nice senhor at the cash register.

The fight between crippling anxiety and the need to speak in a foreign language
The fight between crippling anxiety and the need to speak in a foreign language

At last, I made a brave (and rash) decision to change all of my work calls to Portuguese. I had people who supported and respected me for it, and we also made a clause where we’d change it to English if something wasn’t clear so that we wouldn’t endanger the project.

I was tired after the first call of the day. My brain was boiling, trying to solve two hard tasks at once: how to do my job properly and how to speak about it properly. I felt very very stupid very often and doubted my ability to be a good professional. It sucked so much!

But, with time, we abandoned this self-defeating practice for a milder one:

The balance between portinglĂŞs, english and portuguese in a work environment
The balance between portinglĂŞs, english and portuguese in a work environment

I must clarify that my job requires me to communicate a lot. Written communication in Portuguese did not strain me that much; it was speaking that was hard. I am not the fastest of thinkers: I require time and space to switch gears. Switching the context from English to Portuguese was hard. The other way around was easy, like sliding down an icy hill to a patch of green spring grass.

And then came the planning session at the end of summer. I organized it, I came to it, and, for two days plus lunches plus staying in the same room as my coworker, I had to Portuguese in a hardcore mode. I actually got a little sick from being so tired.

After that, I took on a couple more projects where people were kind of used to speaking Portuguese for everything, and I continued doing just that.

I also actually switched to another tutor because we achieved my goal with Sandro by December, to the point that I could host a 15-minute daily without shutting up. And we did not have a new one. So I went to another tutor to help me with my grammar and improve my fluency.

Interestingly enough, by then, I had a new non-Portuguese speaker on the main team, so the communication went back to English :) But I didn’t mind. We made a small circle of the main people responsible for different parts of the project, and I was in it, and we didn't use English there.

Some insights:

And yes, I now speak four languages every day. Fun! Sometimes five, if I get a chance to drop some of my wild German. I feel like a superwoman.

I still suck, though, and I have to keep that in mind every day. Only yesterday, I almost caused a small scandal by mixing two words that DRASTICALLY changed the context of my message. But I know I suck, so I’m prepared to apologize and make amends.

P.S.: Here is some cringe humour about pigs and cousins. (I live in the North, after all).

Hey, tomorrow will be 40 years since we got married. Should we slaughter a pig? — What is the pig's fault? We should slaughter your cousin who introduced us!
"Hey, tomorrow will be 40 years since we got married. Should we slaughter a pig?" — "What is the pig's fault? We should slaughter your cousin who introduced us!"