As I have always been interested in film and music, I spent my adolescence studying English and French.
In the beginning I tried conventional schools, but I never adapted to the methods because I felt I was learning very slowly. It may have been flurry of being a teenager, but what I wanted was to suddenly wake up speaking and understanding everything in English. I hated reading subtitles and wanted to sing my favorite songs at any cost. After a while, I decided to study by myself, that was before DVDs with subtitles in several languages or none. I used to go to the video store and always rented the same movie “Pretty Woman” with subtitles in Portuguese, as I didn’t want to read it, I used to stick black tape at the bottom of the TV screen and watch the film on my own, working on each scene, listening to the dialogs carefully and repeating them as many times as necessary by mimicking the actors, and when I didn’t have any more doubts or got tired, I would switch to another film and do the same thing over and over.After graduating from college, I decided to try an exchange program in the United States. The beginning was full of surprises. Even though I had studied English before, living in an English speaking country can be tricky sometimes, just like the day I needed to put gas in the car and hadn’t noticed the difference in the sound of the words “fill” and ” feel”. Instead of asking to the attendant to “fill it up, please,” I said “feel it up, please” … Or at the time was working on a video and I had to instruct the actor in that scene he had to be relaxed because it was “pleasure time” and everyone in the studio laughed because of the sexual connotation of what I had said. Cultural differences also were very different. I learned, among other things, that an American does not offer anything out of politeness as in Brazil. If someone offers you something, they want you to accept it.
When you earn in U.S. dollars, all you want to do is more affordable, if you are not rich. This gave me the chance to travel across the U.S. and Canada, meet people who I still keep in touch with, eat exotic foods, visit places that I had only seen on TV or in travel magazines. Later, I decided to live, study and work in Ireland for a few years, which also gave the chance to do the same thing in Europe. And a few years later, I tried living in the Czech Republic, this time for love, despite only knowing a few words in the local language. This last experience was only possible because English is a common language and people did not care about the fact that I couldn’t communicate in Czech, in fact, they liked having someone to practice their English with.
While I think there are more beautiful languages other than English, a lot of what I did in the past was only possible be cause I could speak it well, especially when different nationalities were involved. The English language not only enabled me to connect with other people, it also opened doors: as I was able to speak the language more fluently, I had better jobs abroad, took courses, did not have trouble on trips, I met more people and I could understand them and I relate to them on a deeper level.
I feel I am part of this globalized world. Reading international newspapers, listening to and understanding the music I like, watching movies, TV news and shows in English without the language barrier is priceless and worth every minute of effort that I made
Debora Souza
