A new book asks if the love for the Portuguese language in Goa is genuine or display of vanity
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Many people, once they know I am from Goa, assume that I must be fluent in Portuguese, and are surprised when I tell them that while I can understand and speak it to a certain extent, I wouldn’t (yet) call myself fluent. It is a work in progress.
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As Shinichi Suzuki (pioneer of the Suzuki method) pointed out, fluency in anything, from language to music, is directly proportional to how early and extensive one’s exposure to it is. My father was born and raised in Portuguese Goa, so his first language was Portuguese. To his dying day, he would use “exposition” (from the Portuguese exposição) instead of “exhibition” when talking about a book exhibition; say his days were “counted” (from the Portuguese “contado”) instead of “numbered”; and many more such Freudian slips. This revealed that despite becoming very well versed with English and English literature (he was among the very few I knew who could not only quote Shakespeare, Chaucer, Thackeray, Milton, Byron, Wordsworth and others, but also tell you where the quotation came from, even, as in the case of Shakespeare, the play, act, scene and who said it and in what context), his brain would often fall into default...