My Journey with Portuguese Hello Friends a passerby's, thank you for taking time to read my entry, with it I hope to inspire those embarking on a journey to learning any new language. I started learning Portuguese several years ago upon meeting a very nice group of foreign exchange students from Brazil. They made sure that I learned the basic greetings and a couple of swear words, however when they returned to Brazil I began to learn a bit on my own, when I noticed the progress was slow I decided to buy Rosetta Stone which is a great tool for learning any language. As with any language learning software however, it takes up a lot of time and requires diligence that at the time I did not have because of school. So much for my $500 Dollars (Totally kidding, buying the program was not a complete waste). In any case, there came a time when I got so caught up with both school and work that I completely refrained from learning any more Portuguese. It got to the point where I no longer felt comfortable even greeting people in Portuguese for fear of where the conversation might veer. Having abandoned Portuguese for several months, one day at Six Flags Magic Mountain I met another group of Brazilian natives with which I had a very pleasant conversation. From building up the courage of saying "Oi tudo bem?", we ended up talking about the World Cup, the death of Roberto Gomez Bolanos (Known in Brazil as Chaves) and several other very interesting topics. Augusto the person I greeted first, congratulated me for having good pronunciation and was curious to know how I had learned Portuguese. Since that day I have been a man on a mission toward the arduous task of learning Portuguese. Looking back, I sometimes believe that if I hadn't built up the courage to strike up a conversation with those guys I would have given up on Portuguese for good. So I advise that you do not be afraid of sounding like a fool it will only be temporary, your new language however will be with you for a lifetime. I tell my Brazilian and Portuguese friends to never fear ridicule or correction, surely it will come but it will all be beneficial in the end.