My Portuguese is somewhat coming along, I've reached my goal of learning the numbers, colours, days of the week, some greetings and civilities and handy phrases like "Can you tell me where I can find..." and "Is it to the right or to the left?". My pronounciation is not great though and often I meet questioning baffled faces when I'm trying to communicate in Portuguese.

Portuguese ranks eighth among the most spoken languages in the world (third among the western languages, after English and Castilian), learning a few words certainly wont hurt me.

The pronounciation is tricky and although a word looks similar in writing as the Spanish word it may sound completely different. There is also some distinction between Portuguese spoken in Brazil and Portugal (and probably in Angola, Mozambique, Cabo Verde, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé and Príncipe too). The Brazilian Portuguese is enriched with many words from Indian and African languages, mainly from Nigeria and Angola.

Now this is fun... r is generally pronounced like h, j like sh, h is silent except when combined with l, d or t followed by a vowel like ch, ç like s, lh like ly, nh like ñ, x can be pronounced like ks, ss or ch, the list goes on. And then there are regional variations.

But my effort is normally appreciated and it's fun. And sometimes funny; e.g. condoms are camisas de Venus or venus-shirts, and skimpy bikinis are called fio dental or dental floss. And then there are idioms like Viajando na maionese, literally translated as I'm travelling through the mayonnaise, a colloqualism for I'm totally wasted/knackered/spaced out.