Initially, whenever I saw the Portuguese language it appeared rather foreign and whenever I heard it, it sounded almost Slavic to me. This held true up until about a year ago. At the time, I had already studied the Spanish language for four years and had begun with my first year of French and had played with Japanese off and on for but one or two years (I’m certain that it is already evident enough that I’ve got an interest in learning languages). The other important factor to take note of in this story is that that I’m a collector of retro video games.
    

It is well known within Brazil, and to select others which hold interest in the matter, that though Sega’s 1985 hardware known as the Sega Master System saw its greatest success in the Brazilian market after the console’s 1989 national release, one reason for this being the absence of major competition like Nintendo, who had not entered the Brazilian market until years after Sega. With Sega’s head start in Brazil’s video game market and a neat national distributor, Brazil’s own Tec Toy, a national toy company that became best known for its close involvement with Sega, the Master System sold wonderfully and prospered for a much longer period of time than one would expect from the ‘80s hardware and Brazil received many games released exclusively within the country by Tec Toy. One game in particular had piqued my interest some years before: Sonic Blast. It had always seemed to me so obscure that I never thought that I would eventually come to own a copy.
  

   I brought myself to periodically take a dekko at one of Brazil’s most popular auction sites, Mercadolivre. I had only seen but a few copies sold on the site and they were a little too expensive for me at the time. One day, I did find a boxed copy at a decent price, but there was a dilemma. Mercadolivre sellers do not usually have/accept PayPal, as with the absence of a Brazilian eBay site, the form of electronic payment isn’t very popular there. People normally pay domestically with bank deposits, but being an international buyer posed issues of taxation and security. I had to contact the vendor and reach some agreement because I just couldn’t let this deal escape. Here lay the other issue of communication, in the language barrier. Luckily, I did have a Brazilian friend whom I know over the Internet who speaks English and Portuguese. We communicate via Steam. What I did was I messaged him asking for help in the translation of a message that I wanted to email the vendor regarding the sale. As I had no means of payment, I could only hope to do a (somewhat risky) trade with the dealer. My friend was glad to aid me and translated some messages between the vendor and me. The vendor was interested in doing a trade and I had a Super Nintendo game for which he was willing to post me his Sonic Blast: Chrono Trigger. Monetarily-speaking, Chrono Trigger is a game that was at the time around $80 loose, which was what mine was, and Sonic Blast in the case was around $150-$300 (prices based upon those of the American Market). I had no choice but to make this trade.
    

As the vendor and I continued to negotiate the deal, it was at times difficult to wait for my friend’s availability to translate incoming and outgoing messages. During the process, I had been studying the messages and comparing it to Spanish. I learnt quickly of the large amount of similarities between the two languages. I made connections and eventually was able to figure out the gist of what was being said (or typed, if you will). After a while of this and growing a tad impatient with having to wait for my friend to help me in my understanding, I began to attempt to make the replies myself. Of course, there were many errors that one would probably see an Hispanophone make when making an attempt at Portuguese. I showed my own replies to my translating friend and he corrected my mistakes from which I improved upon my grammar and vocabulary. There had come a point where I no longer needed my friend to translate anything I suddenly (and surprisingly to me) had gained a sufficient amount of knowledge of the Portuguese language to be justified in saying that I am able to speak it. All this happened within the time period of a few months. I believe I was so quick in picking it up because of my knowledge of Spanish, which, as mentioned before, is extremely similar to Portuguese.

     I ended up reaching an acordo with the seller and reluctantly sent to him my game, where upon receipt he would send me his part of the deal. There was plenty reason to be nervous about sending a rather pricey game to another country and relying solely upon your trust in the individual with whom you had only emailed for a couple months in a language you had just learnt. Mercadolivre has many more scammers than eBay and Brazil isn’t exactly the best place to send electronics to. In the end, I received the Sonic Blast and all was well. Luckily (for me), postage is almost dirt cheap when shipping from the United States to Brazil compared to vice-versa, not to mention the awful implementation of taxation of imported electronics on the Brazilian people (however there exist ways around this which I will not discuss here). After the success of the trade, I joined some Brazilian gaming groups on Facebook in hopes of improving upon my newly-learnt tongue and finding more people to trade with, both of which I did. I had made deals with a few members of a certain group for more Brazil-exclusive goodies and after only six months, I found my Portuguese to be almost as good as my Spanish.

     To this day, I still do trades with people in Brazil and I remain a trusted member of the group. I enjoy both Portuguese and Brazilian music and the language finds its use in my everyday life. I now own the game that I had wanted to get for quite some time amongst many others and in addition, I can now speak Portuguese. Como gosto de poder dizer que posso falar português!