[brazil, week 2] Living when you don't know how to speak

10 Mar, 2026

I recently finished my second week in Brazil. In my first week, I was practically speaking bombarded with new-ness. New experiences, new flavours, new streets, new everything. Even things I thought I knew how was, tasted differently here - the fruits are sweeter, and the bread

While the first week was filled to the brim with new impressions, flavours, and experiences, the second one has left me slightly moremixed. While I am still very fulfilled, I am now noticing more than just the positives. Most prominent is the lack of a common language.

I speak four languages. It's more like three and a half, but give me some hours of conversation and I'll be up to a "good-enough-to-have-a-conversation-on-the-street"-level of German again. The others are Norwegian, English, and Mandarin, all of which I speak fluently. It is in other words not common that I ever find myself in a situation where I can't neither talk with nor understand what another person is trying to tell me. Now however, this is my daily life.

I was very much prepared to be hit in the face with a wall when I got here. What I did not expect was just how big it is - just how much it is that actually goes into language. Before I arrived, I thought I had managed to teach myself just enough Brazilian¹ to get by and survive daily tasks. Going to the supermarket, buying sunscreen at the drug store, buying a coffee. I was very wrong.

After one or two days, I had learnt how to understand enough of context to know how to make it through these things, provided that everything goes according to the script. I get to the cashier, they ask me if I'm a part of the loyalty programme, they ask me if I want to register my CPF², they scan everything, ask how I want to pay, and at the end ask if I want a receipt. When something deviates from that script, things get interesting.

One of them happens when they ask differently. At São Roque where I usually buy groceries, they ask if I "have the club". At Coop Supermercado they sometimes just say "Coopercado?". Another funny incident happened on Friday, where the cashier at São Roque asked if I wanted to input my CPF (I assume), I answered no, but then proceeded to say that I have to. I assume this was a mistake on the cashiers side, maybe new to the job, since I know for a fact that this isn't necessary. I was then able to explain that I'm an exchange student and don't have a CPF which led to, well, this:

At the end, the solution ended up being asking another colleague for help who promptly went to input her own CPF instead. I then got to pay for my groceries, and went on with life as a relieved and somewhat confused man - I can't complain too much though, as it did mean that I got to eat dinner that day.

This is just one of uncountable scenarios. Someone tries to ask me for something at the street, more often than not I'll have to say "Sorry, I don't understand the language well enough to help". If I try to talk to the guys running the apartment building about anyting, ie. when I had to pick up some parcels - it was mostly just luck that led to everything working out without me having to call a translator.

If I wanna take the bus somewhere, I need someone to accompany me. If I want to go to a restaurant, I'll need a translator. If I want to buy food at my conservatory cafeteria, I need help. If I want to ask someone at the store where I can find something, I need to check my notes for how to say that. Later today, I have two new classes in new groups at the conservatory, where it's safe to assume that there is very little English. I'll be going alone, which is gonna be.... let's say, an experience. These are things that I'm usually looking very much forward to. I still am, but the flavor is slightly more bittersweet now. It's hard to deny that close to everything I do now, as long as it includes other people, comes with a slight fear and stress of how I will be able to communicate properly.

A few days ago my girlfriend sent me an excerpt from The book of Embraces, Celerbration of the Human voice. Part of it goes:

The Uruguayan dictatorship wanted everyone to stand alone, everyone to be no one: in prisons and barracks, and throughout the country, communication was a crime.

Some prisoners spent more than ten years buried in solitary cells the size of coffins, hearing nothing but clanging bars or footsteps in the corridors. Fernández Huidobro and Mauricio Rosencof, thus condemned, survived because they could talk to each other by tapping on the wall. In that way they told of dreams and moemories, fallings in and out of love; they discussed, embraced, fought; they shared beliefs and beauties, doubts and guilts, and those questions that have no answer.

When it is genuine, when it is born of the need to speak, no one can stop the human voice. When denied a mouth, it speaks with the hands or the eyes, or the pores, or anything at all. Because every single one of us has something to say to the others, something that deserves to be celebrated or forgiven by others.

Recommended reading:
Sangalang, C. C., Becerra, D., Mitchell, F. M., Lechuga-Peña, S., Lopez, K., & Kim, I. (2019). Trauma, Post-Migration Stress, and Mental Health: A Comparative Analysis of Refugees and Immigrants in the United States. Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health, 21(5), 909–919. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10903-018-0826-2

#brazil #exchange #travel