Preserving the language

I speak Portuguese but we live in Netherlands. My oldest son speaks fluently both Portuguese and Dutch. He has captured all the English he could from the time I still spoke English with Mr. M.

But my smallson doesn't speak Portuguese. Not at all! I insisted like many mothers do, but when he was 2 1/2, during one of his tantrums, impotent, he shouted to me: "I hate you and this language you speak".

It was portuguese.


By then, I was crossing a burn-out with severe depression symptoms. I had the strong sensation that people were made of plastic. Mr. M. was for most of the time traveling, I had a full time job, a house and two kids.  Smallson was doing very bad on "Kindergarden", unable to progress on the most basic stuff.

I gave up and started to speak Dutch. Thanks to this, our relationship improved A LOT. He is still able to understand my language a bit, because I still talk to bigson in Portuguese, but his development on Portuguese is a bit behind (don't worry, the boy is a genius like his brother, just on this aspect is he behind... kkkk).

And because of this, I started with a little project and may be I can find another mothers that want to share it with me. I did a small pilot with five pictures. Take a look:

To build this  I use an application called "Flashcards". It's the same cue cards we used when we were kids at school. It is available for IPhone and IPad (not sure if available for Android).

I make a spreadsheet and on one column I put the picture HTTP address (the side one of the cue card), on another column the sound (recorded with Garageband from Apple) and the word on portuguese (the side 2). I then copy & past the spreadsheet into the website with a "secret code". Than I download it on the IPad.

Voilá! An interesting game for the punks and I use my pictures for something.

I am interested to make contact with another mothers that have IPads/IPhones and want to share the task of recording sounds/writing words/collecting images into a spreadsheet so we can make a huge Portuguese dictionary in the form of a game for our kiddos. 

I commit to teach you the best way to do it and I have even thought about a system of recording/classifying/organizing the words.

Interested? Manifest!