I’m still learning Portuguese. The social bond is much stronger now. The relationships and links I have with countries where Portuguese is spoken have increased. I have a friend who was born in Mozambique. I have strengthening relationships with a research centre in Portugal and with several different Portuguese and Brazilian universities. I have Brazilian friends. I am going to Mozambique this year and no doubt I’ll travel to Brazil most likely with work, but also as a tourist, in the coming years. One of the Portuguese classes I joined is still meeting. We no longer have a teacher, our level 2 course – the post-beginners course never got off the ground – the bureaucrats said that there weren’t enough people wanting to take the course – but we met anyway, with a great teacher who we paid privately. And now, in the absence of any teacher at all we are still meeting, a few of us – a growing number. But we take it in turns to bring along texts to read and to talk for 2 hours a week to each other in Portuguese. Perhaps we do need a teacher – we are spending a lot of time with dictionaries and grammar books together, asking each other questions about language and culture and resting in English to tell stories, or laugh.

Meeting, greeting and eating and languaging. The space between, the space of language learning, not of languaging, the determination to try and language, to persevere because of the sense of the rewards of this linguistic currency, is one where we maintain our social bondedness. The language holiday came together for a short, intense period, and then dwindled away – the market was not able to provide the kinds of conditions in which the bonds might continue. Sometimes I see people who were on the first course with me in town, as I walk the streets and we smile at each other.

Learning Portuguese has changed my life.