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Find out more about Izzy

• Do you speak this language fluently because of your origins or because a teacher inspired you to learn?

  Portuguese is my mother tongue, I was born in Brazil and grew up with the language in every part of my life. But teaching it came from something else entirely. When I spent years living abroad, I realized how much I had taken my own language for granted. Watching people struggle to communicate, and then light up when something finally clicked, made me want to be the person who creates that moment for others. My origins gave me the language. Life gave me the reason to teach it.

• Can you name a living, historical or fictional character that you think is the emblematic representative of the language's culture?

  Caetano Veloso. He was exiled from Brazil in the late 1960s and spent years living in London, and came back with his language transformed, richer, more global, and somehow more Brazilian than ever. To me, he is the perfect symbol of what Portuguese can do: carry an entire culture across borders without losing its soul. His music is full of the warmth, complexity, and creativity that define Brazil, and that I try to bring into every lesson.

• Is there a typical word, phrase, tradition or behaviour in the language that you particularly like?

  "Né?" a tiny word Brazilians use dozens of times a day that no app or textbook ever teaches. It works like "right?" at the end of a thought, but it carries something deeper: a sense of connection, of "I trust you understand me." It's informal, warm, and completely natural. The moment a student uses "né?" without thinking about it, I know they are no longer just studying Portuguese, they are actually speaking it.

• Why does speaking this language matter to you?

  Portuguese is how I understand the world. It is the language of my earliest memories, my family, my instincts. There is something about Brazilian Portuguese specifically that opens people up. It carries warmth, rhythm, and a particular way of seeing life that is hard to translate but impossible to miss. Teaching it feels like sharing something I genuinely love.

• What is the main difficulty in learning this language and what can help the process of learning?

  The biggest challenge is the gap between textbook Portuguese and what Brazilians actually say. The informal contractions, the rhythm, the filler words, the way we shorten and swallow syllables, none of that exists in standard learning materials. Students who rely only on apps can conjugate verbs perfectly and still freeze the moment a real conversation starts. What helps most is exposure to authentic spoken language: Brazilian music, series, podcasts, and conversations with native speakers who do not slow down for you. That discomfort is exactly where real fluency begins.

• Provide a valuable anecdote related to your language learning or your days at school.

  When I moved to Buenos Aires, I was a native Portuguese speaker surrounded by Spanish, a language I barely knew. The first few weeks were humbling. I remember nodding along to conversations I could only half understand, guessing from context, making mistakes that made people laugh, including me. But something shifted. I started mixing Portuguese and Spanish instinctively, finding patterns, building confidence through necessity. Within months I was fluent, not because I studied, but because I had no choice but to communicate. That experience, learning a language as an adult, in real life, with no classroom, changed everything about how I teach. I never forget what it feels like to be the student.

• How has travel or a specific trip helped you to increase your skill and knowledge of the language?

  Living abroad for 7 years, in London, Berlin, Buenos Aires, and across South America, Europe, North Africa, and the Caribbean taught me that language is inseparable from context. In each place, I saw how people communicate differently, what tone means, what silence means, how much culture lives inside a single expression. That perspective shaped my teaching directly: I do not just teach vocabulary and grammar, I teach the culture, the rhythm, and the mindset behind the language. Real fluency is not just knowing the words, it is knowing when and how people use them.

• What makes you a Superprof in language?

  Because I have lived language learning from both sides. I know what it feels like to sit in a foreign country and not understand a word the frustration, the embarrassment, and the extraordinary feeling when it finally clicks. I am TESOL certified, trained in student-centered communicative teaching, and I bring a background in social communication and design to every lesson I plan. But more than credentials, what sets me apart is this: I teach the Portuguese that exists outside classrooms and apps. The kind that actually works in real conversations, real relationships, and real life.