Month: Dec 2021

Posted in English

Tips So Hot They’re (In)Flammable

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I asked on the Reddit about why Desempenhar wasn’t the opposite of Empenhar. Empenhar means “to make an effort”, and the prefix “des” is like “dis” in english and it usually reverses or negates the meaning of whatever word it’s attached to and makes it into an antonym. So for example, “Fazer” means to make or do, and “Desfazer” mean to take something apart; “Cansar” means to get tired, “Descansar” means to rest, “Ordem” means “Order” and “Desordem” means “Disorder” and so on. So desempenhar looks like it should mean “make no effort” (“Hoje é dia de folga, pá. Vou me desempenhar o dia inteiro!”) but it doesn’t, it means “to perform”.

Why? Is there some sort of mysterious etymological tale to tell here? Same question for their noun forms, empenho (effort) and desempenho (performance).

Joe Desempesci discovers the difference between flammable and Inflammable

As it turns out, it’s just one of those things like Flammable and Inflammable in english, where the prefix just doesn’t really have any effect. A few interesting points came up in the comments

Butt_Roidholds listed some other examples of this sort of thing:

  • Abrir = open / Desabrir means leave off doing something… hm… I’m not absolutely sure about this one. Abrir can mean “Open the proceedings” – ie, start something, so desabrir meaning cease doing something actually does seem to be an antonym
  • Obstinado = obstinate / Desobstinado = something like “disoriented” but it’s not very clear – it isn’t defined in Priberam and Infopedia just says “ver desaustinado”. It seems like an odd fish and I won’t be using it!
  • Inquieto = disquieted / Desinquieto = exactly the same as inquieto! Why does this even exist though? They already have the word “quieto”, so why the double negative?
  • Aliviar = alleviate / desaliviar = alleviate.

And other users, TheSingingBowl and Vilkav chimed in with

  • Abrochar = to fasten with a brooch, or to button up / Desabrochar = open or unbutton, can also refer to the opening of a flower. These seem like pretty decent antonyms but the person who suggested them added a laughing emoji so I think it might have to do with the other (rude) meaning of “broche”.
  • Largar = let go / Deslargar = let go. Yep, definite example.

As for theories about how the words got like this, the most interesting one was from Grenarius who suggested maybe Desempenho came from the word “penhor” which is like “pawn” in the sense of something given as security for a high interest loan, and when you would “se empenhar” you were incurring an obligation which you would then discharge, so desempenha is an antonym of “se empenha” in that sense: you are performing some work to pay off your debt. It’s a minor stretch but not out of the realms of possibility

Posted in English

Storyglot

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I’ve just updated the Textbook page of the blog with a new set of books I’ve heard about.

Susana Morais is the creator of the Portuguese Lab Podcast and Academy and she’s written a couple of story books aimed at portuguese learners: A Casa Na Bosque for intermediate learners (B2) and A Baú das Coisas Perdidas for beginners (A2). They each come with an audio version read by the author and some questions at the end to test your comprehension. I have the B2 version and have listened to the first few minutes. It looks like a really useful addition to the ever-growing list of resources for learners.

Looking out at the landscape today, compared to when I started, when it was pretty much just the Practice Portuguese podcast – and even that was pretty shonky in the early days – there’s really quite a lot of good stuff out there for anyone wanting to ;earn european portuguese.

Anyway, the links above go to the Kobo versions, which is what I’m using, since it allows me to listen to the audio and read all on one device, but you can get a printed version or several other ebook options via her website Storyglot.

Posted in English

The Utopia Portuguese Film Festival

Posted on by Colin Lusk

The Utopia Portuguese Film Festival usually takes place on the UK but this year, owing to travel restrictions, I guess, it’s only available on the web. Its free though, and that’s my favourite price so I’m definitely in!

Utopia Portuguese Film Festival

It takes place this coming week: the 12th to the 19th and you can sign up for the films here. I feel like the first one is probably going to be the most useful for my studies but I’ll be out all day so I’ve no chance. The offerings on the following Sunday look good too though, especially the very last presengation: Cinzas & Rasgança.

Posted in Portuguese

Subjunctives

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Random witterings based on the subjunctive exercises in the C1 course. Notes below. Thanks to Cataphract for correcting the original

Ainda que tenha tentado muitas vezes entender os tempos verbais mais… Profissionais, digamos assim, deste* idioma, continuo confuso. Já fiz um exercício** hoje de manhã, chumbei (quarenta e dois por cento, que desgraça!) e fiz novamente. Apesar de ter revisto as respostas todas, não conseguiria passar, nem que*** a nota das escolhas múltiplas tivesse aumentado, porque as respostas escritas permaneceram cem por cento erradas (o site não mostra exemplos correctos deste tipo de questão, o que não é muito prestável!).

Decidi deixar o exercício para amanhã. Entretanto, se revir**** as informações sobre os significados, e os graus de probabilidade das várias estruturas (“mesmo que”, “caso” e os outros marcadores que introduzem o modo conjuntivo), talvez fique mais capaz de lidar com este curso do caraças!

*=idioma is one of those Greek derived words that ends in a but is still masculine.

**=for some reason my spellchecker got it into its head that this word was spelled with an s so it kept changing it. Luckily in Android there’s a way of holding down your thumb on a predicted word and telling it never to predict that again, so I’ve done that now.

***=This pair of words, “nem que” comes up a fair bit in this exercise and I hadn’t really been conscious of it before. It means “even if” and its one of those constructions that needs a subjunctive verb.

****=review. I wrote “rever” which os the infinitive but this is a future subjunctive and it looks like the infinitive of a totally different verb!

Posted in Portuguese

Everybody Must Get Sconed

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Já alguma vez encontraste uma palavra invulgar que não costumas ouvir/ler e depois a mesma palavra surge numa conversa ou numa revista ou onde quer que seja durante os próximos dias?

Bunfight at the OK Tea Rooms

É só uma coincidência. Ou talvez a palavra seja mais comum do que pensamos mas ficamos mais sensíveis à sua presença por causa desse primeiro momento de atenção.

Recentemente mencionei a apresentação dum livro na embaixada de Portugal na qual a autora leu um parágrafo em voz alta. O parágrafo falava da família dela a comer scones. Isso captou a minha atenção porque não costumo ouvir portugueses a falar destes petiscos ingleses. No dia seguinte, um amigo português publicou uma imagem de scones no seu insta.

Ontem, estava a ler o meu livro (“Anjos” de Carlos Silva) e o capítulo 25 começa assim “Com alguma cerimónia e algum orgulho, o empregado pousou a travessa metálica no centro da mesa. Scones, croissãs, compotas, queijo, fiambre…” hum não quero escrever mais porque isto faz crescer água na boca. Mas ficas com uma ideia não é?
E hoje abri o Twitter e Deparei-me com um tweet de alguém a partilhar a um artigo num jornal que destaca, entre outros pontos turísticos, “o maior scone do mundo” que é servido num café em Sintra.

Há uma espécie de mania dos scones em andamento por lá ou quê?

(It’s referred to as the Baader Meinhof Phenomenon, or Frequency Illusion apparently. Learning lots of new stuff, not just Portuguese, from Dani today. Still though: 4 times in 4 days seems pretty frequent and I can’t believe it was purely illusory.)

Posted in English

Portuguese Audiobooks – A New Chapter?

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I’m really chuffed to see Livraria Bertrand now has an audiobook section and an app for ebooks and audiobooks. You can find the page here, and it’s a little underdeveloped at the moment, but so was Audible when I first joined so I’m not giving up on it. The link takes you to the front page of the portuguese audio section, but if you look in the menu on the left-hand side you’ll see there are subheadings for history, science, classics and so on, so you can rummage around and see if anything takes your fancy.

The most annoying aspect of it is that it doesn’t have a preview feature so you can’t find out if the reader is European or Brazilian. Some are obvious, but I picked out a couple that I knew seemed like a good bet – O Vendeador de Passados by José Eduardo Agualusa and Vidadupla by Sérgio Godinho and can confirm that they are both european portuguese. Yippee!!! There are a couple of others by Godinho but as for the rest, I dunno. If you sample any, I’d love it if you could tell me what you thought in the comments. Share the knowledge!

I’ll add these to my Portuguese Audiobooks Page in the few days. In the meantime, if anyone knows anything about any of the other books, I’d love it if you could tell me about it in the comments. Let’s share the knowledge! We learners have to stick together!

Posted in Portuguese

Grumpy Author

Posted on by Colin Lusk
Comma

Um comentário num outro texto fez-me lembrar uma citação que achei muito marcante. Um escritor inglês chamado Martin Amis descreveu a experiência de ter submetido o seu livro a um redactor que sabia todas as regras da pontuação mas não entendeu (na opinião do Amis!) o ritmo do seu estilo literário. Espero conseguir traduzi-la fielmente:
“Ele inseriu vírgulas nos espaços onde pertenciam, cada uma um minúsculo corte de papel na minha alma”

My favourite bits of this are “espero conseguir traduzi-la” – I hope to be able to translate it – because it is less stuffy than the awful subjunctive construction I used to begin with, and “cada uma um” – because I originally wrote “each one was a tiny papercut on my soul” but the corrector said o cojld leave out the word “was” and just write it as “each one a tiny papercut on my soul” which is much, much better.

With thanks to Cataphract for the corrections

Posted in English

A Brief, Pessimistic Interlude

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I occasionally wonder what the point of all this is. The aim of language is to communicate but I am a fairly introverted person and I seem to get more and more socially awkward with each passing year, to the point where, unless I’m in really good form, I’m not really capable of holding a relaxed conversation in my own language, let alone in another one. Perhaps as a result of that, I am still very backward in my use of the basics of Portuguese that would maybe come quite naturally to someone who was used to having conversations with people. I’m studying for the C1 exam, which is quite advanced, but I’m still making really basic errors, mixing up ser and estar, using a instead of para, using the wrong tense or gender.

Some days I just feel like I’m only doing this so I can read more books. Well, there’s nothing wrong with that, but it seems a bit self-centred and not really in the spirit of… I dunno, reaching out across the sea and making connections with other people in other places or whatever.

I was at the Portuguese embassy yesterday at a book launch and I went thinking I’d speak to people in Portuguese and just immerse myself in that for an hour or so, but I ended up sitting and reading a book before the presentation and then afterwards got talking to some other British people, in English, until one of them did the “oh, I’ve just spotted someone I know on the other side of the room” move and I didn’t really have the mental energy to go and find someone else to talk to so I just sort of slunk away without saying goodbye or thanking the author or the ambassador. Le sigh.

Anyway, these moods come and go, and I suppose the main thing is to not make any rash decisions while under the influence of negative thoughts. Just keep working and wait till the positivity returns and I can maybe make plans for how to be less of a total disaster.

Posted in Portuguese

Organizar o Discurso

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Neste texto, tento usar algumas expressões do curso C1 que ajudam o escritor organizar um discurso. A história (da apresentação) é verdade mas confesso que ainda não li o livro que foi apresentado, portanto é provável que o meu resumo dos conteúdos é errado.

_No que se refere à_ história dos nossos tempos transtornados, já há vários livros editados que descrevem os efeitos da crise, mesmo que estamos ainda em plena pandemia. É interessante ler os opiniões does escritores mas _é de salientar_ a dificuldade de entender, numa maneira nítida, um evento histórico quando estiver a acontecer.

_Pode-se citar a título do exemplo_, um livro chamado “O Diário da Bela Vista” de Clara Mecedo Cabral, que foi apresentado ontem no consulado português em Londres. _Eis um exemplo_ do género, _exemplificando_ alguns dos melhores aspectos dum diário da vida contemporânea _bem como_ a contraste entre a sua vida em Londres e em Lisboa.

O livro foi resumido por um responsável da Junta da Freguesia da Estrela que editou o livro. _Sintetizando_ os seus pensamentos, _conclui-se que_ a freguesia tinha muito orgulho de apresentar este livro que dá tanto luz na história e na geografia daquele território.

Depois, _deu a palavra_ à autora, que falou mais uns minutos. Em breve ela convidou-nos experimentar uma espécie de conhaque regional chamado “Old Nosey” por causa do Duque de Wellington que passou por lá durante a guerra peninsular mas alguém chamou “_se me permites interromper_, posso pedir uma leitura de um ou dois parágrafos?” Na verdade, a apresentação tinha sido tão breve, suponho que ela quisesse ouvir mais. O parágrafo falou de scones (um tipo de petisco inglês) com manteiga portuguesa. Uma conjugação muito adequada à harmonia entre os nossos países!