Month: Jun 2023

Posted in English

These are a Few of My Favourite Things

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I was chatting to a fellow learner on Reddit the other day and mentioned the site which I now realise has been going for more than 7 years. Holy Moly! I must say I thought I’d be a lot more fluent now, and making far fewer errors, but I’m obviously daft, so here we are.

Anyway, it made me think about some of the high points in the evolution of the site. A lot of the posts are just me doing my homework, but I think I might try and make it a bit more accessible to people who might want to look through it without having to skip past the bits where it’s just me describing the potatoes on my allotment or whatever.

A guy who made a list

Part of that is going to be making a list of the most useful posts and adding it as a menu item. In fact, I’ve already started! There’s a menu on the right hand side (if you’re on a laptop) or bottom (on a phone) called “Favourite Posts” and I’ve added a few that I find myself constantly referring other learners to. It’ll probably grow over the next few days.

If anyone reading this has a favourite post of mine that they’ve found helpful and they think I should highlight, I’d love it if you could drop me a note in the comments.

Posted in English

Enta Sandman

Posted on by Colin Lusk

My daughter turned eighteen yesterday and I am, as the kids say, shook. I mentioned it on reddit on the first of June

Daqui a 101 minutos a minha filha faz 18 anos. Transformar-se-á instantaneamente numa mulher. Eu nunca mais verei a minha menina a partir de agora. 😭

…which is probably not really right. The corrections changed the meaning to “I’ll never again see her as my little girl”, but I was really trying to be dramatic with “I’ll never see my little girl again”, I’m too shook to even try and parse it back into decent portuguese, so for a change I’ll leave it uncorrected here. She is a lovely girl, and although any parent is bound to have a funny feeling seeing their baby suddenly standing there, old enough to vote, time marches forward, and I’m just as proud of her now as I was when she was taking her first steps in the hall.

A friend sent me a message, congratulating her, and included an intriguing phrase: their own filho had turned 40 on the same day and “pass(ou) dos intas para os entas”. I’d never heard that before, but seems pretty obvious what it means: going from the vINTA and trINTA to quarENTA, cinquENTA, sessENTA. It doesn’t seem to be used loads, judging by the results of a google search, but you can see a few examples in the wild. This guy for example.

I love things like this.