Junk in the Trunk

Here’s a little snippet from the book I’m reading at the moment. It’s a children’s book, similar to the Famous 5, about a pair of twins and their friends who have gone to stay with their tia Judite on her farm for the holidays, where they have an adventure. In the snippet they are asking the lady of the house where she got the load of manky old mattresses in the celeiro (grain storehouse). Why do they want to know? Read the book and you’ll find out. There’s a treasure map involved.

I was mostly interested in the phrase “Para lixo já basta o nosso” which is obviously something like “We have enough junk of our own”. I love little scraps of useful sentencecraft like this. It seems hard to think of a situation I can use it in but I’ll try!

The previous sentence contains another new bit of vocabulary: cangalhada, which is a “conjunto de trastes velhos”. And what, pray, is a traste? Well luckily priberam let’s you click on any word on its pages so I found out it’s a piece of furniture of little value. So basically a cangalhada is a load of old junk.

Quite enjoying the book. There’ll be a review soon enough, but it’s a solid short novel, not as childish as I was told. Well, I mean it is, in that the story is quite straightforward, but it’s properly written. They aren’t spoonfeeding the kids with babyish sentences and easy words!