I was just arguing with someone about whether the common Brazilian use of the word “falar” exists in European portuguese. In Brazil it is often used interchangeably with “dizer” ao you get hideous travesties like “‘Dá-me uma banana’ falou o macaco”. The first time I encountered this I was shocked to the core but then I mentioned it to a portuguese guy and he said it exists in Portugal too, albeit less common. Priberam seems to back this up – it’s the second definition – but the guy seemed to think I’d been misinformed. Maybe he’s right, I dunno, I’m only going by what I’ve been told.
Aaaaaaaaanyway, while I was searching this blog for the post I wrote about it at the time, I came across this post that I had forgotten all about because i have the memory of a goldfish. It’s about a different controversy. I wonder if part of the reason I make so many mistakes is that I spend too much time trying to unravel weird edge cases like this and not enough learning the genders of common nouns ending in e.
Sigh.
Luso 