Author: Colin Lusk

Just a data nerd
Posted in Portuguese

A Incontornável Vírgula de Oxford

Posted on by Colin Lusk
Virgula

This text is in defence of the Oxford Comma, which is actually called Vírgula de Oxford or in Brazil, Vírgula de Oxónia. I’ve put notes at the bottom containing some of the more interesting corrections.

Geralmente prefiro evitar erros de pontuação se for possível. Não sou muito picuinhas mas se vir um erro, corrijo. Mas há excepções. Se uma regra resulta numa frase ambígua ou pouco clara, antes quebrar a regra que deixar o leitor com dúvidas. É por isto, na minha opinião, que devemos exigir of uso da temível Vírgula de Oxford.

Quando se usa? Normalmente escrevemos listas assim: o primeiro item, o segundo item e o último. Não precisamos de usar uma vírgula entre o segundo e o último porque há um “e” mas considere-se a seguinte conversa:

Que* tipos de sandes** tens?

Queijo e fiambre, queijo e cebola e doce de framboesa e manteiga de amendoim.

Há uma certa ambiguidade: provavelmente há três opções: “queijo e fiambre”, “queijo e cebola” e “doce de framboesa e manteiga de amendoim” mas também pode ser “queijo e fiambre”, “queijo e cebola e doce de framboesa e manteiga de amendoim” ou “queijo e fiambre”, “queijo” e “cebola e doce de framboesa e manteiga de amendoim” ou várias outras combinações.

É provável que a maioria de nós já saibamos mas não é cem por cento óbvio, portanto o escritor tem a oportunidade de colocar uma vírgula antes do último item na lista, e antes do “e”.

Igualmente, ao escrever listas que contenham*** títulos ou qualquer coisa mais complicada do que uma única palavra, vale a pena inserir uma vírgula. Ainda que não seja certinha, qualquer coisa que ajude o leitor ou que faça com que o texto se leia melhor o texto é útil e ser claro é mais importante do que ser certinho.

* I used qual. I generally think of qual as meaning whic (which one is it?), as opposed to que, meanining what (what is it?) so I guess I was thinking which kind of sandwiches but in reflection that doesn’t really sound right does it, and maybe I was influenced by the fact that I was taking about sandw(h)iches. More about Qual vs Que here, on Ciberdúvidas.

**Side-note about sandes and sanduíches: bother are fine but sandes is more normal. It is a reduction of sanduíche, the latter being obviously an “estrangeirismo” based on an English word and therefore not very Portuguese-sounding but of course its tempting for us to use the more familiar word. Just to complicate matters further, technically sandes should be plural and sande the singular form, but “uma sandes” seems to be the default. In case you need more incentive to avoid saying sanduíche, consider this: sanduíche has the incredibly irritating characteristic of changing its gender across the Atlantic. It’s feminine in European Portuguese and masculine in Brazilian Portuguese. Whaaaaaaat? Sandes, people, don’t forget.

***Here and in the rest of the paragraph I completely failed to get I to subjunctive mode and blew all the grammar. It’s a good example of expressing an idea that has a lot of reliance on subjunctive tenses.

Posted in English, Portuguese

Expressões da Natureza

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Doing homework from the new book. Here we go with idiomatic expressions that have to do with nature. I’ll skip all the obvious ones. Tirar o cavalo da chuva is in there for example. It’s an old favourite but I’ve mentioned it about a hundred times already.

  • Frio de rachar – splitting cold. Very, very cold.
  • Arranjar lenha para se queimar – to gather wood to burn oneself. Basically to create difficulties for yourself
  • Chamar-lhe um figo – To call something a fig. To eat /serve something you really like. Can also mean that you covet something.
  • Mandar à fava – to send someone to the bean. To send someone away or make it obvious you want them to get lost
  • Com a cabeça na lua – with one s head in the moon. Equivalent to “with one’s head in the clouds” in English
  • Mandar às urtigas to send someone to the nettles. To treat something as unimportant
  • Sol de pouca dura – Sun that doesn’t last long. Something good but transitory
  • Ter névoa nos olhos – To have fog in one’s eyes. To have blurred vision. This can be used both for the literal blurry vision but also figuratively when you don’t understand something
  • Aos quatro ventos – To the four winds. In all directions – just like in English, if you scatter something to the four winds.
  • Estar com um grão na asa – To have a grain in the wing. A state of mild euphoria or tipsiness

Posted in Portuguese

A Lusofonia

Posted on by Colin Lusk
A lusofonia

A Lusofonia é o nome dado aos territórios mundiais onde se fala português. Mas para além disso, existe uma ideia de uma comunidade de povos unidos por uma história e um idioma partilhada*, mesmo que muitas pessoas vivem noutros países. Talvez o melhor encapsulamento desta ideia deja uma citação de Fernando Pessoa “Minha Pátria é a Língua Portuguesa”. Eu também sou cidadão dessa pátria, apesar dos erros que faço!

O autor e poeta Angolano conhecido como “Ondjaki” deu a sua opinião sobre a lusofonia no festival internacional de literatura em 2014. Para o escritor, a lusofonia é uma comunidade de pessoas lusófonas de qualquer país, sejam de onde forem**, mas às vezes, ouve pessoas a falar como se a lusofonia fosse apenas os cinco países africanos. Perguntou porque é que se fala dele e dos outros escritores africanos como membros da “lusofonia”*** mas Saramago nem por isso. Tanto quanto eu entendo, o seu ponto de vista não é uma acusação de racismo ou de colonialismo. Afirma, isso sim, que somos todos iguais perante a língua.

Identifico-me muito com esta visão, como cidadão dum outro país expansionista: os países onde se fala inglês são os países que antigamente “pertenciam” ao nosso império e embora o passado seja o passado e o presente seja o presente, a comunidade linguística deve servir como um lembrete da nossa história partilhada, e é isso que é a chave para a cooperação no futuro.

CPLP

Lado ao lado com a ideia intangível da lusofonia, existe uma entidade política que representa a zona lusófona. O título dela é Comunidade dos Países da Língua Portuguesa (CPLP) e foi fundada em 1996. Tem o propósito de aprofundar a amizade e a cooperação entre os países lusófonos. Para além dos objectivos económicos (desenvolvimento, crescimento, negócios internacionais), esta amizade consiste em ligações culturais e desportivas. E sem dúvida a saúde da língua em si é importante, portanto a difusão do conhecimento de português faz parte da sua missão.

A organização é regida por um secretariado executivo cujos planos são concretizados por ação a outros níveis da estrutura governativa: o Conselho dos Chefes de Estado,**** e os conselhos dos ministros dos negócios estrangeiros e relações exteriores. Por seu turno, estes conselhos devolvem responsabilidade aos encontros mensais do comité de concertação permanente.

A CPLP tem uma presidência rotativa com um mandato que dura dois anos, para não ser dominada por um único país. Mas apesar disso, há quem afirmem que a organização é dominada pelo país mãis desenvolvido (Portugal) e o maior, e mais rico (Brasil). Da mesma maneira, a Comunidade de Nações (“Commonwealth”) que é a estrutura equivalente da “Anglosphere” (basicamente, a anglofonia) é alvo de críticas de quem veja todas as uniões intergovernamentais como símbolos do passado colonialista. Para mim, tais desequilíbrios são quase inevitáveis, mas não é motivo de desespero. Deve funcionar, isso sim, como um estímulo a trabalhar juntos para eliminar desigualdades e erguer os mais fracos ao patamar dos países desenvolvidos. É esse o sonho.

*I wrote “Compartilhado” in a couple of places but that’s a Brazilian thing and “partilhado” is more usual in PT-PT

** I wrote “sejam onde forem” thinking it meant “wherever they happen to be” but it was changed to “wherever they happen to be from”. I guess the reason for this was my poor verb choice. Sejam and Forem are both from ser, so you can use it in phrases havubg to do with where you are from since that’s a question of your identity. I probably should have written “estejam onde estiverem” since estar is the verb that deals with where you happen to be right now.

*** Talures kindly reminded me that there is another expression – PALOPs – which stands for Países Africanos de Língua Oficial Português, which covers this same group of countries. That’s definitely not what Ondjaki is talking about in the clip but it might be the origin of the confusion, I guess…?

**** The Oxford Comma is as much a pet peeve in Portugal as they are in the English-speaking world but I like them.

Posted in English

An Unlesson

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I’ve just had a meeting with a Portuguese teacher who I thought was doing something interesting. Her name is Catarina and she runs The Language Unschool.

If you hang around the various online forums where Portuguese learners congregate, you’ve probably come across a lot of teachers looking for new students among the pool of curious, interested, potential learners who are trying to figure out where to start. The teachers usually have YouTube channels with a range of topics new learners are interested in: how to watch subtitled TV, how to use Ser and Estar, how to say the days of the week and so on, and they use that to draw in paying punters.

Catarina was fishing in darker waters though. She contacted me via Reddit after I’d already been writing in WritestreakPT every day for a few weeks and invited me for a free consultation. I liked the sound of the school. The package has a few components: a smartphone app, grammar videos, group sessions activities that aim to draw out people’s Portuguese voice and getting them talking. She seemed very switched on and presented the options well.

She’d really made an effort to demonstrate her personal touch too, because she’d looked at some of my recent posts, where I’ve talked about my January yoga binge and she’d actually teamed up with a local yoga teacher and made a video about yoga in Portuguese, released on the day she contacted me 👇

As a piece of entrepreneurship, it was impressive. I felt like she was making an effort to win me over as a customer: where most teachers aim for broad appeal, she seemed to be aiming for a specific niche. That’s how it felt anyway: the approach, the description, even the pricing structure, all seemed to be tailored to suit people who had already made up their mind to stick at it long term.

Anyway, I tried out the yoga video yesterday morning . I had to turn the subtitles on because I couldn’t hear very well but the inbuilt YouTube subtitles have a black background. That created some unexpected humour, because at one point the teacher got down on the floor and… And then I couldn’t see her any more! It looked like she’d had a sudden attack of shyness and decided to hide behind the subtitles, which made me laugh out loud. Anyway, if you fancy giving it a go, maybe play with the video settings and see if you can change the subtitles so they don’t have a background.

As I’ve said in some previous posts, doing workouts in Portuguese is a good way of learning some of the more niche body vocabulary and you’ll get a decent stretch out of it too, so what’s not to like?

I’m still pondering whether to go for the course. I’ll sleep on it. I definitely like the idea, and I need something to boost me towards spoken fluency, but I’m not sure how it fits into the rest of my life. Also, with the third world war around the corner, maybe nothing matters any more.

Hm, got a bit dark there at the end, didn’t it? I caught a glance at the news. Sorry.

Posted in English

A2 Exam Help

Posted on by Colin Lusk
Cheating in an exam

Cheating in an exam isn’t something I’d ever encourage, but if you’re going to cheat, you need at least to be sure that the person whose answers you’re copying knows more than you. So we can only envy any would-be cheater who was lucky enough to be sat next to Liz Sharma in the A2 exam and managed to peep over her shoulder when she wasn’t looking. Liz is the host of Talk The Streets, the popular YouTube series and she recently took the exam as part of a citizenship application and vlogged about it. Anyway, I know one of the most frequent questions I get is about where to find exam resources so I am officially designating this video as pretty flipping useful. A lot of what she says backs up what I said in my previous posts about the form of the exams but she’s obviously much more advanced than I am now, let alone how I was when I did my first exam. That means she’s got a bit more detachment from the stress-factor, which allows her to be cool and calm about the advice she gives, whereas I think my blog posts probably read like someone who has just escaped from being held hostage!

Posted in Portuguese

This Blows

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Encontro de negócios com o inventor do soprador de folhagem:

“É tipo… Uma vassoura que emite gases com efeito de estufa…”

“Então… Não queremos investir nisso”

“E faz muito barulho. Soa como uma* moto”

“PORQUE É QUE NÃO DISSESTE ISSO ANTES? CALA-TE E LEVA O NOSSO DINHEIRO TODO!”

Posted in Portuguese

Esperto, Manhoso, What?

Posted on by Colin Lusk

This is a text from a couple of days ago, based on the video I mentioned at the time. Most of the mistakes I made were pretty pedestrian: typos and such. But what piqued my interest was the attempt to find the right word to describe a response that was “a sick burn” or “a clever come-back” or something like that. In other words, not clever in the sense that it was informative, wise and well-considered but it was something sharp to completely undermine the opponent’s argument and turn the tables.

Vi um vídeo no tuitere hoje enquanto estava a comer o meu pequeno almoço. Um jornalista foi acusado por um deputado de Chega de ter feito afirmações falsas. O jornalista respondeu “Não sou eu que vou ser julgado amanhã por difusão de fake news e informações falsas. É o doutor, não sou eu”.

Não estava a entender porque é que a pessoa que partilhou o clipe achou que foi uma resposta demolidora. Pensei que o jornalista queria dizer “o povo vai ver este vídeo e formar a sua opinião”. Mas estava a falar mais literalmente. O deputado realmente estava num processo por ter difamado um ex líder dum outro partido. Sabendo isso, o vídeo (e a resposta das redes sociais) fez mais sentido!

Demolidora! That’s the word I went for in the end. How do you describe a really good zinger, an answer that sends your opponent away with their tail between their legs. Inteligente? Well, it probably is intelligent, but that’s not enough. Manhoso (cunning) seems wrong. Likewise sagaz, certeira, astuto: all in the right area but they don’t seem to fit. I opted for “esperto” but that’s more like something you’d say about a clever animal. You can use it about a human, but you have to be careful to make sure the context and intonation are clear because it’s easy to sound like you’re being ironic and putting the person down. I think I’ve mentioned “Chico Esperto” before, but that’s really used to describe someone who is either a selfish, untrustworthy piss-taker or someone who thinks they’re clever but isn’t.

Anyway, after knocking it back and forth, I settled on Dani’s suggestion of Demolidora – ie a demolishing response, which puts an end to the other side’s argument. That works for me!

Posted in English

Course Review – Portuguese for Foreigners, Level C1

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Here’s my review of the Portuguese for Foreigners Online Self Study course for level C1, also known as DAPLE, offered by Camões Instituto da Cooperação e da Língua. I finished the course on Saturday so it seems like a good idea to get it out of my head and onto a blog post while it’s still fresh.

Exam prep
What’s she even doing?

The Instituto offers courses at all levels of the CAPLE framework from A1 (beginner) to C2 (God-mode). It also caters for different kinds of packages: this review is just the self study option, but for a further €140, I could have gone the de luxe route and added some tutor interaction. See here for more details about the options. I haven’t done any of the other courses so I don’t know whether or not my opinion of this one applies equally to the whole range. I mean I guess so, but who knows?

The obvious attraction of doing a course created by the organisation that designed the exam curriculum, is that you’re getting it “straight from the horse’s mouth”. You know that they will be teaching subjects the exam board think are important at this level so there’s a good chance they will come up in the exam. That’s great, and I think it’s undoubtedly one of the strongest selling points of the course: it gives you a road map of what you need to know. And it doesn’t just teach you about grammar and vocabulary, it tries to weave those together with the major themes you need to know about. The topics for each of the twelve units are

  • Ourselves and others – interpersonal interactions
  • Carpe Diem – enjoying free time
  • A healthy mind in a healthy body
  • From the field to the city – different ways of life
  • Thinking about the future – training and professional development
  • Giving new worlds to the world – immigration and emigration
  • Science and religion – allies or enemies?
  • New information technologies – solitary closeness and collective isolation
  • Portugal and my country – festivals and traditions
  • Portugal and the arts
  • Portugal today
  • Portugal and the world

I think the course is definitely worth doing for this reason alone: insofar as learning a new language entails learning about the culture, the place and the people, it’s useful to have someone walk you through how Portugal sees itself and its place on the world. Whenever I see lessons about Portuguese culture it tends to be Fado, recipes for cod, o Galo de Barcelos, and all that tourist-friendly stuff. Interesting, no doubt, but this course gets down into how trust works in neighbourhoods where shopkeepers know their neighbours and extend credit where it’s needed, and what is it that makes such trust possible; the migrant experience and the role of Portugal and its former colonies in the wider world. In other words, it goes deeper. It also gives you tools to be able to describe challenges that all countries face, like the rise of social media, the decline of religion and the challenges of international cooperation.

How does this map onto the exam itself? Well, the cultural knowledge will come in handy in the fourth (spoken) part, which seems to be where you’re most likely to describe your knowledge of some cultural or social trend. Even though you’re not speaking in the course, you’re getting used to thinking about the ideas and making use of the vocabulary.

As for the other three sections*, there are audio/video components that are going to be useful in developing your listening skills for the aural comprehension. It’s far, far easier than the aural comprehension section of the exam because of the time available and the relatively simple questions you’re asked, so don’t get lulled into a false sense of security. Likewise, the written comprehension is quite a bit easier than in the exam. OK, the way I’m talking, I expect it sounds like I got full marks and I definitely didn’t, but I feel like I lost more marks through carelessness than because I was unable to interpret an ambiguous or tricky question.

When it comes to the written work, there are some exercises based on grammar but they’re quite minimal. Each new structure it introduces is covered in a very basic way and the students is only really expected to do one question for each, which isn’t really enough to push it into your long term memory.

So summing up: It was €180 well spent, but it’s not a perfect course. But I could have guessed that. No one learning tool is ever going to tick all the boxes and we always need to look at multiple sources. This one has no speaking component, but I could have got that by signing up for the premium course. Or I could use an online tutor on a site like italki or Polytripper or even just ask around on one of the many Facebook groups for Portuguese learners like this one (European only but heavily moderated) or this one (freer and easier but includes Brazilian Portuguese). It’s a little weak on grammar, but that’s what exercise books are for, and a book won’t mark you down if you accidentally make a typo or if spellchecker changes your right answer to a wrong answer. The book I’m about to start using (Português Outra Vez) doesn’t have any audio component but it’s very text-heavy so I’m expecting it to be able to boost my grammar levels up a notch or two using it.

So if you’re considering going in for one of the exams, definitely consider one of these courses as a sort of route map, but don’t make it the whole of your learning plan: be prepared to take notes for further study afterwards. You’ll probably need it.

Oh and one more thing: if you do it, do it in your browser. Don’t bother with the app.

*=If you haven’t already taken an exam, have a look at one of my descriptions of the exam process for more background on what is in each section. Here’s the B1 exam, for example.