Category: English

Posted in English, Portuguese

Esta é a tua escova de dentes?

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Acabei de ouvir um podcast. Um dos falantes disse “os idiomas são como as escovas de dentes: nunca deve de ter alguma na sua boca com excepção da sua”.

Não concordo com isto!

The original quote was something like “Languages are like toothbrushes. You should never have one in your mouth unless it’s your own” and it was on the Start the Week Podcast on Language and Reinvention.

My last sentence was originally “Não concordo consigo” which in my mind means “I don’t agree with him” but everyone who looked at it wanted it changed to “contigo” (with you… what????) or “com isso” (with that). To be honest, I’m not absolutely sure why it’s wrong, still. There are complicating factors: Portuguese (especially european portuguese) seems to be violently averse to pronouns, which doesn’t help, and also consigo can mean either “with him” or “I can” depending on the context. Maybe later I will understand what I did wrong but for now, best just change it to “Com isso” and be done with it.

 

 

Posted in English

The Shape of Verbs to Come

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I wrote a question on italki about whether or not there is a Portuguese equivalent of the English verb “to Google”. “Googlar” would be the likely form, I suppose. So far, nobody recognises it beyond the phrase “dar um google”.
Interestingly, I typed “googlar” into Google translate and it knew *exactly* what I meant so, Portugal and Brasil, even if you aren’t using it as a full verb yet, I think Google has plans that you will soon!  ;^)

Posted in English

Concordância

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I am becoming increasingly obsessed with Deolinda. There’s just something intoxicating about understanding a song in another language. I cottoned on to one called “Concordância“, which seems to be about grammar. Intrigued, I went looking for a translation but there wasn’t one. So I sat down and I wrote one. As it turns out, it’s quite witty. She starts with “I am a pronoun, a personal pronoun” and goes on to state what she wants from this man who is trying to subsume her into a nós. She demands “complementos diretos” which are both direct objects and also have the double meaning of complements that we use in english. “Nome” also means both “noun” and “name” and of course adjectives change depending on the noun, so you can see there’s stuff going on here that probably has more resonance if you’ve been taught Portuguese grammar at a Portuguese school.

There’s a website called lyricstranslate where people can post lyrics and others can translate them so I submitted one for Concordância and you can read it here if you’re so inclined.

 

Posted in English

Through the Looking Glass

Posted on by Colin Lusk

This morning I stumbled on a series of videos by someone calling herself Marianareads on Youtube, about reading books in English. On closer inspection, it seems she is Brazilian rather than Portuguese, which put me off slightly, and also she seems to have a thing for vampires. She seems very enthusiastic and her massive subscriber list means she must be doing something right, but she’s not for me, so I moved along. Youtube then spent some time trying to interest me in a whole string of brasileiras novas, before I finally hit paydirt in the form of an actual, 100% authentic Portuguese vlogger, discussing easy books for Portuguese readers to improve their English vocabulary. This seemed interesting to me because of course it’s the inverse of what I’ve been doing in some of my posts on here.

Intrigued?

Little House of Books on “Wonder” (which I’ve read) and “A Monster Calls” (which I haven’t read yet and… what’s Portuguese for “Spoiler Alert”? *googles* “alerta de spoiler”, apparently) and some others

Diário da Chris on “A Christmas Carol” (Alerta de Spoiler: he gets a bit nicer at the end) “Wonder” again and “The Fault in our Stars”, to name but three

ACromaDosLivros – I’m not sure but from previous linguistic detective work, I think “Croma” or “Cromo” means nerd, so this must be “the book nerd”. I think. The first video of hers I watched was about The Curious Incident of the Dog in the night Time though, so she’s got good taste.

 

Posted in English

The Sound and the Fury

Posted on by Colin Lusk

cocorocoI mentioned in a previous post that the Portuguese seem to use “Tiquetaque” in place of “Tick Tock”. This made me dig out my old Astérix comics and check out the sounds made by people and things during the course of a story
.
Here’s the one I remember best  ->

So apparently Portuguese roosters say “Cocorocóóóóó” instead of “Cockadoodledooo!” I think this is much cooler. There’s a Portuguese family who have a rooster that crows in the allotment behind the rowing club I’m a member of and now I’ll be able to address him in his own language.

caimDogs, I’m less sure of. Dogmatix is called Ideiafix in Portuguese (Asterix character names, on their own, are probably a subject for a blog post for someone with more linguistic skillz than I have now). In the books I have, the only noise he makes is “CAiMM!” but that sounds more like a yelp than a bark. I googled it and apparently the more conventional dog noise is “Au Au”. OK, I can believe that.

truzMoving on to inanimate objects, how about knocking on a door?

“Truz Truz Truz” is apparently le mot juste. That’s just bizarre though. Are we sure that’s really knocking? Maybe Cacafonix (Cacofonix) is playing his harp outside the door? 20160402_230111

Well no, I promise you, that’s knocking and anyway Cacofonix’s harp goes TZOIN (or is there a last letter there? I can’t see because it’s cut off by the edge of the panel. It looks like a rounded letter so I want to make it “TZOING” but I think that’s just my English prejudice coming through to make it as much like “Twang” as I can possibly manage. TZOINO? Ach, who knows.

crac

 

This one, at least, looks familiar. The crac(k) of a tree as it is pulled down by slaves

 

 

buaaa

 

And here, the pathos of the Roman centurion reduced to tears

 

 

The trouble with Astérix, though, is that you’re never quite sure what is a survival from the original French or perhaps something that the translators made up…

 

For a more cerebral look at the sounds made by animals in different languages, try this article in the Guardian

Posted in English

Nãããããoooo!!!!

Posted on by Colin Lusk

At the time of writing, Conjuga-me.net is offline with some message about being suspended. I’m horrified because it’s my go-to site for verb conjugation.

Luckily, my teacher has told me of an equivalent called conjugacao-de-verbos.com which seems, if anything, even better – but terrifying – because it has ALL THE TENSES not just the main ones. But I will miss conjuga-me if it is gone for good. It’s a very tidy little site and I am used to its layout and it’s colour scheme.

Posted in English, Portuguese

A Banheira / The Bath

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Ouvi o Hugh Laurie dizer que na sua idade, ler livros é como encher uma banheira quando o tampão não está no ralo. Estou de acordo com ele (or “concordo com ele”). Na minha idade também, derramo português dentro da minha cabeça mas tudo drena depressa.

*suspiro*

…which, for those of you who don’t speak Portuguese means…

I heard Hugh Laurie saying that at his age, reading books is like running the bath with the plug out of the plughole. I agree with him. At my age too, I pour Portuguese into my head but it all drains away (quickly)

*sigh*

The word “quickly” wasn’t part of my original intent but both people who corrected it seem to have thought that’s what I was saying so I’ve left it in.

Thanks again to Sophia and also Rubens for their help with the corrections.

Posted in English

Successful Self Study

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I just sat in on a taster webinar for Lindsay Dow’s Successful Self Study course. It was really interesting and her enthusiasm is definitely infectious. It sounds like a course I could have used a couple of years ago when I was struggling to do anything at all. I’m sort-of in the zone now, but I can definitely see the benefit of it for new starters. If you need a motivating force to get you on the right track you might like to take a look (*points* at the link in the first line).

I’ll jot down my answers to the quiz questions here so I don’t forget.

A big tip to boost my language-learning self-confidence: try not to get hung up on one point. I think in my lessons I often spend time making sceptical noises if I don’t understand something, as if the entire nation of Portugal is playing some elaborate practical joke on me. While I haven’t completely ruled out this theory, I can see how that is probably a bit unnerving for the teacher and creates awkward pauses that don’t help anyone.

Three things I can do to achieve this:

  1. Smile!
  2. Do some offline study before the lesson to get my mental juices flowing.
  3. Jot down distracting questions to research later in a grammar book so that I don’t get off the point during valuable conversation time.

Four tips for working around words I don’t know:

I thought I knew a few tricks already but there are always more, so

  1. Learn the phrase “é uma coisa que…” (“it’s a thing that…”) so you can describe the thing you’re trying to find a word for.
  2. Mime the thing (assuming the person you’re talking to can see you!) and ask what it’s called
  3. Say the opposite (e.g., if I don’t remember the word “barato” say “não é caro” instead)
  4. Read “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt” (Hm, I’m not sure about this one)

There were some other hot tips too, both from Lindsay and the other students, but I won’t give you too many spoilers – go and have a look.

 

Posted in English

Exam Pressure

Posted on by Colin Lusk

One of the things that’s keeping me motivated to work  every day is the knowledge that I have an exam in May. The standard model for competency in European languages is known as The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages and the Portuguese variant of it is known as Centro de Avaliação de Português Língua Estrangeira (CAPLE). It has six stages, corresponding to the main framework’s A1, A2, B1, B2, C1 and C2. I am taking the B1 exam (known as the Diploma Elementar de Português Língua Estrangeira) at a centre here in the UK (sign up here if you’re interested). It’s a good way of increasing motivation and of course of proving to the world that I really am quite good at Portuguese, and not just braggin’. The trouble is, yesterday I did a test paper based on the A1 exam (that’s the easiest level of all) and I couldn’t do it at all. Specifically, I couldn’t tune in to what was being said. I’m a bit worried now. I need to boost my confidence levels somehow.

Partly, I suppose, I missed out on a lot of the basic school exercises in my rush to get ahead into complex sentences. For example I had never tried to write a letter or email in Portuguese. There’s a tutor who has written a helpful page about it though so that was a good place to start. Maybe I need to work through some more things like that and get some experience under my belt. Back to the books…