Category: English

Posted in English, Portuguese

Witches! Part 3

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Ando a negligenciar este blogue e por isso a minha série sobre as bruxas de Portugal perdeu o seu dinamismo. As bruxas escaparam, e torna-se difícil seguir-lhes o rasto. Mas estou de volta com o meu nariz pronto para cheirar as feiticeiras todas. Hoje investigamos a aldeia de Proença-a-Nova na Beira.

Segundo a lenda, havia naquela zona uma viúva atraente que casou com um sapateiro. De vez em quando, nas noites de lua cheia, ela levava ao marido um chá quente, e ao beber, o marido adormeceu, caindo num sono profundo. O sapateiro ficou curioso e, uma noite dessas, não bebeu o chá. Após algum tempo, viu a sua esposa a ungir o corpo dela com ervas e óleo. Depois, abriu a janela e, cantando “Voa voa por cima de toda a folha”, começou a voar pelo ar. O marido, querendo segui-la, esfregou o seu corpo com o mesmo óleo e as mesmas ervas. Entoou as palavras mágicas mas não tinha poder igual à da esposa e acabou no chão, arranhado e machucado. Nunca voltou a falar daquela noite e passou a beber sempre o chá como ela mandou.  

English Version

I’ve been neglecting this blog, and that’s why my series on the witches of Portugal has lost its momentum. The witches have escaped, and it’s difficult to track them down. But I’m back with my nose ready to sniff out all the witches. Today we investigate the village of Proença-a-Nova in Beira.

According to legend, there was an attractive widow in that area who married a shoemaker. From time to time, on nights when the moon was full, she would bring her husband hot tea, and upon drinking it, he would fall into a deep sleep. The shoemaker became curious and, one night, only pretended to drink the tea. After some time, he saw his wife anointing her body with herbs and oil. So he opened the window and, chanting “Fly fly over every leaf,” began to fly through the air. The husband, wanting to follow her, rubbed his body with the same oil and herbs. He chanted the magic words but he didn’t have his wife’s power, so he ended up on the ground, scratched and bruised. He never spoke of that night again and from then on, always drank the tea as she had instructed.

Posted in English

O Grão Caudilho

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I was a briefly stumped by this. Grão means grain, normally, and caudilho looks familiar but looks like it ought to be something to do with a tail (cauda). It’s a set phrase though. Caudilho is actually descended from Spanish word meaning the chief, the head man, the dictator. So grão caudilho means… The grain chief? No, grão has a hidden secret meaning, if you scroll down a bit on its priberam page, it can be an adjective, where it’s just a form of “grande”. It’s the masculine form of Grã, as in Grã-Bretanha. So grão caudilho = the big boss, the big cheese.

Posted in English

Sete-Estalos and Surprising Suffixes

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Reading “Natais – Contos e Narrativas” by João dos Reis Gomes and came across this phrase that seems to be unknown on the Web.

It’s just some sort of firecracker or cap that goes bang when you throw it on the ground though, according to my wife. Some sort of party snap or cap bomb, I suppose. Do they even make those any more? I haven’t seen anything like it for a while.

The book is quite challenging because it has a lot of unusual words and madeiran regionalisms. One of the new words that struck me was “indelével”.

Very obvious what that means but I don’t think I’ve come across it before and it’s surprising because I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen a word ending in “ével”. Of someone had asked me to guess how to say indelible I would have had it ending in “ível”, for sure.

Hm, I seem to be blogging in English again. Lazy.

Posted in English

Say It In Portuguese

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Oh! I must have accidentally unsubscribed to Say It In Portuguese’s email feed because I completely missed the notification about the last episode. I had been watching out for it because I’m in it, but I’ve just noticed it’s in my podcast app!

It’s this episode which deals with a song by Deolinda called Fado Toninho, and it was inspired by my attempt to grapple with the meaning of the song, in a post in February.

The podcast is definitely one you should be subscribed to if you are working toward B2 or over. It’s not the sort of thing you can listen to as a newbie, but if you already have decent skills, it gives you a wealth of knowledge about expressions and culture, all of which are essential for moving up to the next level. So, in other words, I can’t recommend it strongly enough! Cristina was my teacher for later C1 through to graduating C2, and she is very much a “friend of the blog”, but I would recommend SIIP even if that weren’t the case, because it’s excellent, it’s been around for ages and there’s nothing else like it, really.

Generally, the podcast picks an idiomatic expression and unpacks it for you, but in this one, we discuss the lyrics of a song, mainly trying to analyse the meaning of “Toninho” itself, but there are some expressions in the song too, and those are worth noticing. So if you don’t know the song already, I challenge thee: set aside some time to give the video and the podcast episode a listen and see how much you can learn in fifteen minutes.

Posted in English

Untranslatable

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I like how this sentence is something that wouldn’t really make sense at all in English. You could say it of course, but it wouldn’t make as much sense in a language where we don’t really learn verb conjugations because our verbs are so straightforward.

He’s talking about those times in our lies when we do something for the first time ever – the first time you kiss someone, the first time you go out on your own and so on. In this paragraph, he goes onto say that those things don’t always work out as we might expect, and hoped-for first kiss turns into the first rejection.

And to do that he says the verbs “querer” and “ter” are conjugated with very different endings. I like that!

The book is Aqui Dentro Faz Muito Barulho by Bruno Nogueira

Posted in English

Tira-Teimas

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I keep seeing the expression “Tira-Teimas” pop up in my socials. Mainly, it’s on these short videos from The Voice Portugal. What can it mean?

Well, apparently, it can mean “objeto ou meio com que se castigam os teimosos” Er… Ok, that’s a very specific thing to have a phrase for, but sure. That’s clearly not what it means here though. I think the relevant definition here is “acontecimento ou circunstância que funciona como desenlace, pondo fim a disputa, competição ou controvérsia”. So a tie-breaker then? Hm, not quite that, because that would normally only involve two people. So maybe some sort of final battle where they shake out some of ghe weaker candidates and get it down to the finalists then? Something like that I think. I certainly don’t fancy watching the whole show to find out, I’m afraid, but I think that’s the gist of it.

There seems to be a brand of disgusting looking crisps called Tira-Teimas as well. I’m not sure why. Do people punish stubborn children with wheat-based snacks?

Posted in English

Airlearn Grifters

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I posted a video on here of someone crying while trying to pronounce Portuguese. I realised later that she was just doing viral marketing, hyping up an app called Airlearn.

Since then, I’ve had loads more videos of people doing the same kinds of viral shenanigans. The best known is am American woman who has an elaborate story about how she went to visit her Portuguese boyfriend’s family and could tell they were being rude about her, even though she couldn’t speak Portuguese. LOL, yeah, because colloquial European Portuguese is soooo easy for an outsider to understand! The denouement is that she uses Airlearn to become fluent in Brazilian portuguese. Why Brazilian? Well, because she knew they would hate that because they are so racist. Not because Airlearn doesn’t even teach European Portuguese, oh no no no. Then a few weeks later she goes back and cusses them out in their own language. There were loads of aspects of the story that just didn’t make sense, and it also seemed like an infuriating slander on the Portuguese and their hospitality. Some people were saying she was native Brazilian anyway, so the whole thing was a con, and the video seems to have been deleted now.

So I was really happy to see this Instagram reel and even shared it on my own story… But then I clicked on her profile and I found out she’s an Airlearn shill too. This is a whole other dimension – the inception of rage bait marketing.

Anyway, this is all by way of saying I think we should just agree amongst ourselves to ignore Airlearn because they are a bunch of unscrupulous twats. If you’re looking for an app, start here instead.