Category: English

Posted in English

Resources for Studying European Portuguese

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Quite a lot has changed in the world of Portuguese learning in the last year or so, so I’ve updated all my resource pages, adding new audiobooks, graphic novels, podcasts and tricks I’ve come across in my language learning journey. If you’re new to the site, there are five of them and they are….

Portuguese Audiobooks

The Portuguese Audiobooks Page – where I have tried to list every source on the Interwebs for european portuguese audio books. It’s mostly paid of course, but there are a few free ones too if you’re on a budget. I love audiobooks and I couldn’t be happier to see how the number of available books has grown since the first edition of this page. We still have a long way to go before I’d say we’re spoiled for choice, but it’s a start!

Portuguese Language Hacks

The Language Hacking Page – The idea behind language hacking is to get out of a textbook mentality and into really using the language, so these aren’t study guides per se, just little things you can do to boost the background level of portuguese in your life. If you get it right, you can strengthen your grasp of what you’ve already learned, as well as absorbing a lot of useful vocabulary without feeling like you’re making a lot of effort.

Portuguese Learning Resources

The Online Learning Resources Page – where you’ll find everything I know about YouTube channels, websites, apps and virtual courses for new and not so-new learners. I’ve made quite a lot of edits here – dropped a youtube channel that no longer exists, as well as adding in a couple of new ones. Quite a lot has changed in teh world of apps too.

Portuguese Graphic Novels

The Portuguese Graphic Novels Page – where you’ll find (yes, you guessed it!) a whole load of comics and graphic novels I’ve read in portuguese. I’m a huge fan of these and think they’re a brilliant way of getting into reading in portuguese, simply because the illustrations give you enough context that you can often suss out the meaning of unfamiliar words without having to constantly refer to the dictionary.

Portuguese Study Guides

The Portuguese Study Guides Page – where I’ve listed and rated all the exercise books and textbooks I’ve used over the years. Some are old, some new, some basic, some advanced, and I’ve included my favourite audio course too.

Posted in English

Lei Da Rolha

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Phrase of the day: “Lei Da Rolha”. Law of the cork. It’s equivalent to a gagging order, apparently. Not necessarily a full legal order, but might apply to a situation where a political leader tells his party members not to shoot their mouths off, say.

Posted in English

Rapalhau

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I’ve been enjoying these lads – Bacalhau No Azeite – doing their rap videos on Instagram. It’s not exactly Kanye West but they have lyrics so I can follow what they’re saying and I quite like that. Strong recommendation for anyone who likes rap but isn’t too purist about it (or rather “anyone who doesn’t mind seeing the art form butchered in real time”)

Posted in English

Açorda à Alentejana Latest

Posted on by Colin Lusk
Açorda à alentejana

I had another go at making this “bread soup” and managed, I think, not to disgrace myself as badly as last time.

I followed a recipe on YouTube and I used some higher-quality bread. It was only sourdough so could have been better still, but it was better than the crappy bread I used last time. And I used slightly vinegary water from the egg poaching instead of chicken stock.

Verdict: 7/10. I liked it, anyway.

And here’s a bunch of lads singing about it. It’s a roundabout way of doing it but he’s actually pretty much singing the recipe. Lyrics here if (like me) you have trouble tuning in to what he’s saying.

Fiz mais uma tentativa de fazer açorda à alentejana. Desta vez, usei pão melhor e segui a receita rigorosamente. O resultado… Provavelmente não ficou perfeito mas não me senti envergonhado quando experimentei a primeira colherada.

Posted in English

As Someone…

Posted on by Colin Lusk

…who likes to prance about pretending to be a scientist, even though my degrees are in barely, tangentially scientific subjects, I enjoy reading this twitter account. It’s Brazilian, so I have to keep my wits about me, but the memes are actually pretty funny, even if about one in ten go completely over my head. And as a bonus, I get familiar with sciencey words without having to torture myself by working through a memrise deck of chemistry terminology or whatever.

Posted in English

Gente

Posted on by Colin Lusk

How singular is “a gente”?

Well, first of all, it can be used as a sort of “we” pronoun as discussed a little while ago. But putting that aside, Gente usually means “the people” and it’s a bit confusing because unlike in English, it’s singular. In English youd say “The people don’t know anything” but in portuguese, “A gente não sabe nada”.

This can get a bit weird though. How long do you carry on this crazy charade that yiure taking about one person when really you might be talking about dozens?

I had an exchange with someone the other day in which I expressed disapproval of people who denounce books without reading them.

“Há gente que não LIU (…) mas DIZ (…)”
**and then in the following sentence, I just had to switch it up. I couldn’t maintain singular verb forms.
“DEVEM ler mais e falar menos.”

I asked around and thank goodness u had done the right thing.

“There is (people) that hasn’t read… but says…” Is OK as far as it goes, but when you pull into the following sentence it’s perfectly fine to treat them as a multitude again and say “They should read more and talk less”.

Posted in English, Portuguese

Morena

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I did a Tiago Bettencourt translation the other day, so let’s have a go at “Morena” too, not becaue it’s my favourite song of his, but because it has some nice guitar work.

Trigger Warning: Scrabble Crimes

OK, potentially controversial decision: I’m translating “Morena” as “Brunette”, because that’s the closest I can get to a literal translation. It’s not quite right though, for two reasons. Firstly, there’s a sense of the person’s skin being tanned or olive-toned as well as their hair being dark brown; and secondly, I think referring to women as blondes, brunettes, redheads has a slightly disrespectful tone in english (at least in some circles) and I think that’s less true in portuguese. That’s partly a linguistic thing: in Portuguese it’s more usual to use an adjective as a noun – for example “um inglês” not “um homem inglês” – and partly because we have a tendency to overthink things in the english-speaking world, especially a certain very large country situated a few hundred miles north of Brazil. Anyway, with that dislcaimer, let’s crack on.

PortugueseEnglish
Esta morena não sabe
O que o dia tem para lhe dar
Diz-me que tem namorado
Mas sem paixão no olhar
Tem um risinho pequeno
E que só dá de favor
Corpo com sede de quente
Mas que não sente calor
Mas que não sente calor

Esta morena não dança
Quando lhe mostro Jobim
Talvez não goste da letra
Talvez não goste de mim
Cabelo negro sem regra
Caindo em leve ombro nu
Feito de morno passado
E amor que nunca cegou
E amor que nunca cegou

Morena no fundo quer
Tempo para ser mulher
Morena não sabe bem
Mas eu no fundo sei
Que quando o véu lhe cai
Quando o calor lhe vem
Sempre que a noite quer
Sonha comigo também

Há sítios que ela não usa
Por não saber que estão cá
Há mares que ela não cruza
Por não ser eu a estar lá
É de mim que ela precisa
Para lhe dar o que não quer
Talvez lhe mostre caminhos
Onde se queira perder
Onde se queira perder

Esta morena não chora
Com um fado negro de Oulman
Nem com um poema de O’Neill
Na primeira luz da manhã
Sabe de tantos artistas
Canta-me letras de cor
Mas não lhe passam por dentro
Não lhes entende o sabor
Não lhes entende o sabor

Morena no fundo quer
Tempo para ser mulher
Morena não sabe bem
Mas eu no fundo sei
Que quando o véu lhe cai
Quando o calor lhe vem
Sempre que a noite quer
Sonha comigo também

Esta morena não corre
Quando a chamo para mim		This brunette doesn’t know
What the day has to give her
She tells me she has a boyfriend
But without any passion in her eyes
She has a little laugh
That she only gives as a favour
Body that thirsts for warmth
But doesn’t feel heat
But doesn’t feel heat

This brunette doesn’t dance
When I show her Jobim
Maybe she doesn’t like the lyrics
Maybe she doesn’t like me
Black, unruly hair
Falling on a light, naked shoulder
Made by boredom gone by
And love that never blinded her
And love that never blinded her

Deep down, the brunette wants
Time to be a woman
The brunette doesn’t really know
But deep down, I know
That when her veil falls
When the warmth comes back to her
Whenever the night chooses
She dreams of me* too.

There are places she doesn’t use
Because she doesn’t know they’re here
There are seas she doesn’t cross
Because I’m not there
It’s me she needs
To give her what she doesn’t want
Maybe I’ll show her paths
Where she wants to lose herself
Where she wants to lose herself

This brunette doesn’t cry
with the dark fado of Oulman
Nor with the poetry of O’Neill
In the first light of morning
She knows so many artists
She sings me lyrics by heart**
But they don’t get inside her
She doesn’t understand their flavour
She doesn’t understand their flavour

Deep down, the brunette wants
Time to be a woman
The brunette doesn’t really know
But deep down, I know
That when her veil falls
When the warmth comes back to her
Whenever the night chooses
She dreams of me too.

This brunette doesn’t run
When I call her to me

*= Remember “sonha comigo” might look like “dreams with me” – implying they are sleeping together – but it means “dreams of me”, which is a different kettle of fish! One of those instances where the use of prepositions can give you a slightly different mental image if you’re not careful.

**= Letras “de cor” sounds like it should mean colourful lyrics but there’s an older meaning of cor that is the same as coração, so it’s just like the english expression “knowing something by heart”

Morenas: Expectativas x Realidade
Posted in English, Portuguese

A Gorda – Opinião

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Here’s a corrected review of a book I’ve been listening too lately called A Gorda (The Fat Woman) by Isabela Figueiredo. It has had rave reviews (this guy, for example, names it as his first, second and third best book of 2022) and… Well, it’s not the easiest book I’ve ever read, and I probably didn’t get all the nuance but I hung in there and managed to follow. The vocabulary is passable for upper-intermediate readers. You can buy the book at Bertrand or grab the audio version to listen to on your phone using the Kobo App.

A Gorda de Isabela Figueiredo

A Gorda é um romance escrito por Isabela Figueiredo, que retrata uma portuguesa da minha geração, que “transporta (…) ou seja arrasta” 40 quilogramas de peso com ela. Ao longo da sua vida, sofre muitos problemas e muitos reveses. Nasceu no ultramar e volta para Portugal nos anos setenta com os outros retornados (se não me engano esta foi a experiência da autora também). Perde os pais e é traída por amigos, colegas e amantes e sente-se constrangida pelos efeitos deste peso excessivo, mas tem vontade de viver a sua vida, portanto recusa soçobrar.

Durante o percurso da história, a autora faz referência aos eventos da época na qual a protagonista se encontra: o Incêndio do Chiado, a crise financeira de 2008-9 e vários outros. Isto situa-nos na história do país e reforça a realidade da protagonista. Lembra-nos que pessoas assim existem mesmo, e a história não é uma fantasia abstrata sem ligação ao mundo verdadeiro.