I did one of my occasional sweeps through the audiobook sites, on the lookout for new titles in european portuguese and I have managed to add about ten new ones to my audiobook page. The one I’m most excited about is this 👉 O Último Ano Em Luanda (The Last Year in Luanda) by Tiago Rebelo , but there are quite a few others, including a couple of new freebies.
I’ve rearranged the page slightly too: Bertrand is further down the page. I like the fact that they are a specifically portuguese outlet but the sad fact is that their collection hasn’t grown much. Neither has Audible’s. Why, Audible? Why must you torture us lusophiles? Kobo are smashing it though! They have added a few new ones, including some shiny, recent releases that have gone straight on my wish list. So I’ve moved Kobo right to the top of the page and I’m fully recommending that if you are serious about listening to european portuguese audiobooks, that’s the app you need!
Netflix announced another Portuguese series had gone into production a couple of weeks ago. That will bring the number of specifically European Portuguese offerings to a measly three, but it’s a good sign that they are following up the success of Glória and I’m hoping for more to come. The name of the show is “Rabo de Peixe” (Fishtail) and its set in the Açores. Here’s the teaser trailer below.
Like a lot of people, i have been playing with Dall-E. This one surprised me. I was a bit worried it wouldn’t know who Fernando Pessoa was but it turned out it didn’t know what an otter was
Fernando Pessoa as an Otter
And here’s one where the Justice League all have the same super-power and it’s just knowing the colours of the Portuguese flag.
I’m going to be doing the London Nightrider event this weekend. I’ll be riding 100km, which is… what, about 65 miles? Something like that… to raise money for the Alzheimer’s society. It would mean a lot to me if you could sponsor me on my JustGiving page. I’ve got a temporary extra button over on the right-hand-side there 👉
It’s an overnight session, so I’ll be starting at 11PM and finishing at breakfast time. I’ve been cycling since I was tiny, but I’m not a sporty cyclist and I’ll be doing it on a very ordinary mountain bike, so I’m sure I can do it but it’s probably going to be pretty slow and painful!
It probably doesn’t look like much here but you should see the original, looming above you…
I was sorry to hear of the death of Paula Rego, an amazingly powerful and versatile portuguese artist who made her home here in Britain . She made it to 87, that’s a good long life so no tragedy, but still, a loss for the world.
I went to see some of her work at Europe house last summer and then later in the same year went to see the full exhibition at the Tate with my wife, who was always far more aware of Rego’s work than I was, of course. I went looking for the blog post I wrote about the Tate visit and was a bit surprised to find I hadn’t written one! I wasn’t as active on here back then, but stll, I don’t know why I didn’t write about that of all things.
Oh well, at least I know who I’ll be writing about on writestreakPT tomorrow!
It is with immense sadness that we announce the death of the Portuguese-born, British artist Dame Paula Rego at the age of 87. She died peacefully this morning, after a short illness, at home in North London, surrounded by her family. Our heartfelt thoughts are with them. pic.twitter.com/hFXdIZeTtb
I’ve just written a brief text in Portuguese about this which will probably end up being a blog post soon but I thought I’d expand on it in English in the meantime because it’s interesting!
So apparently there’s this joke that gets made a lot in Portuguese cafés. If you ask for a coffee by saying “queria um abatenado” (an abatenado is a kind of coffee) the waiter might reply “Queria? Já não quer?” if they are a bit of a smartarse. Why?
In English we don’t usually say “I want a cup of tea” because it sounds too blunt, so we go for something gentler like “I would like a cup of tea” instead. In the same way, the Portuguese have a fondness for tweaking the tense to sound more polite. They do this by saying “I was wanting a coffee”. And so, if you are a bored waiter you might decide to interpret this in the most literal way possible and reply with “Oh, you were wanting one, we’re you? So you don’t want one any more?” I know, hilarious, right?
I quite like it actually since it is both amusing and instructive for us learners but I think some people find it irritatingly pedantic, especially when it is repeated often. A recent article on Timeout Lisboa has taken waiters to task for this and for another literalism – namely when they reply to a request for a glass of water (“um copo de aqua”) by replying that they don’t have any glasses made of water, only glasses made of glass but if you want, they can give you a glass with water in (“um copo com água”). Marco Neves, in his blog, Certas Palavras, takes up the baton and gives a few other examples of nonstandard uses of verb tenses as well as some of his pet peeves. It’s a good read if you are at intermediate level or above.
Of course, as with most things, as soon as you noticed some weird feature of Portuguese, you realise English has exactly the same weirdness. I’ve already mentioned “I would like” as a politer version of “I want” but here are some other examples of verb tenses being used in weird ways in everyday English that are completely fine but would be confusing if you took them at face value.
Present tense for future events: I hope I don’t catch covid because I’m visiting my parents at the weekend.
Conditional tense for past events: When he was depressed he would spend his evenings drinking Drambuie and watching repeats of Peep Show with his cat.
Future perfect tense for things you assume to be true: Ah, Hamish, you’ll have had your tea
Present tense for historic events (the so called “historic present” or “narrative present” which was briefly both trendy and controversial a few years ago and basically dominates podcasting): “The Romans invade the Iberian Peninsula in the third century and are met with fierce resistance, not least from the Lusitanian tribes, led by Viriatus”
Studying another language has given me a new appreciation of my own.
I don’t really use Facebook much, but I have a couple of groups I follow lazily and one of them is called Portugal De Antigamente. I like to make sure I’m reading social media by Portuguese people, not just groups that are just dedicated to learning Portuguese. It broadens the horizons a bit and gives you more of a sense of the culture that the language is rooted in.
I like this one because people share old photos, memories and objects they have from their childhood or recent family history. Here’s one from Helga Schmidt-Glassner, for example. I’ve just found an article about her and will probably make her the subject of a future post in her own right.
I’ve mentioned before that there’s a Portuguese version of Wordle called Termo and I’ve been enjoying that in a daily basis. Well, there’s now a termo not on twitter, so this vice is on tap 24 hours a day!
To play, just tweet at this account and tell it a five letter word. It’ll reply straight away and you can keep going till you win. Or don’t.
It’s not as easy to follow as the website because you have to keep track of what letters you’ve used but that’s OK, it’s still fun and challenging and you can do it more than once a day!
Here’s a fun word i heard yesterday: commenting on something I wrote about my daughter’s birthday, someone wrote “Parabéns à tua pimpolha”. Sounds like a zit but isn’t. Pimpolho seems to be a sort of shoot of a germinating seed or, by extension, a child, with a female child being a pimpolha. There’s a brand of children’s shoes with the same name too.
Another word I’ve come across as a slang word for one’s offspring is “metralha”. Metralha is normally a volley of bullets (hence “metralhadora” for machine gun) or a hail of shrapnel but it seems to mean kids too. I can’t actually find any authority for this: it’s not in priberam or the dicionário informal or this thing I sometimes use. There’s a guy I follow on twitter who always uses it though. Presumably he isn’t the only one, but who knows.
Luso 