Category: English

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.

Posted in English

My Dinner With André

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I’ve been having a whirlwind romance with Andre Ventura, the Nigel Farage of Portugal. It’s taken my breath away.

It’s all thanks to a game called André Ventura Dating Simulator.

It’s a pretty simple game that starts with the player being rescued from a car crash by Ventura and exchanging phone numbers. It then takes you through a series of days in which you can work to earn money, go to the shopping mall, or call your man to go on a date. At the mall, you can buy accessories for your Ventura, such as sunglasses and hats. On the dates, you can chat, question his choice of venues, and deal with various enemies who appear, such as gypsies and antifa members. You can play as yourself, although if you are a male it’ll send you away with “Bro, sai daqui. O André Ventura não gosta de paneleiros”. That sets the tone, really: the game is sending up his actual attitudes so it warns you right at the start to expect racist, sexist and homophobic language throughout.

Playing games is, of course, a bit silly, but we can’t study vocabulary all the time. Most of us have apps on our phone that we use to pass the time on lunch breaks or on public transport, so having a Portuguese game to play is good way to keep your brain in Portuguese mode without a huge commitment of energy. I doubt this one is going to be an addiction because the joke is bound to wear thin after a while but I’ll play it a few times and see where it takes me.

Posted in English

Picklist Perplexity

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I found this exercise very, very hard. Even when I got the results back, I still couldn’t make sense of why the right answers were the right answers. I asked about it and got an answer but before I read it I’m going to write out a translation and try to sort it out in my own head… OK, what have we got?

She liked figs, the old woman. And he’d always feel himself accompanied from time to time. Not that she made a big ________ in that friendship. Far from it. The Apple of her eye was the only daughter, the child who had patted him when she was little.

And options for that space are “lufa-lufa” (being busy with lots of tasks), “finca-pé” (a firm stance) and bate-papo (chit-chat)

And then…

The old lady, all her life, had kept him at a distance. She gave him a loaf of bread (honor indeed!) but she _______ straight afterwards: – get away! And he took himself away cerimoniously to his bed.

And options for that one are “engolia sapos” (swallowed frogs – meaning did something she really didn’t want to do), “borrava a pintura” (smudged the painting) or… Something else, i can’t remember.

Uyth, in the Portuguese subreddit, explained that this is from a book called Bichos by Miguel Torga, which is embarrassing because I’ve read that and I still didn’t get it! It’s a very difficult book though, so it’s no wonder it was chosen for an advanced course like this. When I read it I felt all at sea and I only really managed to follow two or three stories.

Anyway, in the first case, finca-pé was the right answer because taking a firm stance on friendship means making an effort to keep it going. And in the second case, borrava a pintura – smudged the painting – means she undid the effects of something good she’d done. So after giving the animal (a donkey, if I remember rightly) the lump of bread, she chases him away.

OK, I can see that. Wow, so hard though! Some of the exercises were super-easy, so this one came as a real shock!

Posted in English

Lã LO Land

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I spotted an expression I hadn’t seen before, out in the wild, on twitter

It’s pretty hard to tell what’s going on in the video because they talk over each other a lot (which seems to be quite common in Portuguese TV), but apparently the guy speaking at the beginning is Miguel Carvalho, a journalist at Visão and the younger but slightly awkward looking fella is Pedro Frazão, a vet who was recently elected as a member of the Assembleia da República, representing the right-wing populist “party”, Chega. Frazão accuses Carvalho of making false statements and Carvalho comes back with “It isn’t me who will be judged tomorrow for spreading fake news, it’s you”.

Leaving aside whether “I know you are but what am I” is the killer move the tweeter seems to think it is*, the last sentence of the tweet is where the juicy goodness is:

O veterinário foi à lã e saiu tosquiado

The vet went for the wool and got sheered

This seems like a really good way of describing when someone’s cunning plan backfires and they end up looking stupid. I had a look around to see if it was something he’d just made up, but it’s a fairly common expression and there are a few versions of it online. The version Priberam gives is “Ir buscar lã e vir tosquiado“.

In case you’re tempted to feel sorry for Frazão for being talked over and taunted like this, it’s worth pointing out that he’s a loathsome little weasel who deserves no sympathy whatsoever. He made headlines a while back, having a pop at Joacine Katar Moreira, the annoyingly woke member of the Assembleia in a smallish party called Livre.

Pedro Frazão's fingers
Pedro Frazão, showing his fearless conservative principles

She had put up a sticker on a door of her office saying “descolonizar este lugar” (decolonize this place). That’s quite annoying, but his response was worse. Shortly before she was expected to leave the Assembleia, he took a picture of the door with his fingers over the LO, leaving it saying “desconizar este lugar” which can only be translated as “decuntify this place”. In case that wasn’t enough douchebaggery, he sealed the deal with an emoji of a plane taking off, which I read as implying she should not only leave the Assembleia but also leave the country and go back to Guinea Bissau, where she was born. She responded by reporting him to the police. The whole thing was a fairly squalid episode, with him definitely the villain of the piece.

So I’m not wildly in favour of debates where people talk over each other and accusé each other of lying, but if anyone is going to be verbally roughed up on TV, it might as well be him.

LOL. Or as Frazão might put it, 🤚L

And the line in the tweet about getting sheered is gold. I will definitely use that in future.

* UPDATE – I seem to have misunderstood. Carvalho wasn’t just talking about the court of public opinion: Frazão really did face an actual court judgement on the following day for having defamed a fellow politician. This puts it in a different light – friends, we are witnessing a murder here, live on camera

Posted in English

Nearly Done

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I’ve quite nearly finished the C1 course, y’know. I wasn’t expecting to be ready for the C1 exam this spring, but I might just sign up in May because it’s going well: the advanced material is not so hard and I think I can pass with another 3 months to play with, despite still, still, making so many mistakes and never quite feeling ready, I have passed almost all the in-course tests first time.

Posted in English

A Garota Wow!

Posted on by Colin Lusk

This video from A Garota Não is giving me goosebumps today. The lyric is written by João Quadros, who is a comedy writer, twitter sage, irritant and sometime collaborator with Bruno Nogueira.

OK, OK, I don’t know an awful lot about Quadros to be honest, so apologies if that last sentence doesn’t do him justice. He seems to have been around for a while and to have written some classics of comedy. He also seems to be one of these people who some people absolutely adore and some people can’t stand. I must say, I didn’t know he’d written anything that could result in this loveliness. I mean, I know her voice and her guitar are doing the heavy lifting in this video, but you don’t write music like that and go to all that effort for any old drivel.

tudo começa numa estrada que termina no Alaska

há um sinal que tem escrito a letras vermelhas: deixe aqui os seus sonhos

desenhou o mapa de tudo o que não conseguiu

com coordenadas de objetivos falhados

o X afastava-o dos lugares onde seria feliz

um mapa de oportunidades desperdiçadas

de chances comprometidas

e de atalhos sem fim.

A Garota Não has an album on iTunes that has its share of bangers. I dunno though, I think I like her videos best: she has a few like this that are based on poems she’s read, or raps she’s heard and decided to interpret in her own way, sometimes singing in harmony with herself in a separate box.

One of them is based on a small fragment of this video by Classe Crua, which is probably the only rap ever written that mentions Theresa May. Weird.

Then there are some covers of songs in English (Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush and Ready or Not by the Fugees) and they’re good too, but we’re here to learn Portuguese, so let’s not get distracted.

Posted in English

Have I Mentioned How Much I Like Comics?

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I think I’ve banged on about comics a few times, mainly in the page I wrote about the best Portuguese graphic novels.

Just to show it’s not just me though, I can testify that my daughter, who has just started A Level French, and is a big fan of the Walking Dead video game series, has been getting just as much out of the French version of the Walking Dead graphic novel series as I got out of the Portuguese ones. She’s only a couple of volumes deep but she’s already better able to unravel complicated sentences, recognise new vocabulary that has come up before, and read out loud. I’ve been nagging her for ages to try the Astérix books but they’re not something that appeals to her and I’m glad she’s found her way to a series that suits her.

Posted in English, Portuguese

The Yogaing Dead

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Here’s a text I wrote, with correction notes at the bottom. Thanks to Eqdif and Dani_Morgenstern for the help. I’ve finished my thirty day yoga experiment now but as you can see we’re still using it as a family workout despite the lack of floor space in our flat. Writing about yoga on here has brought me a lot of new follows and likes from yoga-related bloggers, which is nice (hello yoga peeps!) but I hope they don’t think I’m some sort of fitness influencer because I can’t live up to that kind of expectation!

This isn’t the routine we were doing but it’s by the same instructor and it seems to fit the theme of the text!

A minha filha anda cada vez mais obcecada com a saga* Walking Dead, traduzida em francês. Mas ela precisa de ajuda portanto lemos juntos. Hoje passámos umas horas a ler. Uma vez que não tinha feito o meu yoga diário** (29 dias malta!), sugeri “faz uma sessão de Yoga comigo e depois lemos mais umas páginas.” ela concordou mas com pouco entusiasmo.

Durante a aula, estavamos de pé, ela no meu lado esquerdo, com as ancas dobradas***, as cabeças viradas para baixo e os braços pendurados frouxamente em direcção ao chão.

A professora disse “vira a cabeça para a direita”. Obedecemos. “Depois, volta para o centro… Agora, vira a cabeça novamente mas desta vez para a esquerda.”

Virei a cabeça na direção dela. Ela estava ainda virada para mim. Os nossos olhos encontraram-se e ela gemeu “Riick Grrriiimes”. Desatámos às gargalhadas.

* Although Série can be used it’s used to refer to a TV series, and I’m talking about the series of graphic novels, hence the word saga instead.

** Despite ending in an a, yoga is masculine apparently.

*** what I’m describing here is what the yoga instructor calls a “forward fold”, but the expression I tried to use – “dobrados da anca” = “bent from the hips” doesn’t really work so I’ve used the suggested “with our hips bent”. TBH, it’s a slightly odd phrase even in English, so I shouldn’t be that surprised but I’m pretty sure it’s how she describes the pose.