I spotted this on twitter and was pleased to find that I understood what he was annoyed about
Ai, Público! E será que “habituaremo-nos” a estropiar a língua portuguesa na imprensa, sem que ninguém reveja os textos antes de eles serem publicados? pic.twitter.com/QqfGndGe2j
The headline writer has got in a mix-up between two tenses. He could have gone with the imperative “habituemo-nos” (let’s get used to wearing masks) or made a pronoun sandwich with the future tense “habituar-nos-emos” (we will get used to wearing masks) but he’s instead tried to put the pronoun in the end of the future tense and people are riled up.
Regular readers and grammar nerds might remember the terms for these positions. When the pronoun goes on the end of the verb it’s caller “ênclise” and when it goes in the middle, its called “mesóclise”. The missing third term is próclise, where the pronoun goes before the noun. The rules are set out here if you want some good, solid grammar broccoli for the day.
My epic quest for advanced certification rumbles on, with over. A hundred days behind me, doing daily exercises, writing texts and tweeting. I’ve given myself a break on the reading aspect of this over the difficult few days between Christmas And New Year though because it’s a weird period and I feel like I need a rest and some nonsense so between now and New Year I’ll allow myself some indulgent English language reading.
A few recent texts with corrections below each. These are mostly pretty short since I didn’t want to give the correctors too much work over Christmas
Perder Um Streak.
A minha filha perdeu o seu Streak no Duolingo. Está a aprender francês. Usou o app todos os dias* durante 426 dias, mas esqueceu-se ontem. Eh pá.. Dói-me o coração….
*dammit, another one where I keep mistranslating. For “every day”, I keep writing “cada dia” (each day) when I should write “todos os dias” (all the days)
Feliz Natal.
Votos de um bom Natal** para todos. Espero que o Pai Natal traga tudo que vocês desejam.
**the capital letter is important.
Catolicismo.
Hoje de manhã, abri o Twitter, aquele sítio de opiniões equilibradas e cuidadosamente consideradas e deparei-me num tweet antigo. Uma mulher afirmava “não te podes considerar português não sendo católico”
O tweet é isca, claro, mas fez-me pensar um pouco sobre religião e identidade. O catolicismo constitui uma grande parte da cultura e da história do país (a isca é isca precisamente porque contém um grão de verdade) mas qualquer definição da nacionalidade que não inclua Viriato (de um lado da cronologia) nem Saramago (do outro) é evidentemente limitada de mais.
There was a little discussion in reddit about the influence of Catholicism on Portuguese culture, and how even those who consider themselves anti-catholics are to some extent influenced by it, which is all true, no doubt, but I think the original tweet I’m referring to isn’t saying that: I think she’s specifically trying to assert that any protestants or Muslims or Jews or atheists resident in the country will always be outsiders. In short, I think she was being a bit of an arsehole. To what extent that was pure trollage, or to what extent her tradwife persona is real, I don’t know, but taken on its face, it just seemed obnoxious.
My favourite Trivial Pursuit question at today’s family get together was when my brother asked me “What language is spoken by a Lusophone?” Hm, let me think about that one….
I hope yours was as good, that you had a happy Christmas, and that 2022 will be less of a pain in the bum than the last couple of years.
Occasionally people write to me and tell me they’ve found this blog helpful in some way and I’m always really delighted that someone else out there in the darkness is going through the same struggles with grammar and has found something in these pages they can use to help them improve.
This is the first time someone has taken the trouble to tell me how shit my Portuguese is though. Well, that’s not very motivating is it? Oh well, never mind. The text of the day was about vaccine denialism and conspiracy theories, so I’m going to salve my ego by telling myself that she’s probably a tinfoil-hat-wearer and that her urge to fling poop at random language bloggers has more to do with seeing her beliefs challenged than it does with whatever defects she found in the text.
But obviously there’s still a lot to do so I’ll keep working hard and hope not to attract too many more critics! *wipes away tears with pages torn out of Português Atual 3*
Here are some short texts with footnotes pointing out some of the gotchas.
Aprendizagem de Uma Croma*
Estou a ensinar a minha filha a escrever código python. Leva sempre** três vezes mais tempo do que é necessário porque lhe falta a confiança*** e de cada vez que experimentamos uma coisa nova ela começa com “Ó pai, não consiiiigo, não é posííível” e por aí a diante até que ela olha novamente e repara na solução.
Hoje, programámos o “jogo da velha****” e durante os férias*****, vamos fazer um jogo antigo tipo arcade, chamado Snake (“Cobra”). Valha-me Deus! Irei precisar de tanta paciência.
Not that kind of python
*=Cromo/a means nerd
**=Leva sempre not sempre leva. “It takes always…” not “It always takes…”
***=I always find the construction of this kind of sentence difficult because it’s so far from English. We’d say “she lacks confidence” but in Portuguese it’s more like “confidence is lacking to her”
****=noughts and crosses /tic tac toe
*****=There are different words for holiday and they have different meanings so it’s worth taking time to pick the right one. Férias =time off work, so it’s the correct word here because I’m talking about the couple of weeks off school. There’s also “Feriado” which is a statutory holiday such as Christmas day itself, New Year etc. And finally there’s “Festas” which is more like a party ora celebration but “Boas Festas” os the nearest Portuguese equivalent to the American “Happy Holidays”
Um Caminho Longo
Ontem, dei uma voltinha daqui ao outro lado da cidade. O meu percurso seguiu as curvas do Rio Tamisa desde Richmond (ao oeste) até à* barreira contra inundações (ao leste) o meu plano era fazer a viagem de ida e volta que teria sido 50 milhas, mas depois de chegar à meta, estava com bolhas nos pés e as minhas pernas estavam rígidas e sem vida. Manquei mais cinco milhas mas não me senti capaz de regressar, portanto virei para a estação e fui de comboio para casa.
*=The “from” and “to” is interesting since the words used are “desde” (which is also used to mean “since”) and até (which usually means “until”). On top of that, it’s not just “até” but “até a/à” – until to (the) barrier.
I also learned a new word “entrevado” which describes the state I was in when my legs had ceased working: crippled.
The Coliniad
A Festa de Natal
Eu e o meu irmão falámos com o nosso pai ontem. Ele disse que não culpa o governo pelas festas de natal do ano passado, uma das quais teve lugar no apartamento do primeiro ministro e outras nos escritórios dos funcionários quando o mundo estava em plena crise.
Nós ficámos espantados. Posso perdoar muito na resposta à pandemia que apanhou muitos países de surpresa, mas isso vai alem* do que é aceitável na minha opinião. Traíram a nossa confiança.
*This was suggested as an improvement to my “é fora” – it’s outside of what’s acceptable. Instead, it says it goes beyond what’s acceptable.
I asked on the Reddit about why Desempenhar wasn’t the opposite of Empenhar. Empenhar means “to make an effort”, and the prefix “des” is like “dis” in english and it usually reverses or negates the meaning of whatever word it’s attached to and makes it into an antonym. So for example, “Fazer” means to make or do, and “Desfazer” mean to take something apart; “Cansar” means to get tired, “Descansar” means to rest, “Ordem” means “Order” and “Desordem” means “Disorder” and so on. So desempenhar looks like it should mean “make no effort” (“Hoje é dia de folga, pá. Vou me desempenhar o dia inteiro!”) but it doesn’t, it means “to perform”.
Why? Is there some sort of mysterious etymological tale to tell here? Same question for their noun forms, empenho (effort) and desempenho (performance).
Joe Desempesci discovers the difference between flammable and Inflammable
As it turns out, it’s just one of those things like Flammable and Inflammable in english, where the prefix just doesn’t really have any effect. A few interesting points came up in the comments
Butt_Roidholds listed some other examples of this sort of thing:
Abrir = open / Desabrir means leave off doing something… hm… I’m not absolutely sure about this one. Abrir can mean “Open the proceedings” – ie, start something, so desabrir meaning cease doing something actually does seem to be an antonym
Obstinado = obstinate / Desobstinado = something like “disoriented” but it’s not very clear – it isn’t defined in Priberam and Infopedia just says “ver desaustinado”. It seems like an odd fish and I won’t be using it!
Inquieto = disquieted / Desinquieto = exactly the same as inquieto! Why does this even exist though? They already have the word “quieto”, so why the double negative?
Aliviar = alleviate / desaliviar = alleviate.
And other users, TheSingingBowl and Vilkav chimed in with
Abrochar = to fasten with a brooch, or to button up / Desabrochar = open or unbutton, can also refer to the opening of a flower. These seem like pretty decent antonyms but the person who suggested them added a laughing emoji so I think it might have to do with the other (rude) meaning of “broche”.
Largar = let go / Deslargar = let go. Yep, definite example.
As for theories about how the words got like this, the most interesting one was from Grenarius who suggested maybe Desempenho came from the word “penhor” which is like “pawn” in the sense of something given as security for a high interest loan, and when you would “se empenhar” you were incurring an obligation which you would then discharge, so desempenha is an antonym of “se empenha” in that sense: you are performing some work to pay off your debt. It’s a minor stretch but not out of the realms of possibility
I’ve just updated the Textbook page of the blog with a new set of books I’ve heard about.
Susana Morais is the creator of the Portuguese Lab Podcast and Academy and she’s written a couple of story books aimed at portuguese learners: A Casa Na Bosque for intermediate learners (B2) and A Baú das Coisas Perdidas for beginners (A2). They each come with an audio version read by the author and some questions at the end to test your comprehension. I have the B2 version and have listened to the first few minutes. It looks like a really useful addition to the ever-growing list of resources for learners.
Looking out at the landscape today, compared to when I started, when it was pretty much just the Practice Portuguese podcast – and even that was pretty shonky in the early days – there’s really quite a lot of good stuff out there for anyone wanting to ;earn european portuguese.
Anyway, the links above go to the Kobo versions, which is what I’m using, since it allows me to listen to the audio and read all on one device, but you can get a printed version or several other ebook options via her website Storyglot.
The Utopia Portuguese Film Festival usually takes place on the UK but this year, owing to travel restrictions, I guess, it’s only available on the web. Its free though, and that’s my favourite price so I’m definitely in!
It takes place this coming week: the 12th to the 19th and you can sign up for the films here. I feel like the first one is probably going to be the most useful for my studies but I’ll be out all day so I’ve no chance. The offerings on the following Sunday look good too though, especially the very last presengation: Cinzas & Rasgança.
I’m really chuffed to see Livraria Bertrand now has an audiobook section and an app for ebooks and audiobooks. You can find the page here, and it’s a little underdeveloped at the moment, but so was Audible when I first joined so I’m not giving up on it. The link takes you to the front page of the portuguese audio section, but if you look in the menu on the left-hand side you’ll see there are subheadings for history, science, classics and so on, so you can rummage around and see if anything takes your fancy.
The most annoying aspect of it is that it doesn’t have a preview feature so you can’t find out if the reader is European or Brazilian. Some are obvious, but I picked out a couple that I knew seemed like a good bet – O Vendeador de Passados by José Eduardo Agualusa and Vidadupla by Sérgio Godinho and can confirm that they are both european portuguese. Yippee!!! There are a couple of others by Godinho but as for the rest, I dunno. If you sample any, I’d love it if you could tell me what you thought in the comments. Share the knowledge!
I’ll add these to my Portuguese Audiobooks Pagein the few days. In the meantime, if anyone knows anything about any of the other books, I’d love it if you could tell me about it in the comments. Let’s share the knowledge! We learners have to stick together!
Luso 