I had a Portuguese lesson via Skype today and during a conversation about current events, tried to use the phrase “narwhal tusk”. My teacher had read about the idiot on London Bridge but hadn’t heard that specific detail so she couldn’t help. I checked Linguee for “tusk” and Linguee, which seems to base a lot of its natural language processing on the contents of translated EU policy documents and not so much on old Tarzan novels, thought I meant a kind of fish called a tusk, so it gave me the word “bolota” which is the word they use apparently. Sadly, bolota more commonly means acorn, so there I was, blathering on about a whale’s acorn. Yes, that’s it, this polish guy grabbed a whale’s acorn, you see, and went to attack the terrorist. What mental image must she have had?
I suppose it could have been worse. Donald Tusk features heavily in those same EU documents and pops up from time to time in the Linguee results, usually without translation, although in at least one “Prime Minister Tusk” is translated as “o Primeiro Ministro turco” which is a massive cock-up if ever I saw one.
In case you’re wondering, Narwhal is just “o narval” and tusk is “a presa”. So as Wikipedia says “Os navais machos são distinguidos por uma presa helicoidal longa e feta que, na verdade, é um canino esquerdo superior alongado” so now you know.
Taking a break from the lizards today to compile Instagram posts I made as part of 
One of the exercises in “A Actualidade em Português” is about superstitions and there are five that are similar to “knock on wood” or similar – phrases for warding off the effects of bad luck. By far the coolest is “Lagarto, Lagarto, Lagarto” (Lizard, Lizard, Lizard). I have no idea why that means what it means. Ciberdúvidas isn’t much help and neither is Andreia Vale’s “Puxar a Brasa à Nossa Sardinha”. Even m’wife didn’t know, only guessed that maybe it was because witches use lizards in their spells.
“Mas isso não tem pés nem cabeça” 
If you’re reasonably familiar with portuguese names, you’ll notice a lot of them end with “eira”: Pereira (m’wife’s maiden name), Nogueira, Oliveira, for example, and if you’re even more switched on, you’ll know that these, along with a few other names – Carvalho springs to mind – are names of trees*.
Luso 