Category: English

Posted in English

Let’s Get Bruxism Done

Posted on by Colin Lusk

giphyI went to the dentist today. I’d rather not talk about it.

Anyway, while I was there, I noticed a leaflet about “Bruxism” which is just the technical term for excessive grinding of the teeth. I didn’t even know there was a word.

Anyway, checked priberam, and sure enough, “bruxismo” já existe! This interested me because “bruxo” or “bruxa” is the portuguese word for “witch”, so I checked the alternative meanings and, yes, this one, slightly arcane word, means both: “Mania ou acção inconsciente ou involuntária de ranger os dentes, normalmente durante o sono” (mania, unconscious action or compulsion to grind the teeth, normally during sleep*) and “Crença em bruxas ou em bruxarias” (Belief in witches or witchcraft).

giphy (1)Assuming the tooth-grinding term is as uncommon in Portugal as it is here, I bet this has caused a fair bit of confusion over the years. I’m imagining the dentist telling some catholic parents little João needs to be put to bed in a mouthguard because he’s engaging in bruxismo all night and them taking him straight to the priest for a swift exorcism.

*incidentally, this definition makes no sense. If you’re asleep. how can you be said to be suffering from a “mania”, and how can it be anything other than “unconscious”?

Posted in English

Farting About: The Royal Road to Language Proficiency

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I got this game recently called June’s Journey. It’s not as good as I hoped, tbh, and if I was playing it in English I’d have given up by now, but setting it to Portuguese settings turns out to be quite useful. A lot of the gameplay hinges in spotting items in a picture and clicking on them. Since the names of all the items are in Portuguese (Brazilian Portuguese, but hey…) it has turned out to be quite a good way of learning new vocabulary.

I have a couple of games that I play in Portuguese already, but this is the one that looks set to be the most beneficial.

Posted in English

A Wild Portugeese Chase

Posted on by Colin Lusk

In t-shirt news, I saw this t-shirt, referencing the current portuguese fuel crisis, on the Cão Azul website…

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…and although I had no desire to own the thing, I did get a bit obsessed by what the joke was. I asked around and found someone who explained it was to do with the way the words are pronounced in regional accents/dialects in the north, where the sound of words is more influenced by Galician – so a V might become a B and the ão sound would be more like an “on” or “om” (so “televisão” becomes “telebisom”). She also mentioned an explanation of the gasoil/gasoleo thing that included the word “gozar” which unfortunately I misunderstood as her saying that gazoil would be pronounced “gozar”

So I started trying to put the mispronounced syllables into a sentence

Camion… Bidon… Gasoil… Jarrican

Cá meu m… something… gozar… já something

but I couldn’t make sense of it so I asked again and she explained that, no, it’s just about how the northerners talk funny. I find this a deeply disappointing piece of news and keep looking at it again trying to find a hidden meaning in there like it was some sort of crossword clue, and I don’t think I can rest easy until I find one.

If you’re reading this and you have a better answer for why this is funny (feel free to invent one – I’ll be as gullible as you like) then please, please, tell me.

 

Posted in English

Diz-se Que Existem Outras Línguas.

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Bon Soir, Boa Noite and Good Evening

Well, I think this is the longest gap between blog posts for quite some time now. I have been wibbling about doing other things, busy with work and actually took a whole week off portuguese to brush up on my french for a family holiday. It was sort of a strange experience. On the one hand, I was surprised by the experience of accessing the francophone bits of my brain. I’ve forgotten a lot in the 34 years since my O’Level of course, but I used to be pretty good at it back in the day, and the language has pretty deep roots in my head, such that I’ve always been able to hold my own in conversations I’ve had as an adult. But to continue the deep roots metaphor, the whole plant has been buried under a thick mulch of portuguese vocabulary. I had to read a couple of comic books to reawaken it, and even then I’d find portuguese would just tumble out of my mouth at every excuse. I consistently said “et” like the portuguese “e” and standards like “merci”, “pardon” and “oui” would all just give way to their portuguese equivalents even if I was a few sentences deep into a conversation. Words that are similar between the two like “fácil” and “facile” got a bit blurry too.

What was weirder still, though, was that the day after I got back, I had a portuguese lesson after having not spoken, read, heard, or written a word of portuguese for about 8 or 9 days. Normally if I have a delay like that I find I’m really rusty and can’t get a word out, but it actually flowed pretty well, and I can only conclude that whatever mental equipment I use for producing portuguese was getting a good workout from producing the bizarre Françuguês I was bellowing at the longsuffering garçons of Nantes.

Posted in English

Chulé, Madly, Deeply

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Apparently there’s a specific word for the smell of stinky feet in Portuguese: Chulé.

Ricardo Araújo Pereira mentions it in “Estar Vivo Aleija” and wonders how “línguas bárbaras” like English manage without it in sentences like “Após a meia-maratona, os meus pés cheiravam a chulé”. We’d have to say “(they) smell of smelly feet” which would be tautologous.

If never come across the word before. As an example of an untranslatable word it’s not as impressive as “Saudade” but it’s much more fun.

Posted in English

Big Day

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Right, well here I go then…

Tuesday

  • Read on the train
  • 1 hour accent practice (speaking)
  • 1 hour accent practice (listening – while walking)
  • Write about o Mosteiro de Batalha

Wednesday

  • Read on the train
  • 1 hour lesson
  • 1 hour conversation practice
  • Write a letter of complaint
  • Go to bed early

Thursday

  • Exam
Posted in English

Exam Prep Review #6

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Last 3 days. Biff. And also: Thwack.

Monday:

  • 1 hour lesson
  • Watch “Gatos Nao têm Vertigens”
  • Write about the Padrão dos descobrimentos
  • Write about the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos (did a text about my book instead)
  • Watch 1 episode of “O Ministério do Tempo”

Tuesday

  • Read on the train
  • 1 hour accent practice (speaking)
  • 1 hour accent practice (listening – while walking)
  • Write about o Mosteiro de Batalha

Wednesday

  • Read on the train
  • 1 hour lesson
  • 1 hour conversation practice
  • Write a letter of complaint
  • Go to bed early

Thursday

  • Exam