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Category: English
Well, Shit.
So something a bit depressing happened today: I got the result of my second B2 exam. As I might have mentioned, it didn’t go as well as I hoped but I was expecting to creep up a bit from the miserly “suficiente” I got twelve months earlier to a “bom”. Today, it finally came through and it said…. “insuficiente”… meaning I have actually got worse after a full year of study.
Except of course, I haven’t, I’ve got quite a bit better. My conversation is still a bit stilted but I can write reasonably well, understand most of the podcasts I listen to, and I read 17 Portuguese books last year, some of them pretty heavy. So, what went wrong? Well, ultimately, I suppose, I am still pretty weak on a lot of important points of language. Add to that a lack of exam prep and just general having-a-bad day, and you get a pile of poo. It was a bit of a blow to my confidence. I’m not going to bloody stop though. Exams are a useful way of motivating myself (well – heh – sometimes) but I’m in it for the books and the mind-expansion, so. I’m not going to lie down in a ditch and give up because I got one shit result.
Tense, Nervous Headache
I had a but if a shock today when I saw a weird verb conjugation in a book I was reading (“Pessoas que Usam Bonés-com-Helices” which I recommend as a funny, short, cheap read!). It’s the word “tremei” in the final bubble here:
I asked Mrs L what it was and she said it was the “imperious” tense, which sounds a bit Slytherin to me, but never mind. Then I came across two more examples in my other book, “Para Onde Vão Os Guard-Chuvas” in a chapter narrated by the angel of death. I was thinking “God, not another tense! And this one apparently waits three years and then mugs me three times in one day!”. However, apparently that’s not what it is – it’s just the imperative, and the reason I didn’t recognise the ending was because it was the vós part of the verb, which hardly ever comes up in normal life.
Whew!
Oh Look, Another Podcast!
I heard about the Portuguese Lab Podcast via a F**ebook group (which I joined grudgingly – I have been studiously avoiding becoming enmeshed in Zuckerberg’s tentacles). It seems like a good addition to my existing stable of audio, maybe taking the place of Say it in Portuguese, which seems to have gone quiet lately.
Fado Bicha
I heard this um… bloke? To be honest, I don’t know, but let’s say bloke because beard. So as I was saying, I heard this bloke on Cinco Para Meia-Noite and I think he has a really interesting voice, quite different from most fadistas, and yet, you know, the same. I can’t seem to find any music online other than on Youtube but I’m definitely adding a few videos to my PT Music playlist.
A bit disappointed
Well, I’ve done the exam. It went OK. I mean, I’ve no doubt I passed and with a better mark than last time, but I have a nagging feeling of disappointment that I didn’t smash it. I’ve had a whole year since I took the test for the first time and barely passed. Now I think I’ve bumped my mark up from “barely scraping by” to “not bad I suppose”. That’s not much to show for the effort I’ve put in (and I really have you know!)
Anyway, for now, I’m not going to be disheartened. I’ll crack on with what I was doing and maybe try to be more active in writing and talking. That seems to be the key, I think: producing language, not just passively absorbing it by listening or reading (although I will still be doing those things too)
Legendas
Key Learnings 8 – MiniWriMo Gleanings
Jotting down a few notes from the feedback I’ve had on my epic sci-fi story so far:
Thoughts and Memories
I keep getting mixed up about how to use lembrar vs lembrar-se.
Lembrar is more like “to be reminiscent of”:
Essa música de Panic at the Disco lembra uma música mesmo parecida dos B-52s
….or if you sling a pronoun and a “de” into the mix, “remind”:
Essa música de Panic at the Disco lembra-me duma música mesmo parecida dos B-52s
Lembrar-se is most commonly “remember” and usually takes de:
lembrei-me dalguma coisa
…although I’ve seen it with “que”:
“lembrei-me que precisava…”=”I remembered that I need to…”
…or with nothing at all:
“para eles que se lembram”=”for those who remember”
Lembrar-se can have to do with a consciousness or awareness of something as well as actual memory. There’s another verb – recordar-se which is more specific and ONLY means to remember.
Persons
This is something I sort of new but keep forgetting because it’s so different from my own way of thinking:
“It was me who did that” isn’t “Foi eu que fez isso” as it would be in english but a more logical “Fui eu que fiz isso” (“I was me that I did that”).
On the other hand, “Está na hora” (“It’s on the hour”) never becomes “Estamos na hora”, it always stays in first person singular.
Fazers on Stun
I’ve been using “Faz-me pensar de…” (“It makes me think of”) but it seems you can’t use the same trick with adjectives “Faz me cansado” (“It makes me tired”) but you have to have a verb in there: “Faz me ficar cansado” (“It makes me get tired”), although actually now I’ve written that, there are better ways of saying the same thing.
Desperate Verb Tenses
So I had this exercise to do in a textbook. It was one of these choose-the-right-verb-tense exercises.
“É uma experiência que eu gostava que os meus filhos, um dia, quando ________ (ser) maiores, ______ (poder) experimentar”
I put in “forem” and “poderão” which was wrong but the answers given (“fossem” and “pudessem”) didn’t make any sense since it seemed to be talking about his (young) children in a hypothetical future, not his (grown) children in a remembered past.
There’s a long, detailed answer by Natan on iTalki in response to the query, spanning no fewer than 8 reply boxes. It’s pretty strong stuff, but if you’re in the mood for a challenge, it’s worth it. Natan is Brazilian but knows the European variant inside out so don’t worry that he’s going to indoctrinate you into transatlantic heresy.
It probably boils down to this though: Portuguese and English can both use these speculative past/present tenses to talk about events in the future. In one possible translation, it comes out as “It is an experience that I’d be happy if my kids, someday, when they’re older, were able to experience”. As you can see not a future tense in sight: You’ve got “I would” (conditional), “they are” (present) and “were” which is either an imperfect indicative or a present subjunctive*. In Portuguese, the first box could be “forem” but “fossem” sounds more natural and there seems to be agreement that the second one can only be “pudesse”, not “poderão” or “poderiam” or anything else.
As the young people say: “I’m shook!”
*= present subjunctive would be my bet but secretly, I quite like that my language is relaxed enough that I don’t know or – if I’m honest – care which. We’ve always kept our grammar super-simple so as to allow plenty of linguistic brainpower free to invent new pointless synonyms for stuff.
By the way, I originally wrote the title of the iTalki question as “Tempos Verbais Desesperados” which means “Desperate Verb Tenses” which I think sounds pretty good – like a much nerdier version of “Desperate Housewives”. The current title uses “Inesperados” which is what I should have said: “Unexpected Verb Tenses”
Thanks to Natan – and to Sofia and Kamenko for their contributions too.
Another #MiniWriMo Update
I’m quite pleased with the way my short story is shaping up. I had a few short days because I couldn’t quite decide what to do with the story but I’ve got something now that I think will be at least passably readable. The discipline of doing it every day is helpful and I am learning by using new words and new phrases each day.
I don’t think I’ll be deluged with offers from publishers, but I think it’ll be readable and that’s as much as you can hope for in this life.
Luso 