Category: English

Posted in English

Bitter Portuguese Guy Sings!

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I enjoyed this because aside from being a good song in its own right, it’s a very rare example of a song in Portuguese that I can understand almost 100% without help

The guy singing it seems a little aggrieved with the views of the ladies in his life. Perhaps not quite ready to order his “Meninist” t-shirt online, but he’s definitely disgruntled. Well, that’s OK, we all have bad days, and he got a good song out of it, so who’s complaining? There doesn’t seem to be a translation online so I’ve done one myself

Os Maridos das Outras / Other People’s Husbands

Everyone knows men are brutes
Who leave beds unmade
And things unsaid
They’re not very astute, they’re not very astute
Everyone knows men are brutes

Everyone knows men are ugly
They leave conversations unfinished
And laundry to pick up
And they’re evasive, and they’re evasive*
Everyone knows men are ugly

But other people’s husbands, no
Because other people’s husbands are
The archetype of perfection
The pinnacle of creation

Docile creatures of a completely different species
Who always make their wives’ friends happy
And everything men don’t do
Everything men aren’t, everything men aren’t
Other people’s husbands are, other people’s husbands are

Everyone knows men are rubbish
They like music nobody likes
And never lay the table
Lower than a beast, lower than a beast
Everyone knows men are rubbish

Everyone knows men are animals
Who smell strongly of wine
And never know which way to go
Na na na na na na, na na na na na**
Everyone knows men are animals

But other people’s husbands, no
Because other people’s husbands are
The archetype of perfection
The pinnacle of creation

Amiable creatures of a completely different species
Who always make their wives’ friends happy
And everything men don’t do
Everything men aren’t, everything men aren’t
Other people’s husbands are, other people’s husbands are

 

*=”E vem com rodeios” actually means “they come with roundabouts”. I’m guessing the figurative meaning of this but I could be wrong.

**=Could he not think of a rhyme for Animais?

Original Portuguese Lyrics here

 

 

Posted in English

Moura Encantada

Posted on by Colin Lusk

So here’s a good example of half-understanding a song and completely missing the point. I always thought this song was about a Moorish (Moroccan, Saracen, Muslim) sorcerer of some kind, but swotting up on my Ana Moura lyrics ahead of next week’s concert, I found out that it’s not that at all. Apparently a Moura is a fairy-tale creature from old Galician and portuguese legends. Reading the description on the Wikipedia page, it sounds an awful lot like a djinn/genie of Arabic folktales, so it’s not wholly fanciful that the moor in the sense of Moorish invaders (Mouros) and the Mouro/Moura of legend are bound up in some way, but it certainly illustrates the point that relying on half-understanding most of the words in a song can be deceptive!

Posted in English

Perdido em Tradução 

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I put this in Twitter the other day but it seemed relevant to the blog too: I was playing with the subtitle feature on youtube to see if it would recognise what I was saying as actual Portuguese words but I left it on English language, and… 

Posted in English

Sauce for the Gender

Posted on by Colin Lusk

In the third of what I am now definitely thinking of my Four Evil Exes articles, here’s what I can find on the subject of remembering which nouns are masculine and which feminine. It turned out to be easier than I thought, although I’m sure the exceptions will plague me. I wish I’d done it ages ago, actually, but that’s the trouble with the 4 evil exes: they are boring and difficult and don’t have fun workarounds I can use, so it was just a case of ploughing through the literature – in this case, “Portuguese – an Essential Grammar” by Amélia Hutchinson and Janet Lloyd, with some supplemental examples cribbed from Fun With Portuguese and My Five Romances. I also got some tips from Benny the Irish Polyglot and read an entertaining post on the subject by Lady of the Cakes, whose blog is a great deal prettier and better-written than mine. Her post is a bit more pessimistic when it comes to finding patterns in this mess, but on the plus side does have (a) a picture of some cake and (b) rude words.

As you can see, most of the rules have exceptions, so it’s not as if I can be guaranteed to never screw up again if I learn them but if I don’t happen to know a word, it might boost my hit-rate a few percentage points.In most cases, more specific rules seem to override more general ones. So for example, “milhão” is masculine because it meets the “all numbers are masculine” rule even though it’s an abstract noun ending in -ão.

Oh and sorry about the colour-scheme, but… well, you know…

Rule Examples Exceptions
Dependent:
Male and Female animals/people depend on individual’s sex*
  • o touro / a vaca
  • o irmão / a irmã
Dependent:
Ordinal numbers depend what’s being counted
  • o primeiro (dia)
  • a segunda (noite)
Masculine:
Nouns ending in
-o (nb, not -ão though)
-r
-l
-z
  • o lugar
  • o valor
  • o papel
  • o final
  • o rapaz
  • a foto
  • a tribo
  • a gravidez (understandably enough…)
 Masculine:
Concrete nouns ending in
-e**
-ão***
  • o sangue
  • o clube
  • o coração
  • o chão
  • o órgão
  • a fonte
  • a árvore
  • a mão
  • a televisão
Masculine:
Names of Lakes, Rivers, Mountains etc
  • o Tejo
  • os Himalaias
  • o Brasil
  • o Atlântico
  • o Tamisa (despite the -a ending!)
Masculine:
Car brands**** & types of wines
  • o porto
  • o Ferrari
  • a Mercedes
Masculine:
The seasons*****
  • o verão
  • o inverno
  • o outono
  • a primavera
Masculine:
Weekend days
  • o sábado
  • o domingo
Masculine:
Words from greek, usually ending -a: most usually in
-ema
-grama
-eta
  • o programa
  • o problema
  • o sistema
  • o poema
  • o cometa
  • o planeta
  • o dia
  • o mapa
  • o clima
  • o telefonema
Masculine:
Letters
  • o a
  • o p
Masculine:
Cardinal numbers
  • o um
  • o cento
  • o milhão
Feminine:
Most words ending in
-a
  • a dúvida
  • a água
  • a palavra
  • a terra
Feminine: 
Words ending
-dade
-ie
-tude
-gem
-ice
-ã
  • a cidade
  • a viagem
  • a garagem
  • a juventude
  • a espécie
  • a velhice
Feminine:
Abstract nouns ending in
-e
-ão***
  • a crise
  • a parte
  • a gente
  • a lição
  •  o norte
Feminine:
Names of towns & countries
  • A Madeira
  • A Rússia
  • A França
  • A Suiça
  • A Islândia
  • A Londres
  Places specifically named after male things:

  • O Rio de Janeiro
  • O São Paulo
  • O Porto

Places consisting of a male noun + adjective

  • Reino Unido
  • Os Estados Unidos
Feminine:
Names of the Arts and Sciences
  • a medicina
  • a matemática
  • a biologia
  • o teatro
  • o cinema
Feminine:
Names of days during the working week
  • a segunda feira
  • a terça feira

*=This rule supersedes all others. So “a mulher” is feminine even though it ends with r, for example

**=When looking for samples of nouns ending in -e as examples to use of concrete (masculine) and abstract (feminine) it was striking how many exceptions there were to this rule on the list. I’ve left it in because it’s in the textbook but, at least with the more common nouns, it seems like feminine outnumbers masculine for most -e nouns, even the concrete ones

***=When looking for samples of nouns ending in -ão as examples to use of concrete (masculine) and abstract (feminine) it was striking that the first twenty or so -ão words on this list were all abstract, feminine ones

****= Jeremy Clarkson would love this, I’m sure

*****=one exception out of four words is pretty shonky though. It’s only one away from a 50-50 split! Maybe best remember these by their endings and pretend the rule doesn’t exist!

Posted in English

Oh Se Can You see?

Posted on by Colin Lusk

This is the second of my brainstorms about the four intractable problems I identified last week, trying to wrestle with the subject by putting it into a post, because explaining something to someone else is usually a pretty good way of learning it yourself.

Quite often in Portuguese, the word “Se” crops up in unexpected places, hanging around verbs. In some cases, it just means “if” and that’s easy enough to spot, but when it’s acting as some sort of pronoun things get a little weirder. Here’s a breakdown of some of the related grammar:

As a word meaning “If”

As I said, this is the odd one out, really. In this case, the word happens to be hanging around the sentence and maybe the verb will have to change as a result but in this case it’s not really strongly interacting with the verb, so you can just translate it in your had as “if” and move on. If you’re at B2 level and don’t already know about the subjunctive imperfect, go and have a read. Otherwise, forget it.

As a reflexive pronoun

Se is one of the pronouns used in the construction of reflexive verbs. Reflexive verbs. Reflexive verbs are just verbs in which the subject and the object can be the same thing. For example, “I can dress myself”. I am the one who is doing the dressing, and I am the one being dressed, so it’s a reflexive verb. In Portuguese and other romance languages, reflexive verbs seem a bit counter-intuitive.Sometimes they are used in situations you wouldn’t expect and sometimes they mean “each other” instead of “oneself”.

Of course, it’s not always “se”. The complete set of pronouns looks like this:

  • me
  • te
  • se
  • nos
  • vos
  • se

Here are some examples of reflexive verbs:

 Standard Meaning Reflexive Meaning
 lembrar to remind lembrar-se to remember
amar to love amar-se to love one another
 apaixonar to fall in love apaixonar-se to fall in love with each other
 deitar to lay (something) down deitar-se to lie down
 levantar to lift levantar-se to get up
 pentear to comb pentear-se to comb oneself
 banhar to bathe (someone) banhar-se to have a bath
 chamar to call (someone) chamar-se to be called/named
 lavar to wash something lavar-se to have a wash
 sentar* to put someone in a sitting position? sentar-se to sit down
 sentir  to sense something  sentir-se to be conscious of something
 voltar  to turn, return, re-do  voltar-se to turn around
 servir to serve servir-se to help oneself to
 vestir to dress someone vestir-se to get dressed
 ** suicidar-se to kill oneself
 cortar cut cortar-se to cut oneself

*sentar apparently exists but it’s not used often

**suicidar doesn’t seem to exist as a non-reflexive verb, for reasons that are probably pretty obvious….

—update—

Of course, by sod’s law, within hours of publishing this post, I see this:

…and now I’m ready to suicidar(-me) too.

—update to the update–

My teacher says it’s just bad grammar. What lessons do we learn from this? Don’t trust Twitter for lessons in correct use of language. 

———————-

————-

And here are a few that need pronouns with them (to call back to this post)

Infinitive Meaning
aproveitar-se de to take advantage of
convencer-se de to convince oneself about
lembrar-se de to remember about
esquecer-se de to forget about
queixar-se de to complain about
rir-se de to laugh about
decidir-se a to decide
dedicar-se a to dedicate oneself to
acostumar-se com to get familiar with
parecer-se com to resemble
surpreender-se com to be surprised by

As some other kind of pronoun

Hm… Now I was going to write a whole section on “se” being used as another kind of pronoun but I had a look at the examples and decided that they were all specimens of  either those ones *points up* or these ones *points down*. OK, cool, well that’s one piece of confusion that has been expelled by writing this post, so… bonus!

As part of a sentence in the passive voice

Passive voice is when you use a phrase like “it was done”, “mistakes were made”, “a murder was committed” instead of the more direct “He did it”, “We made a mistake” or “Someone committed murder”. I quite like this form of words and use it in writing but some people find it vague and evasive, and for that very reason it’s popular in political speech and PR briefings.

In portuguese there are two ways of writing the passive voice and one of them looks a lot like the reflexive verbs I mentioned above:

“O livro publicou-se” means “the book was published” but you could equally read it as a reflexive verb “the book published itself” which it didn’t of course, but you can see how the connection is made. Another way of expressing the same thing in Portuguese looks much more like an English construction: “O livro foi publicado”

  • Em Portugal bebe-se muito café (A lot of coffee is drunk in Portugal)
  • Fala-se Inglês (English is spoken here)

and in the negative…

  • Não se fala Espanhol no Brasil

 

Posted in English

This Week In Teaching

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Some news about learning resources I have endorsed on here and some new ones I haven’t:

If you’ve tried the podcast “Practice Portuguese” but didn’t get into it, now might be a time to have another look. Joel is now on it full-time and quit his day-job, so there are longer episodes with a lot more explanation and new features coming out.

Say It in Portuguese has been unavailable to download for a while now but they are expecting to be back online in a few days, so it’s worth checking iTunes if you haven’t already.

A couple of teachers I know have new websites: a good friend of mine, Joana, has started teaching Portuguese face-to-face along with various other things she does, so if you live in West London and are looking for someone to help you sort out your linguistic problems – or even if you know a criança who needs a professora for some out-of-school tuition, you might want to have a look at her site, The Kew Tutor. If you don’t live in West London, Ana, a very reliable and professional iTalki tutor I have been working with on spoken portuguese has a brand new blog which you can find here.

Posted in English, Portuguese

#HotSummerReading Wrap-Up

Posted on by Colin Lusk

9789722328296So I’ve finished my reading for this book blogging challenge and it’s been a brilliant source of motivation to read portuguese in massive (for me) doses. I’ve written reviews of all three books on iTalki and I wanted to make a recorded version as well to make some of the vocabulary stick, and my daughter, who is an expert on vlogging, helped me record it. It’s pretty dreadful though, I’m afraid… I’ve put it down at the bottom where it belongs

The Text Versions

I’m indebted to Natan, Wagner, Samuel, Milena, Gabriel, and especially Sophia and Rubens for their excellent corrections on all these reviews

O Principezinho

O Principezinho é um livro de Antoine de Saint-Exúpery, um autor e aviador francês. Li-o em Francês quando era jovem, e mais uma vez em Inglês quando tinha uns vinte anos porque um amigo deu-me uma cópia. Agora que estou a estudar Português, comprei a versão portuguesa e li-o para parte dum desafio de leitura.
O livro é pequeno, com muitos desenhos (aguarelas) e por isso é muito fácil para um aluno com poucos conhecimentos da língua. O argumento consiste num piloto perdido no deserto. Acho que este piloto é o próprio autor do livro. O seu avião não funcionava e ele estava a tentar consertá-lo. De repente, um rapazinho apareceu. Com as suas palavras primeiras, o rapazinho – o principezinho do título – pediu-lhe que desenhasse uma ovelha. Tinha muitas dúvidas sobre a vida na terra e contou uma historia da sua vida num pequeno planeta e da sua viagem através das estrelas. No caminho, encontrou muitas “pessoas crescidas” que tinham atitudes estranhas de adultos em toda parte: interessavam-se apenas por dinheiro, no seu próprio poder e nos seus trabalhos.
No curso da história, o protagonista fez muitas observações sobre as diferenças entre as crianças e os adultos. Aos adultos falta-lhes* de imaginação. Não compreendem nada por causa da sua obsessão com números. Adoro este livro!

*=Woah! This grammar was contorted into a shape I really wasn’t expecting by the people who marked it

 O Mandarim

Como disse no registo passado, eu tive vontade de fazer parte dum desafio de leitura, e por isso li dois livros portugueses. Actualmente, estou a ler um terceiro – em inglês – e vou escrever sobre ele em português mais tarde.
O segundo livro foi “O Mandarim” de Eça de Queiroz, um famoso autor português do século XIX. “O Mandarim” é um conto muito curto dum homem que tem a oportunidade, por circunstancias sobrenaturais e esquisitas, matar um imperador chinês e herdar as suas grandes riquezas. A história lembrou-me dos livros “Faust” (de Goethe) e “Doctor Faustus” (de Christopher Marlowe). Confesso que não percebi tudo no livro. Hei de voltar a lê-lo mais tarde quando tiver mais tempo, mas no fim, o homem fugiu duma emboscada e regressou a Portugal.
Dentro da capa da minha copia existe um CD com a gravação duma mulher a ler a história, então posso praticar a compreensao auditiva do texto ao mesmo tempo que leio. Há também um apêndice lexical com traduções das palavras difíceis. Infelizmente, um dos capítulos estava ausente no CD, e as traduções são em espanhol! Ora bem, não faz mal. Tenho um bom dicionário e sou perfeitamente habilitado para ler um capitulo sem ajuda!

The Puppet

“The Puppet” (A Marioneta) é um livro de Ibrahim Al-Koni. Para ser honesto, estou a escrever este comentário antes de acabá-lo por… Por razões, OK, não importa nada o quais são as razões!
Ora bem, este livro é o segundo duma trilogia. É muito difícil mas muito interessante apesar disso. O argumento consiste num grupo de nómadas Tuaregs. No final do livro passado, acabaram a caminhar no deserto e estabeleceram um aldeia acerca dum oásis. No curso deste livro, a sua sociedade mudaram a seguir às ideias do Ibn Khaldun, um escritor árabe do século XIII. Escolheram um líder novo. Esse líder é a Marioneta do título. Os cidadãos mais ricos começaram a persuadi-lo a alterar as regras para deixarem de utilizar o ouro como dinheiro nas trocas comerciais. Estas mudanças, segundo Ibn Khaldun, enfraqueceram o povo que se preparou para o derrubarem por um novo, o mais forte grupo de nómadas. Ups – Spoiler alert! Isto vai demorar até o livro terceiro…

O jantar está pronto. Não tenho tempo para reler isto nem fazer as correcções. Ora bem, provavelmente haverá mais erros do que normalmente…

The Video Version

My daughter made the background and has recorded her own (english) review of the Little Prince, and answered some of the “Top 6” lists on the #HotSummerReading challenge page.

Posted in English

We Don’t Know What We’re Doing 

Posted on by Colin Lusk
Grammar is Hard
A Gramática é difícil

Language exchanges might just be the best thing about the Internet. We don’t need to go to lessons anymore, we can just reach out to other people through apps like Hellotalk or iTalki and learn from them as they learn from us, and it doesn’t cost a penny. It has taken me a while to get going but these days I have a really good network of people I chat to, or whose instagram and twitter feeds I read. 

The aspect of it that might seem like  a drag – having to answer other people’s questions for half the time – is actually one of the best bits because it makes you realise how utterly clueless most of us are about what we say and why. I’ve lost count of the number of times someone has asked me a question and I have been floored. For example, one of the most common questions I get from lusophones is when do we use the various types of of past tense:

I worked

I have worked 

I was working 

I have been working 

On the face of it, this is quite simple, but the more you think about it, the more you realise that it’s not. We use them in ways that don’t seem to fit with their textbook definitions, and yet that use and misuse isn’t arbitrary or wrong. If someone uses the wrong tense, it stands out a mile. The whole business of tenses is much more involved than it seems. We also use the present tense in place of the past (in jokes mostly) and in place of the future tense (all the time) and don’t even realise it. We have different future tenses and different presents and they’re deployed in ways most of us can’t even begin to explain. 

I’ve also been asked what we say at the end of conversations and online chats – the equivalent of the Portuguese “beijinhos” (kisses) or “um abraço” (a hug). I couldn’t answer because it’s so dependent on your age, how well you know the person, where you are, what you’ve been talking about and half a dozen other things. There must be some deep-seated rule that we’re all more-or-less aware of but writing them down would be impossible, and even if you could do it, it would be out of date within a year. 

Portuguese people are the same. Quite often I’ll ask a question of three different people and get three different answers, or the person I’m speaking to will think for a bit and give a very hedged, ambivalent answer. I’ve recently written a couple of blog posts about grammar that are stitched together from several written and oral sources and I really got a sense of how subjective these things were. 

Ultimately, though, it doesn’t really matter. Knowing the rules helps us to an extent but it’s not everything. We really need to use the language *a lot* to get familiar with it and get a sense of what feels right.