I made a new Memrise Deck, which I’ll probably add to as and when. It’s about “False Friends” (“Falsos Amigos”) and I’ve been meaning to write it for a while, and not just as an excuse to steal this title which is the name of a song by Fallout Boy.
False friends are words that look like they should mean one thing but they actually mean something else entitrely. It’s here if you’re interested.
Build Confidence: I need to speak clearly and confidently even when I get to a bit Iâm not sure about. If I donât know the word, just guess and keep on going rather than fretting and looking confused.
Conversely, donât be cocky: talk at a sensible speed to give myself time to think, and donât go off at a tangent that seems interesting if Iâm not sure where Iâm going with it. Obviously this is in conflict with the point above.
Speak portuguese for at least 5 minutes every day between now and the exam.
Listening Goals
Listen to videos of people speaking in a range of accents from Alentejo, the rural centre of the country. and the islands (hence that Açoriano video I just posted). Some done but not enough
Listen to at least 3 video films with subtitles. One down, 2 to go… oh no, wait, Ramiro doesn’t count because the only subtitles were in English and that’s no bloody good! OK, 3 to go still, then.
Get to grips with the Raul Solnado âGuerra de 1908â sketchDone!
Cultural Goals
Read at the very least:
A LĂngua Portuguesa (Fernando Pessoa)
Mensagem (Fernando Pessoa)Done!
BrevĂssima HistĂłria de Portugal (A.H. De Oliveira Marques)
Maybe even A construção da democracia em Portugal (Kenneth Maxwell) although that seems a bit ambitious. No way is this happening.Â
Make a timeline of portuguese history to get a sense of how it hangs together. Drawn but not yet filled in. I need highlighters – stat!
I need to build my vocabulary â Memrise and Lingq daily goals – Doing alright so far!
Iâm getting better at the ver/vir (which was one of the 4 Evil Exes I identified a year or so back) but need to step up my game on some of the other weirder irregulars like Por and Dar Not done
Finish the exercise book Iâm on nowDone!
Do a couple of mock exams to get a feel for the speed I need to be working at to get in under the time limit Nope
Practice writing legibly. I type so much these days I need to get my hand used to forming letters or Iâll be penalised for spelling errors. Started working on this: transcribed a song and translated it. It started breaking down when I was low on space but I’ve shown I can do it if I put my mind to it. More practice needed.
Letter format and forms of address Nope
Learn â actually learn verbatim â one song. I started looking at a song by MĂĄrcia called “Menina” but she writes in a weird, cryptic style that’s really hard to decipher. I thought maybe Deolinda but having dug around a bit, I’m more inclined to go for “Dia de Folga” by Ana Moura because it’s got proper sentences and a wide range of fairly ordinary, everyday language in it, plus it would be good fun to belt it out while I’m doing the housework.
I just sort of filleted this book for ideas, rather than read every word. It’s looking at how adults learn languages, and how their acquired social skills and knowledge can compensate for the quickness and brain plasticity they might lack compared to children. It has some interesting “meta tips” in it. In other words, it doesn’t suggest any specific tools or actions or methods, but does talk about the kinds of ways adult minds learn languages and what general, broad strategies you can deploy to help things stick in your mind. Where it finds evidence lacking (eg that learning a language can stave off dementia) it is clear on exactly what does and doesn’t happen, and can be quite reassuring if you’re the kind of person who thinks they are past it, unable to learn or just uniquely shit and untalented at language acquisition.
In a sense it gives a lot of backing to the strategy often called “language-hacking”, which aims at getting people to grapple with the language more in a range of settings and study it less, but there are important differences. For example, it seems to be against the idea of massive input, and in favour of “little and often”. That’s not something you’ll hear in language hacking circles.
Quite interesting if you like to know the theory behind what you’re doing but if you really want to get stuck into a language you’re probably better off with something more hands-on like Fluent in 3 Months by Benny Lewis
I keep seeing constructions like “bater mal” and “bater certo”, and couldn’t quite see why “bater” was being used. I asked and (after a brief kerfuffle with some brazilians who tried to tell me that it disn’t exist and made no sense) found out that it is an informal expression. Bater is the verb used for the beating of a heart or the ticking of a clock, and if it starts going wrong that’s bad, so if someone “bate mal” after – say – a blow to the head, he’s not quite himself. You can also “bater bem” (being in good form) and things can “bater certo” (be exact, precise, spot on).
There’s an example of Bater Mal near the beginning of this song by the Greatest Band Ever
Acabo de enfiar a mĂŁo dentro da minha mochila, e logo que os dedos tocaram o fundo, fui transportado para outro lugar e outro tempo, mais especificamente para o Algarve em Julho de 2018. Por quĂȘ? Ora bem, a resposta nĂŁo tem nada a ver, sinceramente, com mĂĄgica. Senti pedrinhas de areia, e isso fez-me lembrar os dias de sol e diversĂŁo. Podia sacudir a mochila para tirar a areia mas nĂŁo quero perder aqueles momentinhos agridoces que surgem de vez em quando.
I put up this video with the transcript from Planta CarnivĂłra the other day, with the idea that I could go back over it and tune into what he was saying with the aid of the text, because his accent is very different from what I’m used to and it seemed like a good exercise as part of my exam plan. However, it quickly became obvious that the transcipt doesn’t match. There’s no reason why that should be surprising of course; it’s an old sketch and I’m sure it’s been performed hundreds of times in many different variants. So, for the challenge, I’ve set about trying to change it to what I think he’s really saying. The altered bits are in red. There are probably a few errors because I don’t really understand the sentence structure in a few places, but hopefully it’s an improvement at least… Interested to note that the aunt and the mum seem to have swapped places…
Update 20/4/19 – yes, there were plenty of errors still and I have had help from Sophia. Mainly, they were mistakes in the original that I had missed rather than new errors I’d introduced. Like “Meu tio Gustavo”, which should have read “Meu tio que estava…” for example. Embarrassing.
Eu vou-lhes contar a história da minha ida à Guerra de 1908.
Eu trabalhava numa fĂĄbrica de produtos farmacĂȘuticos. Um dia sem querer, deixei cair um comprimido e despediram-me. Fui lĂĄ para casa sentar-me numa cadeira que nĂłs temos lĂĄÂ em casa para quando somos despedidos. Estava-me a balançar, entrou o meu tio que estava com o jornal que trazia o anĂșncio da guerra, que rezava assim
EntĂŁo fomos para casa. A minha mĂŁe preparou me umas papas de sarrabulho, tomei um tĂĄxi e fui para a guerra. Cheguei Ă guerra eram sete horas da manhĂŁ, estava a guerra ainda fechada. E estava uma senhora que vendia castanhas Ă porta da guerra e eu perguntei,
Então, almocei na guerra do inimigo. Comemos uma cabeça de pescada muita grande e depoisfui para a minha guerra. E quando eu cheguei lå ia estava a contar ao meu capitão, entra um soldado a correr, a correr
âMeu capitĂŁo, meu capitĂŁo, fizemos um prisioneiro!â
Porque cĂĄ hĂĄ prisioneiros que sĂŁo teimosos, a gente puxa, puxa e eles nĂŁo vĂȘm. Feitios.
EntĂŁo o meu capitĂŁo disse,
âEntĂŁo, se eles nĂŁo dĂŁo os planos da pĂłlvora vai lĂĄ buscar o aviĂŁo, prontoâ
Porque como a gente se dava muito bem com o inimigo, nĂłs tĂnhamos sĂł um aviĂŁo que dava para todos. Eles bombardeavam Ă s Segundas, Quartas e Sextas, e a gente bombardeava Ă s Terças, Quintas e SĂĄbados, e lĂĄ Ăamos morrendo.
Mas o capitĂŁo disse que nĂŁo podia dar o aviĂŁo, porque estavam a adaptar uma torneira para andar a jactoâ
Fui-me embora para a minha guerra e quando cheguei lĂĄ estava o meu capitĂŁo Ă porta da guerra e disse-me,
âOlha, podes-te ir embora porque a guerra acabou-se!â
Disse
âAcabou-se??â
âAcabou-se. Veio cĂĄ o fiscal, a gente nĂŁo tinha licença de porte de arma. Levaram as metralhadoras, as pistolas, as bazucasâ
E foi assim que… ai ai ai ai ai
Here are the vocabulary words I didn’t already know:
Carroça = Cart
Sarrabulho = Coagulated pigs blood. Er… yum?
Guita = Wire
Organdi = Organdy
Frincha = A small opening – I’m picturing the little window the guard looks through at the gates of the Emerald City when Dorothy arrives.
Pescada = Hake
PĂłlvora = gunpowder
Jacto = jet… and I assume “torneira” can mean “propeller” too, although I only know it as “tap” and that’s the only definition give in my dictionary too…
Feitios = shapes (which I knew) but seems to mean “it takes all sorts” here.