Posted in Portuguese

“Os Passos Em Volta” de Herberto Helder

Posted on by Colin Lusk
Os Passod em Volta de Herberto Helder

Já escrevi um texto sobre um conto desta coleção há algum tempo, porque eu tive de ler o “teorema” como prate do curso sobre a cultura e a literatura portuguesa. O docente explicou o contexto da história (O protagonista é um dos assassinos de Inês de Castro). Adorei tanto que decidi ler os restantes histórias. Infelizmente, sem um professor para explicar, a experiência foi menos satisfatória… 

O autor é madeirense, e a minha esposa já teve o livro na estante mas quando o mencionei no Insta alguém me chamou de erudito porque tem a reputação de ser uma leitura difícil. Podes crer, mas ainda assim, estou muito contente por ter lido e entendido um dos contos!

Posted in English

O Grão Caudilho

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I was a briefly stumped by this. Grão means grain, normally, and caudilho looks familiar but looks like it ought to be something to do with a tail (cauda). It’s a set phrase though. Caudilho is actually descended from Spanish word meaning the chief, the head man, the dictator. So grão caudilho means… The grain chief? No, grão has a hidden secret meaning, if you scroll down a bit on its priberam page, it can be an adjective, where it’s just a form of “grande”. It’s the masculine form of Grã, as in Grã-Bretanha. So grão caudilho = the big boss, the big cheese.

Posted in English

Sete-Estalos and Surprising Suffixes

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Reading “Natais – Contos e Narrativas” by João dos Reis Gomes and came across this phrase that seems to be unknown on the Web.

It’s just some sort of firecracker or cap that goes bang when you throw it on the ground though, according to my wife. Some sort of party snap or cap bomb, I suppose. Do they even make those any more? I haven’t seen anything like it for a while.

The book is quite challenging because it has a lot of unusual words and madeiran regionalisms. One of the new words that struck me was “indelével”.

Very obvious what that means but I don’t think I’ve come across it before and it’s surprising because I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen a word ending in “ével”. Of someone had asked me to guess how to say indelible I would have had it ending in “ível”, for sure.

Hm, I seem to be blogging in English again. Lazy.

Posted in Portuguese

There Goes Another One

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Oh! What the hell? I wrote this days ago. Why is it still in my drafts folders. Go, little blog post! Fly! Fly to the inboxes of my subscribers!

Acabo de submeter o segundo “e-Folio” da unidade “Temas de Literatura Portuguesa” e o terceiro do curso. Desta vez, pedi ajuda da minha esposa como corretora de gramática antes de enviar o arquivo porque apesar de usar o FLiP, o Gtranslate e o Gmail* para desenroscar o texto, o e-Folio A ficou com 2 ou 3 errozinhos. Ela concordou apesar de ser exausta após um dia de trabalho porque é um anjo. Encontrou hum… quatro, acho eu.

O assunto desta vez foi desafiante. Tivemos de escolher um livro que contém intermedialidade, ou seja exemplos de influência ou de estrutura de uma outra arte, como por exemplo pintura, cinema ou música. Eu selecionei “A Visão das Plantas” de Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida. O livro tem como ponto de partida um texto histórico de 1923. Ligações com textos funcionam até certo ponto: rigorosamente são exemplos de “intertextualidade” porque a obra de arte em questão também é a literatura, mas há quem afirme que a intertextualidade é um subconjunto da intermedialidade. O segundo exemplo é um capítulo no qual as plantas no jardim olham o protagonista. Eu afirmei que esta cena fosse um exemplo do uso de um segundo ângulo de câmara com, logo a seguir, um “flashback”, ambos truques de realizadores de cinema.

Durante as últimas horas, perdi a minha confiança porque ambos os exemplos pareciam marginais… mas continuei ainda assim e fiz o melhor possível.

O docente do curso avisou-nos que houve uns estudantes que submeteram o e-folio A com evidência de ser escrito por IA. Duvido que eu estou entre os suspeitos, a não ser que existe um IA que especializa em escrever como um estrangeiro confuso. Ah ah!

*If you’re wondering why these three – Flip is a grammar checker for native speakers but a bit weirdly fussy, Gmail – at least the way I set it up – has a very good grammar and spelling checker of its own that is in some ways better than Flip but occasionally gets a bit confused about Brazilian vs Portuguese spelling and Gtranslate is mainly useful because by trying to translate your portuguese back into english you sometimes find mistakes you’ve made.

Posted in English

Say It In Portuguese

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Oh! I must have accidentally unsubscribed to Say It In Portuguese’s email feed because I completely missed the notification about the last episode. I had been watching out for it because I’m in it, but I’ve just noticed it’s in my podcast app!

It’s this episode which deals with a song by Deolinda called Fado Toninho, and it was inspired by my attempt to grapple with the meaning of the song, in a post in February.

The podcast is definitely one you should be subscribed to if you are working toward B2 or over. It’s not the sort of thing you can listen to as a newbie, but if you already have decent skills, it gives you a wealth of knowledge about expressions and culture, all of which are essential for moving up to the next level. So, in other words, I can’t recommend it strongly enough! Cristina was my teacher for later C1 through to graduating C2, and she is very much a “friend of the blog”, but I would recommend SIIP even if that weren’t the case, because it’s excellent, it’s been around for ages and there’s nothing else like it, really.

Generally, the podcast picks an idiomatic expression and unpacks it for you, but in this one, we discuss the lyrics of a song, mainly trying to analyse the meaning of “Toninho” itself, but there are some expressions in the song too, and those are worth noticing. So if you don’t know the song already, I challenge thee: set aside some time to give the video and the podcast episode a listen and see how much you can learn in fifteen minutes.

Posted in Portuguese

Do Madeirenses Recognise Their “National Anthem”?

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Claro que a música em questão não é o verdadeiro hino da Madeira, mas Deslocado foi a canção selecionada no último Festival Eurovisão de Canção e continua popular naquela ilha lindíssima porque fala da saudade de um nativo longe da sua terra. A minha esposa usou várias vezes no seu insta durante a nossa estadia lá em Novembro.

Aliás, o gajo de barba, com o vape, que finge não reconhecer a canção é mais um criador de conteúdos, o @reijuliano do Insta, e suponho que o encontro não foi por sorte.

Posted in English

Untranslatable

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I like how this sentence is something that wouldn’t really make sense at all in English. You could say it of course, but it wouldn’t make as much sense in a language where we don’t really learn verb conjugations because our verbs are so straightforward.

He’s talking about those times in our lies when we do something for the first time ever – the first time you kiss someone, the first time you go out on your own and so on. In this paragraph, he goes onto say that those things don’t always work out as we might expect, and hoped-for first kiss turns into the first rejection.

And to do that he says the verbs “querer” and “ter” are conjugated with very different endings. I like that!

The book is Aqui Dentro Faz Muito Barulho by Bruno Nogueira

Posted in English

Tira-Teimas

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I keep seeing the expression “Tira-Teimas” pop up in my socials. Mainly, it’s on these short videos from The Voice Portugal. What can it mean?

Well, apparently, it can mean “objeto ou meio com que se castigam os teimosos” Er… Ok, that’s a very specific thing to have a phrase for, but sure. That’s clearly not what it means here though. I think the relevant definition here is “acontecimento ou circunstância que funciona como desenlace, pondo fim a disputa, competição ou controvérsia”. So a tie-breaker then? Hm, not quite that, because that would normally only involve two people. So maybe some sort of final battle where they shake out some of ghe weaker candidates and get it down to the finalists then? Something like that I think. I certainly don’t fancy watching the whole show to find out, I’m afraid, but I think that’s the gist of it.

There seems to be a brand of disgusting looking crisps called Tira-Teimas as well. I’m not sure why. Do people punish stubborn children with wheat-based snacks?

Posted in English

Airlearn Grifters

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I posted a video on here of someone crying while trying to pronounce Portuguese. I realised later that she was just doing viral marketing, hyping up an app called Airlearn.

Since then, I’ve had loads more videos of people doing the same kinds of viral shenanigans. The best known is am American woman who has an elaborate story about how she went to visit her Portuguese boyfriend’s family and could tell they were being rude about her, even though she couldn’t speak Portuguese. LOL, yeah, because colloquial European Portuguese is soooo easy for an outsider to understand! The denouement is that she uses Airlearn to become fluent in Brazilian portuguese. Why Brazilian? Well, because she knew they would hate that because they are so racist. Not because Airlearn doesn’t even teach European Portuguese, oh no no no. Then a few weeks later she goes back and cusses them out in their own language. There were loads of aspects of the story that just didn’t make sense, and it also seemed like an infuriating slander on the Portuguese and their hospitality. Some people were saying she was native Brazilian anyway, so the whole thing was a con, and the video seems to have been deleted now.

So I was really happy to see this Instagram reel and even shared it on my own story… But then I clicked on her profile and I found out she’s an Airlearn shill too. This is a whole other dimension – the inception of rage bait marketing.

Anyway, this is all by way of saying I think we should just agree amongst ourselves to ignore Airlearn because they are a bunch of unscrupulous twats. If you’re looking for an app, start here instead.