I published this a few days ago and the corrections to my corrections were pretty extensive so I thought rather than quietly correcting the original, I’d repost the whole thing with notes in red showing what I got wrong for ease of reference.
I hope I can quote a whole article here under… what? Fair use? It’s Manuel Cardoso, writing in the Expresso under the headline “Os portugueses lêm bem” and I’m not stealing it, I’m fixing it because – unless I am making a massive idiot of myself by misunderstanding, he has deliberately put lots of errors in it, and that’s the joke. Even the title has an error in it. It should say “leem“, not “lêm”. What’s really interesting about this is that most of these are the kinds of mistakes a native speaker would make, and they are usually different from the mistakes we made as learners. They are mistakes you make when you’ve learned a language by listening instead of by studying books.
Anyway this is a learning blog so I’m going to use it as an exercise and try to fix it. I WILL DEFINITELY GET A LOT Wrong yep so rather than erase the original text, I will put what I think are the right answers in the footnotes and then if any other students are reading this you can play along and see if you get the same answers as me, and, if not, tell me about it in the comments!
Segundo a OCDE, a literacia dos adultos do nosso país está abaixo da média. Talvez póssamos(1) refletir um pouco sobre o assunto. Dizer(2) que não confio nada nestes resultados. Houveram(3) pessoas a afirmar que não ficaram surpreendidas, mas eu fiquei perplexo. Na minha opinião pessoal (This is a redundancy too – you don’t need “pessoal” when you’re talking about your opinião) , os portugueses têm excelentes capacidades de interpretação de texto. Acreditaria neste estudo se tivesse sido feito à(4) cinquenta anos atrás, mas a verdade é que, nas últimas décadas, avançámos muito para a frente(5).
Julgo que tudo isto é muito suspeito, porque o esforço para aumentar a literacia em Portugal tem partido de ambos os dois(6) lados políticos. Este atual governo (atual is a redundancy because “este governo” implies it’s the current one alresdy) até já interviram (plural verb, singular noun – and in top of that, intervir is based in vir not ver so it should be intervier(am)) no sentido de(7) resolver os problemas de fundo da educação. Certamente que a OCDE vai retratar-se(8): os resultados devem estar errados, derivado a erros. Caso contrário, não vejo outra alternativa senão sair para fora dessa organização. Se tivesse nas minhas mãos, eu faria-o(9).
É óbvio que a divulgação deste estudo causou mau-estar(10). Esta notícia estragou-me o dia, que até estava solarengo(11). Não tenham dúvidas: condeno veemente(12) a postura da OCDE. É ofensivo que um organismo(13) internacional trate os cidadões(14) portugueses como uns analfabetos quaisqueres(15). Aonde(16) fica a dignidade? A mim, pessoalmente, admira-me que isto não tenha despoletado manifestações. Para receber resultados como estes, para a próxima nem vale a pena partilhar os dados. Hades(17) cá vir, OCDE.
Não nego, há pequenos pormenores a afinar. No que toca à avaliação dos alunos, temos de subir para cima (redundancy – subir implies you’re going up) os indicadores(18). Por exemplo, os exames de matemática deste ano podiam ter corrido mais bem(19): não houve poucas(20) notas negativas. De facto, dá vontade de perguntar uma questão (redundant – fazer or colocar uma questão. You don’t need to use perguntar with the nouns questão or pergunta in Portuguese) aos nossos estudantes: o que é que fizes-te(21) no ano lectivo(22) passado? Em todo o caso, temos concerteza(23) capacidade para inverter esta situação e sair deste ciclo vicioso(24). Confiem, OCDE: a gente vamos(25) dar a volta a isto.
(1) possamos doesn’t need an accent
(2) I think he means “diz-se” “diria”
(3) Looks like the wrong tense. Educated guess would be that he means “Haverão” No, you berk, it’s haverá because haver should always be third person singular when it’s used in this sense, as a substitute for “existir”
(4) Should be há. The “atrás” later in the sentence is redundant too, I think
(5) Hmmm…. this looks fishy too. Avançar implies the frente so that seems redundant, and “para” instead of “em” seems surprising so I think this is another mistake
(6) Tem partido seems to be OK (it looked wrong in the first version) but “ambos os dois” is a redundancy of course.
(7) Not a grammar error, I think but seems like a misuse of the expression “In the sense of”. It gets misused a lot in english too.
(8) Surprisingly not an error. Retratar-se can mean tratar-se novamente. Pre-AO it would have been retractar-se But it has been changed. Hm… Confusing. OK, I’m blaming the AO for this. It’s like para all over again.
(9) Looks like we’re in mesoclise territory: Fá-lo-ia
(10) Mal-estar
(11) I’m starting to get paranoid and feel like I’m missing loads. I don’t quite know what the joke is here but this is such an odd word that it has to be a wrong. I know it can mean sunny, but its just not a word I’ve heard before so I smell shenanigans.
(12) Ha! It hadn’t really occurred to me but although veemente is an adjective, the presence of the “-mente” at the end makes it look like an adverb. It should be veementemente! Vehemently.
(13) Organização, presumably
(14) Cidadãos
(15) Popular general knowledge quiz answer, which is the only word in the language that is pluralised in the middle, not the end, quaisquer, not quaisqueres!
(16) Just onde
(17) Getting a bit lost here. I know it’s quite common that people write “há des” instead of “hás de” but I haven’t seen it without a hyphen so maybe he really means Hades is coming. Oh wait, no, apparently people really do write Hades – example here. The sentence immediately before this one seems impenetrable and I feel like there’s something wrong with it but I don’t know what
(18) So it looks like the indicators/standards have to go up but he starts off saying “we have to go up…” so I think maybe it’s just that the verb doesn’t match what I take as being the subject of the verb…?
(19) Melhor
(20) There weren’t few… seems like a double negative, no? (OK, looking at it again, it’s a triple negative There were not a few bad marks meaning there were a lot of bad marks, which is in keeping with what he’s saying. Fair enough. I’m my opinion, this many switchnacksnin a sentence is bad form because it’s confusing but fair enough, not an actual error!)
(21) Fizeste is a common mistake apparently (see here for example) but it’s been pointed out that he might be addressing all the students at once, instead of one at a time, and reading for the vós form: fizestes. Not how o imagined it, but yep i can see that.
(22) Looks like a pre-AO spelling
(23) Com certeza
(24) The expression is “Circulo vicioso” not “ciclo vicioso”
(25) A gente takes third person singular verb endings: a gente vai, not vamos
Luso 