Posted in Portuguese

As Legislativas

Referring back to the video I shared a few days ago…

No ano passado, prestei muita atenção às notícias sobre as autárquicas mas, desta vez, a eleição passou me quase despercebida no meu sofá*. Estava desperto** para os acontecimentos, claro, mas só de modo ténue. Ouvi uns podcasts, vi uns tuites. Hoje, há um vídeo na Internet – provavelmente já viste – no qual um jornalista fala das legislativas e finge pedir uma explicação sobre o leque de partidos que fizeram parte.

É óbvio que os termos políticos, como “Liberal” e “socialista” têm significados (ou seja valores?) diferentes em países diferentes, e isso é bem ilustrado pelo contraste entre Portugal e os EUA.

* One of the problems of trying to reproduce my own writing style in Portuguese is that its not always easy to distinguish jokes or deliberately odd expressions from actual mistakes. I am really trying to say “It went almost unnoticed on my sofa” but of course that sounds weird in English so in Portuguese, I had suggestions like “passou quase despercebido enquanto estava no meu sofá” which is probably a more normal way of expressing it.

** I originally wrote that I was conscious (“consciente”) of the goings-on but that seems not to be the way Portuguese speakers use that word. Instead they are awake to it.

Posted in English

Fight For Your Right to Partidos

I finished making my notebook about politics in portugal. It’s super-basic, just covering what the main parties there are, who’s in them, who the cabinet is, and a few bits and pieces like that, mostly to help me to understand the news broadcasts I’m listening to and hopefully not feel quite as lost. I exported it to a PDF which I’ll upload here in case anyone else is interested.

Obviously, bear in mind that it’s made in MS Onenote which doesn’t have portuguese spellcheck so it might have some spelling mistakes. The facts might not be spot on either but I don’t think I’m far out. See what you think.

A screenshot from the politics guide, showing some of the main parties and the president
A screenshot from the Politics PDF