Battles With The Portuguese Language Part One

I have been doing this blog for over a month now, and I have yet to post any Brazilian music, which, frankly, is shocking. So that follows after this description of my ongoing attempt to learn the language.

Yesterday and Monday I had my written and oral tests to complete my first semester as a Portuguese language student. I think I did quite well, obviously there were mistakes, but I think the most important things were all in place. I find it difficult to learn, partly I think because I don't speak French or Spanish or another latin language, and partly because I am the worst student in the world. This is where Bruna and I are different, she loves studying and would happily be a student for the rest of her days. I find sitting down to study akin to torture. I can happily occupy myself for hours with any inanimate object, a spoon or a paper clip say, if it means that I don't have to face up to that text written by someone far cleverer than me. I am the only person you'll ever meet who has a degree with no mark, no 2:1 for me, I just have a degree (I think they gave it to me so I didn't mess up their statistics).

To give you an idea of some of the diffences between our languages, I give you the example of Titanic. It's my favourite one. Firstly, the letter i is pronounced e, so the first syllable is tee. Secondly, when a letter t appears in the middle of a word, it is pronounced ch, so the second syllable is chan. Lastly, the only words that end in hard sounds (c,k,d,t etc) are words that have come from English. All Portuguese words end in a vowel or a soft sound like r, m or s if it's plural. If there is a hard sound they add an e to the end. So park becomes parque. But they also do this even if there is no e actually written there. So internet is pronounced internechee, blog becomes blogee and titanic becomes teechanikee. Which is a bit different, to say the least.

Once you've got this principle in your head, its okay, it's like using a secret code, you just have to remember it as you are speaking. In fact it's quite easy to guess words if you don't know them, just say it in English and add an e. It works surprisingly often.

Now for some musica Brasileira. My favourite Brazilian singer is Caetano Veloso. He was part of Tropicalia movement of the 1960's that has recently become popular again in the western world (if you don't own this, you really need to). I think he has a wonderful voice, it makes me want to use terrible words like pure and angelic. Don't let those words put you off, I guess what I mean is that he just has a beautiful voice. This is my favourite of his tracks:

Caetano Veloso - Tropicalia