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As a native (Portuguese) speaker I completely understand why something like this may have appeared! You must understand that we have such a small country and f

As a native (Portuguese) speaker I completely understand why something like this may have appeared! You must understand that we have such a small country and few foreigners bother to learn our language, even when they come to visit us. As we are a very nice bunch of people (we are, even our political revolution was made with carnation flowers [quite similar to roses], not a single bullet was shot), and we are very proud of having the oldest stable borders of all Europe (since 1180 or something like that), we are proud to be able to provide our visitors with the best possible experience. Therefore, if you don't learn our language, we must try to communicate with you in other ways! You see, we don't want foreigners to make fools out of themselves. I'll give you an example: we cook almost every part of the pork, even the pork's balls, so we don't want you to eat "tubaros" (pork's "balls") without you knowing it. we also cook the intestines (bucho), so we want you to be prepared for the experience (put some lemon). On a more serious note (although I'm speaking some truth above), if you only know a very small subset of the english vocabulary, you have to be creative. So you have to speak in English as you would do in Portuguese. Unfortunately it doesn't help that the english language sometimes mixes the verb and the predicate(?) (from our perspective, of course). An example: - João - John - é - is - tipo - guy - porreiro - nice So "O João é um tipo porreiro" translates directly to "The John is a guy nice". Then, when you translate "to the letter" local proverbs such as "Quem tem língua vai a Roma", you start getting stupid things like "With a tongue one go to Rome" which in fact means something like "He who as a tongue can go to Rome" (meaning that anyone who can speak [has a tongue] can ask for directions). All in all, in the end we just don't want our visitors to eat something they'll regret later!

mikeash 10y ago
"He who has a tongue can go to Rome." I love this. I'd like to update it for the modern age. "He who has a phone can look up Rome."
- marcosdumay 10y ago
  He who has a GPS can go down the cliff?
- IIAOPSW 10y ago
  He who has some battery left can hail an uber.
- Mz 10y ago
  If you have a smartphone, you can get to Rome. Though, it kind of removes the social element and replaces it with technical skill. Not exactly a one for one correlation.
  - mikeash 10y ago
    But doesn't that just reflect the changes we see? People chat less and screw with their phones more.
    - Mz 10y ago
      The world has changed in many dimensions. Very often, what we notice and "agree" upon is merely the tip of the iceberg. It could be argued that the degree to which we talk online via forums, social media, email, etc means we actually chat more, not less. I wouldn't begin to know how to come up with meaningful stats. For many people, "screwing with their phone" very often involves chatting online. But we also have incredible location related resources these days that didn't exist until relatively recently. Thanks to the development of GIS and GPS, we can go online and get exact coordinates. But, also, traveling that far can involve booking flights, train tickets, etc. That is an entirely different skill set. You can be terrible at conversing with people but good at using online mapping resources and ticketing resources. Technology has multipled the ways we can skin this cat. But, having traveled via local and commuter buses from San Diego county to the High Desert and done part of the research online and part by talking with bus drivers while en route, I don't think being good at asking directions is an obsolete skill. It is a skill that you perhaps can get by without if you do not have it. But I could probably still get to Rome if I needed to by talking with people along the way, whether I had a phone or not. It's something I am decently talented at, on a good day.
GnarfGnarf 10y ago
Portuguese is a beautiful sounding language. I love Fado and Brazilian music. I am fluent in French and Spanish, I wish I could have learned Portuguese.
- tluyben2 10y ago
  Brazilian Portuguese sounds different than Portuguese in PT; I like the sound of Brazilian. To me Portuguese from PT sounds more like something from eastern europa. Matter of taste ofcourse but I have heard that statement a lot from clients since we have offices in PT.
  - somethingsimple 10y ago
    For years I've been wondering why Continental Portuguese sounds like an Eastern European language. Sometimes I overhear people speaking some Eastern European language and my first impression is that they are speaking Portuguese, but then I realize I can't understand what they're saying (I'm a native Portuguese speaker). Being Brazilian, Continental Portuguese sounds awful to me. But then I've heard many Portuguese people saying that Brazilian Portuguese sounds awful to them :)
    - tluyben2 10y ago
      > But then I've heard many Portuguese people saying that Brazilian Portuguese sounds awful to them :) Yep, many do say that.
    - nunobrito 10y ago
      This happened after 1974 when the country had lost the decade-long proxy war against USA and URSS. As price to pay, the territories outside Europe were turned by the winning party into independent nations. What was left of Portugal (European-side) was now a small land with difficulty to defend its independence from the neighbor Spain that would now be hostile to communist regimes, besides historically aiming to get the whole of Iberia under a single government. The new government installed in continental Portugal was initially populated by the URSS cronies (Alvaro Cunhal & co.) who quickly realized that military power wouldn't be readily available to protect their sovereignty and grip in power. However, their own party (PCP) was familiar with resistance (they had survived for decades in such manner) and at that time, Portuguese was closer to the Brazilian Portuguese and easy for Spanish people to understand, which they saw as a flaw. So they made arrangements for Russian teachers to modify the language taught in schools, alongside with government intervention in media (newspapers, radio, tv, events) to gradually modify spoken Portuguese to end with the (now famous) "chh" that you hear so often. Kids would learn this new variant straight in primary schools. In case of invasion from Spain, the language would ensure resistance and a painful/slow path to complete assimilation in forthcoming years. Fortunately, URSS failed as a project, communism quickly failed in Portugal after economy went bankrupt, twice. Portugal and Spain joined together EU in mid 80's, both governments resumed working together as happening before 74 but the language modifications were a true success. The population didn't realized this had happened until it was already so different from other nations that use Portuguese. Portuguese aged today between 30 to 45 in mainland will be surprised with the ease how they can pronounce Russian correctly. Ironically, Brazilian Portuguese is truer to the original Portuguese than what you find in Portugal today. Source: - not on the Internet, not in English language, not likely in public docs
deleted 10y ago
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mikeash 10y ago

"He who has a tongue can go to Rome." I love this. I'd like to update it for the modern age. "He who has a phone can look up Rome."

marcosdumay 10y ago
He who has a GPS can go down the cliff?
IIAOPSW 10y ago
He who has some battery left can hail an uber.
Mz 10y ago
If you have a smartphone, you can get to Rome. Though, it kind of removes the social element and replaces it with technical skill. Not exactly a one for one correlation.
- mikeash 10y ago
  But doesn't that just reflect the changes we see? People chat less and screw with their phones more.
  - Mz 10y ago
    The world has changed in many dimensions. Very often, what we notice and "agree" upon is merely the tip of the iceberg. It could be argued that the degree to which we talk online via forums, social media, email, etc means we actually chat more, not less. I wouldn't begin to know how to come up with meaningful stats. For many people, "screwing with their phone" very often involves chatting online. But we also have incredible location related resources these days that didn't exist until relatively recently. Thanks to the development of GIS and GPS, we can go online and get exact coordinates. But, also, traveling that far can involve booking flights, train tickets, etc. That is an entirely different skill set. You can be terrible at conversing with people but good at using online mapping resources and ticketing resources. Technology has multipled the ways we can skin this cat. But, having traveled via local and commuter buses from San Diego county to the High Desert and done part of the research online and part by talking with bus drivers while en route, I don't think being good at asking directions is an obsolete skill. It is a skill that you perhaps can get by without if you do not have it. But I could probably still get to Rome if I needed to by talking with people along the way, whether I had a phone or not. It's something I am decently talented at, on a good day.

GnarfGnarf 10y ago

Portuguese is a beautiful sounding language. I love Fado and Brazilian music. I am fluent in French and Spanish, I wish I could have learned Portuguese.

tluyben2 10y ago
Brazilian Portuguese sounds different than Portuguese in PT; I like the sound of Brazilian. To me Portuguese from PT sounds more like something from eastern europa. Matter of taste ofcourse but I have heard that statement a lot from clients since we have offices in PT.
- somethingsimple 10y ago
  For years I've been wondering why Continental Portuguese sounds like an Eastern European language. Sometimes I overhear people speaking some Eastern European language and my first impression is that they are speaking Portuguese, but then I realize I can't understand what they're saying (I'm a native Portuguese speaker). Being Brazilian, Continental Portuguese sounds awful to me. But then I've heard many Portuguese people saying that Brazilian Portuguese sounds awful to them :)
  - tluyben2 10y ago
    > But then I've heard many Portuguese people saying that Brazilian Portuguese sounds awful to them :) Yep, many do say that.
  - nunobrito 10y ago
    This happened after 1974 when the country had lost the decade-long proxy war against USA and URSS. As price to pay, the territories outside Europe were turned by the winning party into independent nations. What was left of Portugal (European-side) was now a small land with difficulty to defend its independence from the neighbor Spain that would now be hostile to communist regimes, besides historically aiming to get the whole of Iberia under a single government. The new government installed in continental Portugal was initially populated by the URSS cronies (Alvaro Cunhal & co.) who quickly realized that military power wouldn't be readily available to protect their sovereignty and grip in power. However, their own party (PCP) was familiar with resistance (they had survived for decades in such manner) and at that time, Portuguese was closer to the Brazilian Portuguese and easy for Spanish people to understand, which they saw as a flaw. So they made arrangements for Russian teachers to modify the language taught in schools, alongside with government intervention in media (newspapers, radio, tv, events) to gradually modify spoken Portuguese to end with the (now famous) "chh" that you hear so often. Kids would learn this new variant straight in primary schools. In case of invasion from Spain, the language would ensure resistance and a painful/slow path to complete assimilation in forthcoming years. Fortunately, URSS failed as a project, communism quickly failed in Portugal after economy went bankrupt, twice. Portugal and Spain joined together EU in mid 80's, both governments resumed working together as happening before 74 but the language modifications were a true success. The population didn't realized this had happened until it was already so different from other nations that use Portuguese. Portuguese aged today between 30 to 45 in mainland will be surprised with the ease how they can pronounce Russian correctly. Ironically, Brazilian Portuguese is truer to the original Portuguese than what you find in Portugal today. Source: - not on the Internet, not in English language, not likely in public docs

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]