Cracking Up

Thanks to my younger sister sending me an invite, I'm now addicted to Trivia Crack.  Most of the games I have going are in Portuguese + a few in Spanish and English.  I even tried one in German just to see if I could get very far, but no such luck.  It's a good way to think on your feet in the language(s) you're learning.  All those futebol questions are killing me though. ;)

Short and Sweet

For those learning Brazilian Portuguese, this is a great channel to subscribe to.  Enjoy.  :)

Foreign Correspondence

I've totally been neglecting this blog. I don't want each update to be the same ol' boring, "Today I studied Portuguese object pronouns," so unless I have something useful to say, I refrain from posting. As a blogger, I don't know which is worse: talking about boring things or not talking at all.

At least this time I have something a little more interesting to post. In January of this year, I began sponsoring a girl from Haiti through Compassion International. It was sort of by accident, because I had originally expected to sponsor a girl from the Dominican Republic, but at the time they apparently didn't have any urgent need for a sponsor in any of their programs there, so the info I got ended up being for a girl from Haiti. A few months later, I began sponsoring a girl from Brazil and another girl from Nicaragua.

I don't know Haitian Creole at all, so have been writing and will continue to write in English with perhaps a sprinkling of Creole thrown in for good measure. For example, she turned ten yesterday, so I sent her a quick email to wish her a happy birthday and included a short Bible verse in Creole.

I do, however, know enough Spanish and Portuguese to be able to write simple letters to an eight- and six-year old girl. The problem is that I don't know if I should. I don't want to cause any hassles or confusion. That said, in the letter writing section of their FAQs, they do say it's perfectly fine to write in the child's native language, because the translation staff will go over the letters no matter what, so either way, it's gonna be looked at and perhaps modified where appropriate. I guess it's pretty obvious I'm leaning toward writing in Portuguese and Spanish, though if I do, I think the best thing is to be consistent and commit to sticking with whatever language I initially write in.

BTW, if you'd like to hear or try to read Creole, check out VOA.

Language Refresh

I went to World Market a couple of weeks ago and bought two diaries in which to attempt to write the old-fashioned way: one for Portuguese and one for Bulgarian so far (I would definitely like to get better at handwritten Cyrillic).

You Say What I Say

I've been making Slavic vocab lists. When learning languages that share a family (and even those that don't), it's helpful to look for alike words and phrases. That is, instead of thinking in terms of a single language, condense and conquer. ;)

Adeus, inverno!

I thought I would write some quick sentences alluding to the warm temps we've been experiencing. These sentences are pretty basic, but it's been a long time since I've attempted to write anything in Portuguese.

O tempo tem estado agradável esta semana.  O sol se põe mais tarde e nasce mais cedo agora que a primavera está praticamente aqui.  Quando está outono no Brasil, está primavera em Portugal e nos Estados Unidos.

The weather has been nice this week.  The sun is setting later and rising earlier now that spring is almost here.  When it's fall in Brazil, it's spring in Portugal and the United States.

Portuguese Pronunciation (and Dominican Spanish)

Hi all, glad to say it's the second year of this blog, and my motivation for making serious progress in the languages I'm learning is higher than it's been for a while. The only thing I need to do is check my enthusiasm, so I don't get ahead of myself, which is always my downfall.

I know I kept mentioning I would discuss my pronunciation of Portuguese, and will keep it brief by simply saying that when listening to the two BP accents recorded here, I was better able to match the second female contributor (mistakenly placed under the EP text) when speaking along.

Switching to espanhol, here's a little info about Dominincan Spanish you may find interesting...

 
(The link where I got the following is dead, but wanted to keep the info)...

Dominicans speak a Spanish that they describe as "morcha'o", or cut off.

There is the tendency to simplify certain consonant combinations, especially -ado, and to level c, z, and s such that cazar, casar and cacer might sound similar.

Unlike Mexican Spanish, for instance, Dominicans emphasize the vowel sounds.

Dominicans truncate or aspirate their final s es such that "Vamos a las dos o a las tres" sounds like "vamo a las doh o a lah treh."

Like our Puerto Rican and Cuban neighbors, the /r/ final may be flattened into an /l/. In fact the pronunciation of the final r is indicative of regionalism: people from the Cibao speak with the "ai," the south with rolled /~r/, and the east with the flattened /l/.  The Cibao ai is a uniquely identifying linguistic habit. Mujer sounds like mujeai, and "algunos" would be pronounced "aiigunos."

The Dominican Republic is a tuteo country, which is to say that the form of the familiar second person is "tu."

Support Your Local Library

I went to the library today and checked out 1944's An Invitation to Portuguese. It builds on your knowledge by asking questions and giving answers in Portuguese, plus some grammar notes, which is the only place English appears (fine by me). Seems like a good method, but this book is so old-fashioned, it's amusing and quaint.