Part of the joy of returning again and again to somewhere is that you begin to get to know local community, and we have already made some good friends with Portuguese and other Europeans who live in the east Algarve. Our long stays are also encouraging us to learn more about Portugal, and that of course includes the culture and language. I must admit I struggle with languages, including my own, and so my Portuguese is coming along incredibly slowly. I’ve decided I really need to rectify this and so we plan to attend a language school on our return this winter. In the meantime I’d thought I’d share a few Portuguese proverbs and idioms which caught my eye.
I’ll finish with an idiom I have come across a few times – O Português é uma língua muito traiçoeir. The literal translation is that Portuguese is a treacherous language, and I have heard the English in Portugal say repeatedly in English how tricky or difficult they find Portuguese. I’m not sure it is any more difficult than any other language. I know from experience that French, German and English can all trip you up, and Henriette Walter in “L’Aventure des langues en Occident’ says of English ‘It is impossible to give an idea, even approximately, the lexical diversity of the English’!
If you enjoy language then do check out a couple of other posts I wrote a few months ago, the first was also on sayings and the most recent on name pronunciation. And if photography is more your thing pop along and visit Cee’s Odd Ball Photo Challenges.