St Patrick's Day Shamrock Symbol On Planes, Buildings, Stamps And Souvenirs

 Yesterday I photographed jolly balloons in green, white and orange, outside Wetherspoons pub in Hatch End, near Hatch End railway station, in NW London, England.

The colours of the balloons are the colour of the flag of Eire, the Republic of Ireland, the south, from Wikipedia which tells you more.

The main colour in the north is green, from the Emerald Isle. Green because of the abundant vegetation, like Wales (where a famous book was How Green Was My Valley). The west gets the rain which grows the abundant plants, grass, and trees. And lakes, and rivers.

Green is the colour of the shamrock. 

Shamrocks 

St Patrick used the shamrock to convey the idea of the trinity, and you can see the shamrock on a stained glass window of St Patrick holding a shamrock, in a church. 

#Shamrocks are displayed on British coins, stamps, and on Buckingham Palace, and aeroplanes. 

You can buy hats and tee shirts featuring shamrocks. to be prepared for next year, or any other Irish gathering, you can buy a dress or cardigan with green shamrocks from Amazon.

 I bought flip-flops with shamrocks from a poolside shop in Singapore, to be seasonally dressed for a Toastmasters International speakers' club.

Useful Websites

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Patrick%27s_Day

Armagh, Northern Ireland, and St Patrick

https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Armagh

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Patricks-Women-Clearance-Outerwear-Sweatshirt/dp/

Updated March 19th 2026.

Handy Italian words for speaking at dinner in restaurants, and reading menus

Flag of Italy.

The three colours of the Italian flag, green white and orange, are used in a starter in restaurants, called the tricolore meaning the three colours. Green could be vegeble or salad. White could be cheese. Red could be tomato.

 Italian - English

a noi non piace

anatra - duck

bianco - white

carote - carrots

dieta - diet

dopo - after

e - and

ecco - see / look / here you are (giving or showing something)

felici - happy

frutti - fruit

frutti

funghi - mushroom(s) (think of fungus. In English we say mushroom omelette, but you receive more than one mushroom. The Italian uses the plural, ending in i). 

grazie - thank you (think of grateful)

ho bisogno di - I need

incidente - accident

insalata - salad

lei - she

lui vuole - he wants

mi scusi - excuse me

molto - much / very

molto gentili - very kind

nero - black

opzioni - options

pepe - pepper

pesce - fish

(il) petto - breast (eg of chicken, or chest in hospital)

pollo - chicken

prego - (in answer to grazie) you're welcome / not at all

rosso - red

salmone - salmon

segno - sign

(in) segreto - a secret

signore - sir

sono - I am

sono a dieta - I am on a diet

subito - straight away

troppo - too much

tonno - tuna

verde - green

vino - wine

vino bianco - white wine (For wine to drink, or white wine sauce on food. The adjective goes after the noun in Italian, as in casa mia meaning my house)

vitello - veal

vogliamo - we want

vuoi - do you want

English - Italian

accident - incidente

after - dopo

and - e

black - nero

carrots - carote

do you want - vuoi

duck - anatra

excuse me - mi scusi

fish - pesce

green - verde

he wants - lui vuole

I am - sono

I am on a diet - sono a dieta

I need (I have need of) - ho bisogno di 

many - molto

mushroom(s) - funghi

options - opzionni

pepper - pepe

red - rosso

salad - insalata

salmon - salmone

she - lei

sign - segno

sir - signore

straight awa y/ immediately - subito

too much - troppo

tuna - tonno

thank you - grazie

veal - vitello

we want - vogliamo

white - bianco

white wine - vino bianco

wine - vino

You're welcome - prego

Useful Websites

Duolingo

Wikipedia - Italian language

Wiivoyage Italian phrasebook

Please share links to your favourite posts.

St Patrick's Day - not over - it's today! Monday!

 The weekend may be over but Monday March 17 th 2025 is St Patrick's Day.  (See my previous posts.) 

Green, white and orange balllons outside Wetherspoons pub, The Moon & Sixpence, in Hatch End. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright. 

The orange, white and green balloons brighten the Broadway in Hatch End in north west London. The balloons decorate the seating area at the front of The Moon And Sixpence Wetherspoons pub.

Who climbs up to install those balloons? Your questions are answered by a sign just inside the door.

Balloons by Nation Events. Sign at Wetherspoons pub. 

Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

In case you wondered about the colours, they are the colours of the flat of Ireland, Eire.

Flag and Balloons Outside Wetherspoons Pub In Hatch End, North West London.

Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

For those at work, there's still lunch time and Monday evening. For students and the retired, or anybody who chooses to take a day off, you can party any time of day, or all day.

I think of the songs I heard in school when I was a child growing up in England, and also on the radio. 

When Irish eyes are smiling. In Dublin's fair city where the maids are so pretty ,,,

New Zealand Airline Socks In Beautiful Colours

 I love airline socks. And these stripey socks match many of my outfits.

Angela Lansbury wearing New Zealand Airline socks. Photo by Trevor Sharot.

Don't you love free gifts? Doesn't everybody? Apparently not everybody. I saw a sock left behind, by a departed passenger, as I left the plane. 

For a fleeting moment, I was tempted to leap across the plane and grab the abandoned sock. But the thought fled.

I trundled on, forever haunted by the thought that I had lost out. A wasted opportunity. A wasted pair of socks. If you ever find an abandoned pair of airline socks, send them to me. Even if they have been worn by a member of one's own family, or another family, a pair of airline socks can be washed by hand, and often by machine. They come in really handy. 

I have airline socks from Singapore Airlines, pre-Covid, in navy blue, or maroon. I have a red pair from Virgin Atlantic.  

These New Zealand socks are the best. Beautiful colours. Stripey. Go with green or blue. It is worthwhile going premium Economy on Air New Zealand just to get the socks. A great start to my holiday.

Useful Websites

Please share links to your favourite posts.

Confusing flags - Can you tell the flag of Ireland from the flag of the Ivory Coast?

 The flag or Eire (Ireland) and the flag of the Ivory Coast have the same colours. But reversed right to left.

Flag of Ireland.

Green white orange. The orange is for the Protestants in the north.

So the green is on the side of the post.

The Ivory Coast flag is the other way around.

Eire on the left. Ivory coast on the right.

Please share links to your favourite posts.

Celebrating St Patrick's Day with the colour green as well as orange and white

 

St Patrick's day is celebrated in Northern Ireland as well as Eire.

The official flag of Northern Ireland is the union flag or Union Jack which includes the Saltire (X or diagonal cross) of St Patrick which is red on white.

The first thing to notice is the flag of the Republic of Ireland, or Eire, is that it is a tricolour, three colours. Orange white and green, symbolising uniting the green colour of the Catholics, the orange of the Protestants in the north and white in the middle for a truce. It looks a bit like the Italian flag, which is red, white and green. But, if you remember William of Orange you will be sure to identify it.

I looked up William of Orange. The name comes a French town, in the south of France, near Avignon. It was not originally named after oranges but because the name sounded like orange they adopted a symbol of three oranges and eventually changed the spelling to fit. Nowadays the colour orange has come to be associated with William or Orange. 

Useful Websites

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Northern_Ireland

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Ireland

Burma or Myanmar - What Armchair Travellers Need to Know and See

 I have a Burmese or Myanmar national in a Toastmasters club. I began wondering which national holidays she might be celebrating, so that I could include them in a calendar of events for 2022 and meeting themes.

Burma is the old name for the country, now called Myanmar, but Burma is still used. Here is the flag.

It has yellow, green and red horizontal stripes, very colourful and  jolly. The colours are made more pronounced by the contrasting five-pointed white star in the centre.

The yellow symbolizes solidarity. Green means peace and lush greenery. Red represents determination. The white star stands for unity.

I had to rename the flag with both of the country's names, Burma and Myanmar, because I could not find it saved on my computer.

The country is large, huge. 

Cities, Sights and Landmarks

Golden Rock, Burma/Myanmar

Myanmar/Burma, Mount Popa

The language looks very pretty, all curves, but very difficult.

Numbers[edit]

Burmese numbers follow the Arabic system of numerals.

0 

၀ (thoun-nya)သုည

1 

၁ (tit)တစ်

2 

၂ (hni)နှစ်

3 

၃ (thoun)သုံး

4 

၄ (lei)လေး

5 

၅ (nga)ငါး

6 

၆ (chao)ခြောက်

7 

၇ (kun hni)ခုနှစ်

8 

၈ (shit)ရှစ်

9 

၉ (koe)ကိုး

10 

၁၀ (se)ဆယ်

11 

၁၁ (seh-tit)ဆယ့်တစ်

Useful Websites

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burmese_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burmese_respelling_of_the_English_alphabet

The numbers one to ten are easier to recognize and learn, in this website:

https://wikitravel.org/en/Burmese_phrasebook

https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Myanmar

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Myanmar

About the author

(About the Author of this blog, Author Angela Lansbury)

BIOGRAPHY

Angela Lansbury B A Hons ACG ALB PM5 EH5 DL5 VC5 
The Author of several books, including  Etiquette For Every Occasion. Wedding Speeches & Toasts. How to be the Best Man. Quick Quotations. Who Said What When.

Blogs travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com

dressofthedayangela.blogspot.com

translateforfun.blogspot.com

Braddell Heights Advanced Toastmasters Speakers Club Vice President Public Relations (VPPR), Previous President

Join BHA 1st Wednesday 7pm and 3rd Saturday 2 pm Singapore time 

Vice President Public Relations (VP PR) of Tampines Changkat Advanced;

Secretary of weekly online Singapore International Dynamic Toastmasters Speakers’ Club;

Member and past president of Harrovians toastmasters club, UK; Past member of HOD Toastmasters, London. Past member in Singapore of: Toastmasters Club of Singapore (TCS); Tiarel; and Senja Cashew.

More details from Toastmasters International find a club.

Regular attendee at annual Swanwick Writers’ School, England.

Regular attendee at annual Writers’ Holiday, Wales.

Contributor to poetry readings, and after tea courses on: Speaking On Radio To Promote Books; and Plots And Character.

Winner of many club and area speaking contests in the UK and Singapore.

Language advisor to Empire Toastmasters club in Indonesia.

Language and speech workshops in Singapore.

Speaker on radio and TV in England, Scotland, the USA, and Australia.

Compiler of a school course on public speaking for teachers to prepare pupils for school open days with attending ceremonies before government ministers, Singapore.

Former member of Harrow Writers’ Circle, London, and two writing groups in Singapore.

Angela is on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter. She would be delighted to link up with new friends.

I  also have a blog on comic poems.

 Please share links to your favourite posts.

The Portuguese flag and Portuguese words for colours

Lockdown is lifting. Get ready for your next trip to Portugal, Madeira, Brazil, or to reading about trips to these places and more news on Praia da Luz and Madeleine McCann.


Portuguese flag

Portuguese - English

English - Portuguese

Do you have
a Portuguese flag

Português - inglês
Inglês - português
Você tem
uma bandeira portuguesa

red
orange
yellow
green
blue

vermelho - red (like vermilion)
laranja (like orange)
amarelo
verde (like verdant)
azul

navy blue/dark blue
violet
purple
pink
black - white

Português - inglês Inglês - português Você tem azul marinho / azul escuro (like marine, like obscure) tolet (violet and tolet both end with et) roxa Rosa (like rose pink) Preto - black; branco - white (like blank white paper)

grey
not grey

striped
patterned

no striped
polka dots

coloured
multi coloured

bright colours
pale colours

cinzento
não cinza
listrado (striped like lines crossing out a shopping list)
estampado (pattern stamped on it)
não listrado
bolinhas
colori - coloured
multi colorido - multi coloured
cores brilhantes - brilliant colours

cores pálidas - pale colours

I like
I want
small
bigger

how much
cheaper

Perfect
I'll buy it

Thank you
Goodbye

Eu gosto
eu quero
pequeno
Maior (big or major)

quanto
mais barato (m for much or more)
Perfeito - perfect PERFE .T in both words
Vou comprar
Obrigado - obliged/much obliged/ thanks
Adeus - like mixing Spanish adios with French adieu

About the Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

I and my family have lived in the UK, Spain, the USA and Singapore. I am a trave writer and phtographer and teacher of English A level and English as a foreign language.
Please come to a Toastmasters International Club where the English clubs have a langauge evaluator or grammarian.  We also have French, German, Mandarin Chinese, Tamil and other language clubs based in Singapore and many more online around the world which because of Covid-19 are now meeting online.

I am President of Braddell Heights Advanced, meeting every Wednesday, on zoom the first Wednesday of the month but the other Wednesdays are workshops on app learncool.sg
Or quicker to type and easier to remember:  tinyurl.com/BHACOOL

Useful Websites
https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogs
https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2019/04/how-to-say-thank-you-in-several.html
https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2019/05/introducing-yourself-in-english-spanish.html
https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2020/01/second-set-of-portuguese-words.html Please share links to your favourite posts
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8384769/Major-breakthrough-hunt-Madeleine-McCann-police-identify-German-suspect.html
https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lista_de_patrim%C3%B3nio_edificado_no_distrito_de_Faro
translate.google.com
duolingo.com

Welsh Flag - snippet

Baner Cymru or Y Ddraig Goch, meaning 'the red dragon'. The green and white are the Tudor colours. Henry, Prince of Wales, had the red dragon on his flag and eventually it became the flag of Wales.

Gosh, how did I miss that information. I found it in Wikipedia. I should have read that dozens of times, whenever I looked up the flag. 

Maybe I read it before and didn't care. My family just returned from Wales and I'm fact checking. Suddenly, that information jumped out at me. Those people from long ago, with their ambitions and pride, still influencing us today.

About the Author
Travel Writer and photographer, author and speaker. Teacher of English and other languages. Making language learning and travel fun. (Making it fun is not the same as making fun of it. Oh the fun of puns.) 
Please share links to your favourite posts.

Indian Vegetarian Restaurant, Conveniently in Central Singapore, Has Delicious Halwa

Singapore Flag

Nalan Restaurant is easy to reach. You walk underground from City Hall station which is on both the red north-south line and the green east-west line.



The restaurant sits beside the central fountains which are at the bottom of the staircase circling up to the level above where you find the food court.
Here are the fountains.

our friends had found a table by the wall, which I prefer. Last time we had a table of six in the centre.


Nalan vegetarian restaurant. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

We started with drinks. You can have sweet or salty or mango lassi. I opted for rose milk which is rarer.


Rose milk and mango lassi. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

We were given two menus. The simpler one is easier to follow. You can have a South Indian thali or a North Indian Thali.



South Indian Thali at Nalan. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Thali
If you can't decide just goes for the Thali, a tray of mixed food. In the centre was including white rice which got compliments.  Several flavours of food - enough to share around.

Finally, one small white cup contained the most delicious carrot dessert, a yellow liquid with teeny orange shredded carrot at the base.


Carrot halwa dessert. Nalan vegetarian restaurant. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

I avoided Masala dosai which contains potato, which I love, and ordered last time I visited here.  But often in a thin crunchy pancake. I wanted a bread which was more chewy. And to try something new.

I opted for one of the set meals, six and seven sounded similar. The dearer one, number 6, contained potato.

My friend ordered garlic bread.

Garlic bread at Nalan vegetarian restaurant. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

I finished with a final sip of the carrot dessert and found shredded carrot underneath.



Nalan vegetarian restaurant. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

The price was about 25 dollars per couple. We had the two drinks and a bottle of water water, no coffee or tea.

We had phoned and asked to book a table for Sunday lunch time. They said they opened at 10.30 am and no need to book.

I kept the receipt which was handy because it gave me the address if I need to tell anybody else for a repeat visit.

Our friends asked us, "What are you going to do next?"

The signs by the escalator point you to many local attractions including the Peranakan Museum. about the clothes and food of the families combining two cultures, Chinese and Malay, often with a Chinese husband and Malay wife.

Address
13 Stamford Road,
Capitol Piazzo
#B2-54
Singapore 178884
Tel: +65 6336 6404

Useful Websites
Malan
http://www.nalan.com.sg/

MRT
https://landtransportguru.net/city-hall-station/

Singapore
singaporeair.com

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Floodlit Columns Which Change Colours

Columns which change colours. Singapore Polytechnic. Beside Dover MRT train station.
Photos by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Seen in Singapore: Green Rooftop And Rainbow

Singapore flag.

The Rainbow
I took this photo from the window of a bus. I wanted the rainbow.

I always envied pictures of rainbows. I wanted one of my own. At last I saw one.

In a shaking bus! I took dozens. Sometimes we went over a bump and it was all out of focus. Sometimes a lamp post in the way was distracting. I had some photos over cranes and building sites.

This picture was the best. The rainbow frames the building and adds a comment on it, nature in sympathy, in harmony. I liked the building.

The Building
When I looked back at the photo a day later, I noticed the trees on the rooftop of the building, and did not notice the rainbow until a moment later.

Singapore is very green. It does not get that way by accident. Many years I have driven across to nearby Johor Bahru in Malaysia and the change is remarkable. Singapore invests a lot of time and effort in planting and maintaining the plants along the highways and the housing estates, the vast majority of which are publicly owned or managed HDBs.

The private developments also compete for customers with feng shui, harmony with surroundings, supposed to provide an attractive atmosphere conducive to the well-being of the inhabitants and visitors and to attract customers and wealth.


Travel Tips

travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com

australia.com

visitbritain.com

visitbritain.shop.com

visitbritain.org

visittheusa.co.uk

visitsingapore.com

Singapore Airlines: 

singaporeair.com

Author

Angela Lansbury, BA Hons, ACG, ALB. Travel writer and photographer, author, speaker, trainer specialising in the English language, etiquette and communication.

Water bottles and drinking water when travelling

You need moisture in Singapore where it is so hot that you are perspiring all the time. At a morning meeting I looked for a drink. No water provided. 

The days of giving everybody a small plastic bottle of water and coming to an end (October 2018). Even if you stay in air conditioned offices and use cars and taxis, only a proportion of the car parks are underground. You spend a lot of time in overground car parks or bus stops or open air taxi stands. So you need water.

Yes, going green, saving trees, not using plastic, all very well, but people need a drink. I went to two meetings in a day with no water provided.

I used to carry water bottles. Then I got backache. I ditched the umbrella and water bottle, just carrying too much. 

We are in transit over water in Singapore. Early days - no water fountains. Then along come the gyms and hotels and coffee shop. Now you are expected to carry a water bottle and fill it up from a water fountain which has paper cups or no cups. You can buy a collapsible cup.

Author

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Cakes, which is the durian cake and which is the pandan cake - green or yellow?

Yellow or green? Yes, this yellow cake must be the durian.

The green one in my previous post must have been the durian. 

On top is a kind of cream, a bit like a blancmange. Advantage, more moist than the usual cakes which look like sponge cake. 

You need moisture in Singapore where it is so hot that you are perspiring all the time.

 Underneath is the cake. Maybe the flavour is only in the topping. Even so, not much flavour. Not enough for me. If you are scared of durian, try this. You will wonder what the fuss is about.

Author

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer.

Durian cake in Singapore and durian comparison

I love durian cakes and ice cream although I don't like the fruit. This cake had very little flavour nor aroma. Could not offend. But not sufficiently exciting to make me want to buy it. I did not eat a second piece. Interesting. 

I am glad somebody bought it and I am glad I tried it. Saved me from wasting my money. Oops - I think the green was pandan and the yellow was durian. I also find pandan cakes have almost non-existent flavour which does not match up to the enticing colour.

The Japanese would say, "very subtle flavour". 

I thought the durian season was over, because McDonald's had changed their formely durian flavour McFlurry (flavoured melting ice cream in a drink carton) 'drink' flavours to strawberry and chocolate. Flavour of the month.

 I asked an assistant and she thought her branch changed every two months. I presume although they have some autonomy that the bulk buying of McDonalds meant the same flavours were available to all branches. You either stock it or you don't.

I have to say nobody else has supplied a durian flavour to match the one from McDonatds which I tried and wrote about previously.

Perfect mild coffee from Italy Giuliano - can you spot the coffee bean?

How many coffee brands can you name? I can think of: 

Nescafe, 

Rombout, 

Illy (Italian); 

Nespresso, 

Cafepod. 

I just added King Coffee from Vietnam. That's six, at least, and any supermarket will show you several more. Now here's another to add to my list: Giuliano. Italian coffee.

Giuliano translates as Julian in English and is a popular first name or surname in Italy. The company started in 1950 when Michele Giuliano Albo started travelling to coffee regions and mixing his own blends to sell to restaurants and coffee bars. The tradition has been continued in this family by his daughter Maria and her husband Federico and by the next generation. (Yes, it's Fed not Fred.)

Giuliano Italian coffee. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

We stopped for a coffee at this stand at ProWine Asia in Singapore. The coffee was a very soothing, soft, mild coffee. I find it hard to get mild coffee nowadays. At our home-offices we used to buy pods from Nescaffe which are expensive. We found Cafepod which were cheaper but they discontinued the mild coffee. Now, a new discovery. Giuliano from Italy. They have been going a long time, since 1950, more than 50 years. 

How will I remember the name? Like Julia. I know. 

I shall certainly recognize their distinctive, attractive green and white cups. I hadn't noticed, until it was pointed out to me by their rep, that the design includes the white G, the initial letter of Giuliano, plus the little coffee bean. To me it looked like two cups.

Here on the saucer you can see the coffee bean design.

Something about the cups makes the coffee taste better.

Note that the French word's spelling is café but the Italian is caffè with the f doubled and the accent the other way around.

Their website shows their shop will have themed coffees, sugar packets, aprons and a matching clock in the same simple green and white style and tee-shirts for the staff.

You can sign up for a monthly delivery of a mixed case of gourmet foods from around the world, different country each month.

Orso Laboratorio Caffè  Via Claudio Luigi Berthollet, 30h, 10125 Torino, Italy.

Useful Websites

http://www.giulianocaffe.it/en/

https://www.facebook.com/Giulianocaffe/

https://magazine.trytheworld.com/12-ways-to-enjoy-coffee-when-youre-tired-of-drinking-it/

https://www.trytheworld.com/pages/the-gift

Author

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please share links to your favourite posts. I have several on Italy, Umbria, and Italian restaurants in London, England and learning Italian.

More Welsh Word For You To Recognize And Learn

Parking sign in Welsh and English at Fishguard Fort, Wales. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Notice the word welcome.

Problem
How can I learn Welsh easily? How can I teach Welsh to children and adults?

Answer
Just read the signs all around you in Wales. If you like, make an alphabetical list of the words in Welsh-English and English - Welsh. Or photograph the sign and stick it on your fridge door. Underline or highlight the easy words in green or yellow; underline or highlight the difficult ones, the next day, (or next week after you have learned the easy ones) in red.

Here are a few:

Welsh - English 
(Spaces are inserted because the spell checker is threatening to change the word. Spaces have a second advantage, that they draw your attention to the letters which are similar to and different from the English.)
awr - hour (both words have the vowel then r)
croeso - welcome (co as in come and croeso, e in both words)
p a r k i o - parking (the first five letters are the same, not just park but parki)
yn - in (almost the same)

English - Welsh

hour - awr
in - yn
parking - p a r c i o
welcome - croeso

I am editing this. Come back later for more.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, blogger and author, and teacher of languages.

Portuguese Words On Portuguese Wine Labels and Wine Words You Should Know

Colheita means vintage. (It's actually the Portuguese word for harvest. So this was the 1976 harvest.)

Portuguese - English
branco - white
colheita - vintage or harvest
de - of
doce - sweet
maduro - mature or aged
mesa - table (I remember: Don't make a mess on the table.)
quinta - farm, estate or winery
seco - dry
tinto - red (Think of tinted red.)
verde - green or young
vinho - wine
vinhos - wines
vinho de calidad - wine of quality
vinho de mesa - table wine

English - Portuguese
aged or mature - maduro
dry - seco
farm, estate or winery - quinta
green - verde
harbest or vintage - colheita
of - de
red - tinto
sweet - doce
table - mesa (I remember: This table is in a mess.)
table wine - vinho de mesa
vintage or harvest - colheita
white - branco
wine - vinho
wines - vinhos
winery, estate or farm - quinta
wine of quality - vinho de calidad
young (wine) - verde (literally green)

Useful Websites
https://catavino.net/portuguese-wine-label/ (Reading a wine label. Wine tours of Spain and Portugal.)

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Learn Your First Ten Words in Portuguese: Colours (start a monthly learn a language plan)

Problem
I need to learn Portuguese for my next holiday. Portuguese is used in Brazil and Madeira. What should I learn?

Answers
On Tinycards by Duolingo I can learn colours and foods. That takes time every day.

Some of the questions are annoying. You seem to get asked to guess a colour before you've been told it. One reason is that it's really a revision card for what you have already learned on Duolingo.

What has gone wrong? You might have rushed on to the test question, forgetting previously to click to reverse the card to see the translation.

I'm short of time so I'm typing into Google translate my favourite words in the order I want to learn them. I then order the words from Portuguese into English, followed by English into Portuguese.

Any popular phrase book does the same thing. You can pick groups of words to learn, sometimes at the start or end of the book, such as numbers, days of the week. If I were to learn 10 words a day, and keep adding, in a month of 28-31 days I would have a basic vocabulary of 280-310 words.

Which words will I need most? I can select 28-31 sets of words. Let's make it 30 for neatness, and add another 10 or do a revision on day 31. If I am busy one day, my cumulative list will help me catch up. Add one to three whole sentences.

Earworms by Berlitz does something similar. You can play it in your car to help you learn words for your next holiday.

1 Colours
2 Food
3 Wine bottle labels
4 Days of the week
5 Months
6 Numbers 1-10
7 Travel brochure /website
8 On the plane
9 At the airport
10 On a ferry or boat
11 On a bus
12 Walking
13 At the hotel
14 In a restaurant
15 On a tour
16 Shops and prices
17 Speaking to a museum guide
18 Emergency
19 Verbs - to be (present), to be future, walk, run, stop, go, like, can,
20 Recipes
21 Clothes labels / washing instructions
22 Sewing and repairs
23 Pharmacy and doctor
24 Police and theft
25 Driving and traffic signs
26 Greetings and meetings
27 Time
28 Numbers 10-20
29 Celebrations
30 Weddings: bride, groom, photographer
31 Feelings: happy, sad, hungry, full, angry, worried, busy, tired, keen, need, want
Question words: where, how much, how many

Once I have worked out the words I need, I can use the same set of English words to learn any other language. Obviously the words you need on a ski holiday are different to those on a beach holiday.

This would keep me organized.  However, if I want to learn out of sequence, such as doing colours today, I need to re-structure my list, or create a draft of all 30 days of learning.

Here are colours:

English - Portuguese
black - preto (p and b are like upside down or each other; pret-end to be invisible wearing black)
brown - castanho (like a brown castle)
blue - azul
green - verde (like the Italian verdi but the I-tal-I-an has i and Portugu-E-s-E has E) vinho verde green wine
orange - laranja (like the Spanish naranja but L shape Portugal which is long has laranja)
pink - rosa (rose pink)
purple - roxa (r in purple)
red - vermelho (like vermilion)
white - branco (like blanco but with an r as in PoRtuguese)
yellow - amarelo (the endings rhyme; spelling like the town Amarillo simplified, imagine yEllow amarillo - amarElo)

O and A endings
Five of the words end with the letter O, (preto, castanho, vermelho, branco, amarelo).
Three Portuguese colour words end with the letter a: laranja, rosa, roxa.
One word ends with e, verde.
One ends with l, azul.
...
grey
striped
patterned
plain
bright colour
darker
lighter
navy
lovely colour
to match this colour

Portuguese
Preto
Castanho
azul - azul
verde
laranja
Rosa
roxa
vermelho
branco
amarelo
...
cinzento
listrado
padronizado
avião
Cor brilhante (cor rhymes with more, but cor short for colour, brilhante like the English word brilliant)
mais escura (mais is more, escura obscured - darker)
isqueiro
marinha
linda cor (Linda is wearing a lovely colour - cor blimey, that's a lovely colour, Linda)
para combinar com esta cor (to combine with this colour - for combining with this colour).

Five of this second set of letters end with o: cinzento, listrado, padronizado, avião, isqueiro. Three end with a: escura, marinha, linda.

Now you can write to your friends called Linda and tell them they are lovely - in Spanish and Portuguese.

http://duolingo.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_language
https://translate.google.com/

https://www.visitportugal.com/en/destinos/madeira
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/madeira-wine-two-hundred-year-old-found-fortified-cellar-new-jersey-liberty-hall-union-a7835881.html
http://www.kean.edu/libertyhall/about/history

duolingo.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeira

http://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/port-and-portuguese-wine-labels-and.
http://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/how-to-ask-for-food-and-drink-in.
http://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/learn-your-first-ten-words-in.
http://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/how-do-you-say-please-in-portuguese-is.

visitportugal.com

visitbrasil.com

http://www.visitmadeira.pt/en-gb/homepage

earwormslearning.com

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker, teacher of English, learner of 12 other languages.
Please see my other travel blog:
http://www.luxurytravelforless.co.uk

Travel Over the Danube In The New Year's Day Concert

Problem
The New Year's Day concert from Vienna, Austria, on Austrian TV and BBC and BBC4, featuring the Vienna Philharmonic orchestra, was accompanied by shots of the audience interspersed with travel views taken from the sky over Austria. I wish they had included subtitles of the places, as they had done earlier in the programme when they featured buildings in Vienna and Austria.

After the dramatic Thunder and Lightning Polka, the Blue Danube was accompanied by shots along the Danube. The videos were shot in different seasons. Where does the river go? We could identify the stripey vineyards. Looking at a map of the flow of the Danube across Northern Austria, our wine expert informed us that the vineyards would be Riesling. The Danube runs East to the Black Sea.

The best colours were autumn, orange and green fields. Next we saw snow white on the rooftops. Must be winter snow scenes, with the vines asleep in the snow.

We loved a couple of the hilltop castles with turrets, walled enclosure, inner cloisters seen from overhead. We could take a photo and then to an image search for a match and the caption revealing the location and building identity on Google images.

The Blue Danube was not blue, but mostly a murky green, olive green khaki green.Where is that?

Back in the concert hall, the programme ends, as usual, each year, with the rousing Radetsky March. The audience claps in time. The conductor signals to them to start clapping, clap louder, and stop. Afterwards, according to the commentary, members of the audience are allowed to take home flowers from the displays.

Useful websites

https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Austria

Wikipedia

Tripadvisor

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.