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Showing posts with label hours. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hours. Show all posts

Sunday, November 19, 2017

Handy Portuguese Words On Wine Bottles, some of which you will easily recognize and instantly learn

Portuguese flag

Problem
How will I learn and remember Portuguese? Where will I need it and where can I practise it, hear it and keep up and augment it?

Answer
Learn it the same way you would eat a mythical elephant sandwich, one small bite at a time.

I picked up a card about D'Oliveiras who produce Madeira wines on the island of Madeira where they speak Portuguese.

Where and when would you need Portuguese?
1 In Portugal, in Europe, perhaps staying at a Pousada hotel.
2 In Brazil, South America.
3 In the island of Madeira.
4 In a Portuguese restaurant.
5 In a wine shop looking at Portuguese wines, buying Madeira, Port, Mateus Rose or other Portugues wine.
6 On the island of Macau which has a huge number of visitors, presumably because of the Casino - and the Chinese love gambling.
7 In a hotel or restaurant of any nationality when reading the wine list and ordering a bottle of Portuguese wine.

That's not all. Wikipedia said:
Portuguese (português or, in full, língua portuguesa) is a western Romance language and the sole official language of Portugal, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Angola, and São Tomé and Príncipe.[5] It also has co-official language status in East Timor, Equatorial Guinea and Macau in China. As the result of expansion during colonial times, a cultural presence of Portuguese and Portuguese creole speakers are also found in Goa, Daman and Diu in India;[6] in Batticaloa on the east coast of Sri Lanka; in the Indonesian island of Flores; in the Malacca state of Malaysia; and the ABC islands in the Caribbean where Papiamento is spoken, while Cape Verdean Creole is the most widely spoken Portuguese-based Creole. A Portuguese-speaking person or nation may be referred to as "Lusophone" in both English and Portuguese.



Portuguese - English
Avenida - avenue
casa - house
e - and
exportadores - exporters
horas - hours
ilha - island
Janeiro - January
Lugar - place (think of the English word location)
museu - museum
Outubro - October
Praça - Square
produtores - producers/growers
rua - street
Santa - saint / holy

English - Portuguese
and - e
avenue - Avenida
exportadores - exporters
growers/producers - produtores
holy - santa
hours - horas
house - casa
island - ilha
January - Janeiro
museum - museu
October - Outubro
saint - santa
street - rua
wine/s - vinho/s

Useful Websites
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



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Sunday, June 26, 2016

Korean, Russian and Greek alphabets - how to learn them



I have been learning German, Italian, Russian and Spanish (yes in alphabetical order), five minutes a day of each). I am impatient for them to produce the Greek and Hebrew which seem to be at the beta stage.

So I looked around for another free language site. I logged onto memrise. (Spell checker wanted to change that to memories but I now know to click on the little x after the suggestion which means I am telling spell checker NO!)

Korean
I just started learning Korean through www.memrise.com
I thought I could learn the entire alphabet in a couple of hours. I had looked at all the things I could learn in half a day or an evening and Korean seemed the easiest, only a couple of hours.

But it was very slow. Correction: I was very slow.

Korean M
I learned that M is a square, like a mouth.

Korean C is D
 If you see the letter C it is actually pronounced like an English D. So I say to myself, CD. C is D.

Korean H
The letter h in English is drawn like a face with a hat. A circle like a face with a wide line above like a wide brim of a hat and a tiny circle on top like the dome of a hat. H for hat.

Korean K
If you see a Korean letter like a reversed F you think, "Oh F..K - what's that!" The reversed F symbol sounds like an English letter K

After Korean, Russian and Greek seem easy. Mostly letters you recognize, even if they look like they are reversed.

Russian PR

Japanese
I also had a go at the Japanese words. I learned that hai means yes, rhyming with aye.

Chinese Numbers
 Then I looked at Chinese (Mandarin) signs. Why do they teach you such difficult ones first? For example, they teach you the letter one, yet not two or three. I learned one, two three off a table mat for children which I bought in Spotlight department store in Singapore.

You could start learning the letters for the numbers one to three which are all lines horizontal like the Roman numerals but sideways.

I did learn one sign. The upside down V shape, like an A shape written so fast that it doesn't join at the top, is a running man or adult or person. So when you see that sign on a bus in Singapore with a number next to it, you are reading the number of persons who are allowed on the lower or top deck.


Korean
On the other hand, today I have made a giant leap forward. I have learned ten Korean signs. In a month's time I shall know the Korean alphabet.

Japanese
S y o n a r a (goodbye in Japanese). I knew that already. Thank you for reading my blog post. the Japanese for thank you is arigato. Arigato dozaimasu. Thank you very much.

Enough for one day. I'm going back to the Duolingo website on which I am making slow but steady progress with the easy languages, German, Italian and Spanish.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and language teacher.
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