Spanish, Portuguese And Italian, False Friends word translation

 

Quick reminders from Wikivoyage phrasebooks.

False Friends

I have put the Spanish first and underlined, and added my memory aids.

Beware of false friends if you speak or learned Portuguese or Italian. Examples include 

 Spanish embarazada (pregnant), 

but Portuguese embaraçada (embarrassed) like the English

Spanish oficina (office), like the English

but Portuguese oficina (workshop)  \

(The Italian for office is ufficio.)

Spanish burro (donkey)  I remember a beast of burden for donkey rides

Italian burro (butter) like the French buerre. 

Spanish carta (letter).' like the English postcard

Italian carta (paper) like a thin piece of card 

On the other hand, on the plus side, if you are English when you learn Spanish, afterwards you already know the look of the Spanish word, you just need to change a couple of letters and you have an easy to remember different word in Portuguese or Italian.

So, now we know four words of Spanish, two of Portuguese, and two of Italian. Eight foreign words. And an amusing conversation starter with anybody speaking or learning Spanish, Portuguese, or Italian.

What is the Spanish for embarrassed? avergonzado

What is the Spanish for workshop? taller

what is the Spanish for butter? mantequilla

If you are looking at the buffet in a hotel, the Spanish word for margarine is margarina. Easy to recognize.

The Portuguese for butter is manteiga. The word for margarine in Portuguese is margarina. The first two letters are the same as English, and Spanish.

What is the Spanish for paper? papel

For learners, like me, that is eight new words of Spanish.

Useful Language Websites

duolingo.com

translate google

Wikivoyage phasebook Spanish

Wikivoyage phrasebook Italian

Wikivoyage phrasebook Portuguese

Please share links to your favourite posts.

Book To Buy, Borrow, Lend

Embarrassing Moments by Angela Lansbury

on \

Amazon.co.uk and 

Lulu.com

Easy Italian Words You Will Instantly Recognize

Whether you are watching opera on YouTube or in an Italian theatre, eating a meal in Italy or at an Italian restaurant, or buying a ticket in person or online, here are several words you will instantly recogize. With very little effort you will be able to translate back to Italian from the English.

 Italian - English

arte - art

cliente - client

danzo - dance

farmacia - pharmacy

film - film

galleria - gallery

una (feminine) lettera - (a) letter

musculo - muscle

musica - music

poeta - poet

silenzio - silence

teatro - theatre

English - Italian

art - arte

client - cliente

dance - danzo

film - film

gallery - galleria

letter - lettera

muscle - musculo

music - musica

pharmacy - farmacia (I think of Maria in the farmacia)

poet - poeta

silence - silenzio

theatre - teatro

Memory aids for simple Portuguese words: letter, newspaper, pineapple

LETTER NEWSPAPER PINEAPPLE

Write a letter to a Portuguese newspaper about pineapple

Problem
Some Portuguese words are 'false friends' which sound like other words. How do I remember them?

Answer
LETTER
Carta sound and looks like card, but means letter. My memory aid is: Don't send me a card - send me a letter.

Carta means letter.
Carta=letter.
Carta - letter.

NEWSPAPER
Jornal looks like the English word journal, old word for a diary. in romance languages, it means daily.

So my memory aid is, I read the Portuguese Jornal daily. I hope my journal is published in a newspaper.

Jornal means newspaper.
Jornal=newspaper.
Jornal - newspaper.

PINEAPPLE
Abaxi means pineapple. I forgot this. So I tried to devise a memory aid. I look at the x. It reminds me of the spiky green top to a pineapple.

Spiky green top of a pineapple. Abaxi in Portuguese. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Now I can recognise the Portuguese word. But how do I remember it when I want to ask for one in a supermarket?  a - baxi. Don't bring that spiky thing near me. Take a back seat in a taxi with that abaxi.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker, teacher of languages. I have several posts on Portuguese and other languages. If you need a talk on languages in England or Singapore please write to me. If you have a request for a memory aid, contact me here or through facebook. Please share links to your favourite posts.

How to remember 23 Portuguese words - or any foreign language

Flag of Portugal. From Wikimedia Commons.

Problem
I am learning Portuguese. I need a working vocabulary of about 300 words, which I can do in a month if I learn ten a day. I need to practise every day or I will forget the words.

Answer
The simple solution is to keep the word list on a page in my diary. I write the foreign word first, then the English translation.

Alphabet Letters
I list the letters of the alphabet down the left hand side. How many lines do I have? I have 26, enough for one line per letter of the alphabet. (In theory if I know there are few words, an few I need to know, starting with x, y, z, or any letter that language does not use, I could drop that letter or put two on one line, leaving space for a each use letter, such as c in French or S in English.

I started with the letters of the alphabet at the beginning of the line, but I was short of space. So I wrote over the letters, making the initial letter in the margin. When I started the next page, for German, I had the system more condensed.

Margin
Now the initial letters are in the margin. I write as close as I can get to the edge of the page.

Saving Space
I started by repeating the letters, leaving the initial letter separate. However, now I use it to start the first word.  So instead of
A agua - water
b boa / bom - good
c carta - letter

I write
agua - water
boa / bom - good
carta - letter

Save Space With Dots
The hyphens between the Portuguese and the English were taking up too much space. I changed the line for a dot.

agua.water
boa.good
carta.letter

In this blog post I am not so short of space. I also want to make the words easier to read. Therefore here I am sticking to the hyphens.

If the word is the same in English I write the letter s in brackets.
pizza (s) 

Why Not Capitalise Initial Letters?
I could write
Agua
Boa
Carta

However, I have been trained as a sub-editor to use small letters to start words in dictionaries. That way the reader knows when a word always starts with a capital letter.

Folding
The page is narrow and I need all the space I can get. I fold the page in half vertically and then in half again. So I now have four columns.

Four across by 25 down makes space for 100 words on a page.

Here are my first 23 Portuguese words with my memory aids:
(Only 20 are listed in this blog post under labels because the limit is 20 labels)

agua - water (like aquaduct)
abacaxi - pineapple (P and B sound and look almost the same. AP - pineAPple - apple pine, pine apple, cut it down with an axe - ee! I might not remember translating from English to Portuguese, but I am well on the way to remembering it when I see it written on a menu in Portugal or Madeira)
boa / bom - good (As in Bombay. Good bay. How do I remember it's good and not beautiful. If it's beautiful it's good.)
carta - letter, a carta or uma carta is a letter. (How do I remember 'a carta', feminine? I visualise a lady writing a letter.)
com - with / to / by
de - of
é - is
ele - he / him / it
eles - they
eu - I
falamos - we speak
gosto - (I) like
jornal - newspaper (o / um jornal) (like the French journal but drop the u, just as the Americans drop the u from British English c o l o u r and make it c o l o r.)
lê - you read
leio - I read (I remember: Add i for I, + O for I as in Latin Amo amas amat meaning I read, you etc)
livro - book
menino - boy (I remember men, but little ones, o as in boy for masculine)
mulheres - women
nós - us / we
um - a / one / some
você - you (I remember vous with v in French. V looks like Y.) 

Other useful posts:
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

duolingo.com

earwormslearning.com

http://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/polyglot-poem-by-angela-lansbury.html

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker, learner and speaker of many languages (a polyglot). Please bookmark and share links to your favourite posts. I have several more on Portuguese, Spanish, German, Chinese, Hebrew and other languages and countries.