Spanish words for shopping and eating out in restaurants, simplified with memory aids

 We checked into a parador, one of those wonderful historic hotels in Spain. Next morning we went down to breakfast. We went to reception. We did not know the Spanish word for breakfast. The receptionist knew no English. I tried asking in French. She did not understand. My husband tried German. She did not understand.

I had to go all the way back to the bedroom and hunt through my suitcase until I found my small Spanish dictionary. Desayuno.

The receptionist then reached under the reception desk. She revealed that she had a four-language booking form which included most of the words one might need in a hotel.

I now know the word for breakfast in Spanish. I also know that the word for restaurant is similar in both languages. I could also mime or draw. However, I try to learn a few words of Spanish every day. Finding a link between the letters or ideas is helpful.

In addition to the word for breakfast, it is handy to understand the words for toilet, or ladies and gentlemen. 

My late father made a mistake when he was in the Spanish restaurant, La Giralda, in Pinner Green, London. He went to the toilets and saw the sign Senoras. He assumed that was plural for senor. So he pushed open the door. The lady inside was washing her hands. She was outraged. She complained to the management. The restaurant owner came over to ask us, "A lady customer has just complained that your father walked into the ladies toilet. Can you please explain why?"

When my father explained, we all rolled around in hysterical laughter. The moral is, a little learning is a dangerous thing. Once you have started, keep on learning.

Spanish - English

amo - I love

aires - airs

barato - cheap - (sounds like bargain)

Buenos - good ones (sounds like beautiful and beneficial) 

caro - expensive (my image is the cost of a car)

centro comercial - shopping mall

comprar - to buy

desayuno - breakfast (sounds like day starts, you know)

hotel - hotel

ir - to go 

me gusta - I like (sounds like I eat with gusto)

para ver - to see 

restaurante - restaurant

sandalias - sandals 

sombrero - hat

vino blanco - white wine (sounds like a blank colour, colourless wine)

vino tinto - red wine (sounds like tinted)

visitar - to visit

English - Spanish

airs - aires

breakfast - desayuno

gentlemen - caballeros 

good ones - buenos

hat - sombrero

hotel - hotel

I like - me gusta

I love - amo (sounds like amorous)

I want - quiero (looks like my quest)

I want to buy - quiero comprar

ladies - señoras

restaurant - restaurante

to visit - visitar

red wine - vino tinto

sandals - sandalias

shopping mall - centro comercial

toilet/bathroom - baño (sounds like 'in the bathroom, you know')

white wine - vino blanco

Useful Websites

duolingo.com

earwormslearning.com

translate.google.com

 

Portuguese words for good fish sandwich snack

Problem

Portuguese for Brazil is similar to Portuguese for Portugal and islands such as Madeira which was a shipping stop in the Atlantic. Madeira wine gets its name from the wine which heated up during transport and was fortified to protect it during the sea journey. Portuguese is easy to learn if you speak English and more so as it is similar to Spanish and Italian and the root romance language, Latin. How do you remember words you have just learned from Duolingo, the free language learning ap?

Answer

Find a hook to hang the word on. Then repeat the reminder to yourself all day and every day until the word is firmly in your memory. No time or energy for that? Never mind. I find that when I come back to repeat a half-done lesson or revision, the word comes to mind much faster than it did when I first learned it.

English - Portuguese

food - comida (ah - food) (if you prefer a word ending in o, to match food, use alimento like the alimentary canal in your body) 

good - bom as in Bombay (Now Mumbai)

kitchen - cozinho (like cuisine, with an H like kitchen, ends with Oh! excitement, mouth open as you walk into the kitchen and see the cuisine)

pasta - massa - I eat a mass of pasta

snack - lanche (like light lunch, snack lunch)

fish - peixe (i before e in English except in fish pe, fish pee, pe, ixe, start and end with vowels e peixe, x in the middle of the word like fish fins)

sandwich - sanduiche (almost the same but change the w to u, just like the w sound but shortened in shape)

Verbs

I drink - bebo (like imbibe)

I eat  - como (I eat)

I like - gusto de (have a liking for, de is of or for)

I write - escrivo

Portuguese

The o ending goes with I just like the Latin. At school I learned Latin, amo, amas, amat, meaning I love, you love, he, she or it loves.

amo (Latin for I love)

bebo - I drink (Portuguese for I drink)

comida - food

escrivo - I write

eu - I

gusto - I like (add de before a noun, rather like our English phrases I have a fancy for, liking for)

lanche - snack

pesce - fish

sanduiche - sandwich

Author

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. I have several posts on Portugues and Madeira. Please read, bookmark and share links to your favourite posts. Thank you.

How To Learn And Remember A Few Words of Basic Food In Portuguese

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Problem
I had another go at learning Korean on Duolingo and it doesn't work for me. Others on the forums recommend that learners should persist. But I feel my time is better spent on learning Korean from a dedicated Korean website. Duolingo, however, is just right for learning Portuguese. So what have I learned today in Portuguese?

Answer
The trick is to keep repeating words. Duolingo is good at this. The main site has a revision after every lesson. Today I was almost too tired to do the revision. Normally I go through it once or twice, until I can get all the answers right, fast. This time I just looked at the questions and then the answers.

However, I am going to write out what I have learned.

Portuguese - English
amango - bitter (this is so bitter, I'd rather have a sweet mango)
atum - tuna
a banana - the banana (note that the is a, and that the can be masculine o or feminine a)
bolo de chocolat - chocolate cake (yes, I would like a bowl of chocolate cake)
eles - they
eles comen - they eat
eu - I
eu gosto - I like
os homens  - the men (os is plural masculine)
o molho - the sauce (the Portuguese looks like the English word moisture)

English - Portuguese
the banana - a banana (four times letter a)
bitter - amango
chocolate cake - bolo de chocolat
I - eu
I like - eu gosto
The - o (masculine); a (feminine); os (masculine plural)
the sauce - o molho
they - eles
they eat - eles comen
tuna - atum

Useful websites
Free languages for beginners:
https://www.duolingo.com (Portuguese and several other languages)
English in Tinycards for speakers of Portuguese:
https://tinycards.duolingo.com/users/DuolingoPT
https://www.memrise.com/course/1121957/portuguese-portugal-1/

Paid for courses:
https://www.memrise.com/course/1121957/portuguese-portugal-1/
https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=berlitz+portuguese&tag=googhydr-21&index=aps&hvadid=188201508211&hvpos=1t1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=16051061403562216167&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=e&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9045970&hvtargid=kwd-500446475&ref=pd_sl_4e6324zqs0_e
https://www.rosettastone.co.uk

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

Please share links to your favourite posts.

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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.

Welsh, Words, "Would Like" What to say in Welsh, Why Visit Wales and Ireland

View of Fishguard Bay, Wales. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Wedding at Fishguard Bay Hotel.

Problem
How do you say I would like in Welsh? This is a problem when translating from English into any other language.

Answer
I am learning Welsh from Duo Lingo. Their simple English-Welsh lessons often give alternative answers but they gave the Welsh which I translated as I would like which was not allowed. I wondered whether the Welsh had only one phrase, in which case my alternative should have been allowed. However, according to somebody who replied in the forum, the Welsh English goes like this.

• Hoffwn i... - I would like...
• Dw i eisiau... - I want...

If you want to hear how it is pronounced, go to www.Duolingo.

Story
Children of today speak simply and more directly.
For example:
How are you? to an elderly person requires the answer
Very well, thank you.
A young person says
Fine.
That sounds terribly rude to an older person.

Why Learn Welsh Words?
Why would anybody want, or need, or like, to speak or understand Welsh?
If you drive or take the train across Wales, you will see many signs in Welsh. Why not take a few free language lessons?

Why Go To Wales?
Writers' Holiday
Many of my friends are going to the Writers Holiday in Fishguard, Wales, this week. You can book for a week or be a day visitor.

History and Films
Fishguard is also the setting for many movies or films from the past such as Moby Dick and Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

You can read about the making of the films in the bar of the Fishguard Bay Hotel which is above the port where you catch the ferry to Ireland.

Ireland And Wales
Some people go through Wales because they need to in order to get the ferry to Ireland. You might do so deliberately in order to Enjoy and two destination trip to both Wales and Ireland.

Tourist Information
www.visitWales.com
www.wales.com
www.gofishguard.co.uk/
http://www.writersholiday.net
http://www.directferries.co.uk/fishguard_rosslare_ferry.
http://www.directferries.co.uk/ferries_from_wales_to_ireland. (Choosing which ferry route.)
http://www.irishtourist.com/wexford/towns/rosslare/
www.duolingo.com (Welsh, Gaelic, English for speakers of other languages, other languages)
I have several other posts on Wales and learning Welsh. Please share links to your favourite posts.

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