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.
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.
.svg.png)
