While travelling, read or write comic poetry

Problem
How to rest from stress when travelling or stopping for lunch.


Answers
1 Read comic poetry.
2 Write comic poetry.

If you wite comic poetry, you have comic poetry to read. A year later you will have forgotten what you wrote. So you can read it again.

USEFUL WEBSITES
http://comicpoemsbynutter.blogspot.com/2018/07/love-is-like-cuckoo.html
http://comicpoemsbynutter.blogspot.com/2018/07/warm-feelings-about-worms.html

Photo by
Per Harald Olsen
In Wikipedia Cuckoo

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.

Travelling? Remember to read or write novels and learn languages on long trips

Problems
How do you make use of travel time? How do you get off at the right stop?

Answers
A) Learn your route
B) Read or learn en route
C)  Watch out for your stop!

Stories
This advertisement at a bus stop reminded me that you can read books on a phone or tablet when travelling.

But don't go past your stop!

I remember reading on the bus as a teenager on the bus on my way to my father's newly opened shop, Lansbury Opticians in Preston Road, North West London, England.

My mother was watching from the shop windows. she saw me on the bus sitting reading. As she feared, I did not appear five minutes later but ten minutes later..

When I arrived she was doing her impression of an angry mother goose. I was mortified are being caught out. To this day if I go past a bus or train stop I feel that somebody is watching me. I rationalise that security staff on the watch for unusual journeys are likely to step out of the shadows to ask why I am going backwards and forwards.

Signs tell passengers that loitering on railway premises in Singapore is forbidden. Maybe the purpose of the sign is to prevent beggars and pickpockets.

Everywhere worldwide nowadays you are on security cameras.  I find that reassuring.

George Orwell foresaw this in 1984. But I have the imaginary angel on my shoulder. It is the memory of my mother forever warning: Don't go past the stop!

Tips
Whilst travelling, you can also write a book about your travels. Or use the travel background for novels and poems.

Author
Angela Lansbury, author and speaker.
I have a previous post on sketching whilst travelling and a display of art created on trains, an exhibition at Beauty World station, Singapore.
Please follow, like and share my posts.

Reading and writing Italian

scrivere - to write (as in scribe, scribble, scripture, describe, subscribe, inscribe)

The letters b and v are close together in many languages, such as Russian and Hebrew

io scrivo - I write

read is leg ... as in illegible, unreadable

sola - alone, as in solitary or solo

Angela Lansbury, writer and teacher