Lost without Translation

Higanbana, or spider lilies, photo found at pixabay.com

It’s been a long while since I’ve written for the blog, and my apologies to those who were interested and thought I just wandered away.  Yes, I am still studying Portuguese.  Yes, my Portuguese has improved thanks to the continued support and effort of people I’ve met along the way, especially Kel.  

A few months ago, my heart decided not to play fairly, and I spent a lot of time getting better.  For those who may not recall, I have what basically amounts to a heart that decides to skip about and beat as it pleases now and then.  It took time, but I’m well.  While recovering, I’ve been focused a lot on teaching and writing a book.  I hope those who’ve read the blog thus far are doing well, and it’s good to be thinking about saving up for Brazil again as well as focusing on Portuguese again, too.

Because I’m working with second language speakers, I hear sometimes that our intended meanings behind our words is “lost in translation”.  Some words and ideas don’t translate well at all between languages since they’re based on the collected experiences a community or nation of people might share culturally.  Once in a while I do meet up with a Portuguese word or idea that makes absolutely no sense to my English speaking brain; it’s as though all I know and all I could know is entirely cut off from me, and suddenly nothing on the pages in front of me makes sense in the least.  A few of my students have made similar comments to me about English when they encounter a phrase or expression that’s confusing.  Last week, a 14 year old (Hello, Mateo!) who is determined to study and do well learning English in school said to me, “Tara, I think crazy people made English.”  He was having a particularly difficult time understanding why we use “into” and “in to”.  He finally said to me, “Google says it’s the same.”  I began to wonder just how many of our conversations were copied and pasted into Google after that.

This brings me to my post today, and my thoughts about how much we need and how grateful I am there are human translators in this world.  We still need you all.  There is no substitute for a human being who is tied to his or her history, culture, and language in a way that a computer generated translation never can be.  Not that translation programs are never useful.  On the contrary, it can be quite helpful when you’re searching high and low for unknown words while you have little or no access to foreign language dictionaries.  Still, it’s not a substitute for a human being, especially when a person can do his or her own translation.  An author’s thoughts and stories convey sadness, anger, happiness, beauty, hate, love, experience, wisdom, and so much more.  That said, I know a few students who’ve been using the translator to help them figure out what they’re reading, but today, I want to show some of my students exactly why doing their own research and translation is important.  Sometimes the words need a human thought or two, especially when working with poetry.  Kel and I have been having a poetry exchange for a while now; I suspect, in part, he was hoping I'd be a bit less lazy as a student by using poetry to help me improve my vocabulary and written skills when I'd write in Portuguese.  He's used the poems to improve his interpreting skills at the same time, making our project quite helpful! 

The first example is written by Kelison Araújo.  His work was originally in Portuguese, his native language.

Eu acho que estive dormindo.

Apenas me lembro do lôbrego, da luz da manhã, o calor, do suor.

Parece um oceano soturno.

Em uma margem eu adormeço; na outra, eu desperto.

As *Higanbanas florescem em um lugar escondido.

Acho que eu estive lá, mas não consigo recordar depois de acordar.

*Higanbana is a Japanese word for a flower that is translated as spider lilies in English.  Traditionally used as funeral flowers in Japan, the lilies are bright red and particularly striking when planted in great numbers.  They grow in autumn where it’s wet.  Oddly, they seem to thrive on neglect, making spider lilies one of the few plants I am able to keep alive.

Kel’s main interest in learning language is translating as a career.  He has a real love of word origin and how history and culture tie all of us to our languages.  I’m not sure I’d have his patience for finding the precise words as he does, but he’s said to me translators have to keep an author’s intentions in mind. In this case, the author himself rewrote the poem in English.  His work requires little to no editing on my part.   

I think I've been sleeping. 

I only remember the darkness, 

the morning light, heat, the sweat. 

It feels like a gloomy sea.

At one bank I fall asleep; at the other I wake. 

The Higanbana bloom in a hidden place. 

I think I've been there, but I can't recall after waking.

Google Translation, coped and pasted as it was written by the program.

I think I was asleep.

Just remember the murky, the morning light, heat, sweat.

It looks like a grim ocean.

In a margin I fall asleep; in the other, I awake.

The Higanbanas bloom in a hidden place.

I think I've been there, but I cannot remember after waking up.

The second example was written by me in my native language first and then translated to Portuguese. 

“Beyond Sleep”

Walking the edge of a dreamed landscape; my breath catches, 

hanging like the grey mist at the black crags in Faraway.

One word, two words, three words…

The *higanbana stretch before me, endless, and once I knew 

their other name. It’s lost at the boundary of this country.

The words again, darling and sleep and another, but in this 

place words are sibylline, as diaphanous as gossamer.

One word, two words, three words…

This crimson sea, a reminder of mortality, and twice I spoke

the name I knew. “Come with me,” I want to say.

Substance shaping your voice in the wilds, and in the gloaming

my musings are drawn to the stony harshness of my Faraway.

One word, two words, three words…

Hushed murmur urging my return to Faraway, “Shhhh, sleep.”

The blooms caress my bare leg, and I wish you were here.

I’ve translated my own work the best I can in order to practice Portuguese.  As always, credit goes to Kelison for his edits and insights into the language.  Without his help and efforts, my Portuguese writing often goes awry.  It’s been a good exercise for both of us; I learned a lot of new words and interesting points about grammar.  You’d have to ask him, but I suspect Kel learned writers are terribly cranky when you change their punctuation.  

Andando na beira de uma paisagem de um sonho; minha respiração pega, 

pairando como a névoa cinza nos rochedos negros em Longínquo.  

Uma palavra, duas palavras, três palavras…

As flores Higanbana estendem se na minha frente, infindáveis, e uma vez, 

eu sabia o outro nome delas. Está perdido na fronteira deste país.  

As palavras novamente, querida e sono e outro; mas neste lugar 

as palavras são sibilinas, tão diáfanas quanto seda.

Uma palavra, duas palavras, três palavras…

Esse mar carmesim é lembrete para mortalidade, e duas vezes, 

eu disse o nome que eu sabia.  “Venha comigo,” eu quero dizer. 

Substância molda a sua voz em o lugar selvagem, e no crepúsculo 

minha voz está desenhada na aspereza das pedras da minha Longínquo.

Uma palavra, duas palavras, três palavras…

Silencioso murmúrio urgindo meu retorno à Longínquo, “Shhhh, dorme.”

As flores acariciam minha perna nua, e eu desejo que você estivesse aqui.

This is the Google translation to Portuguese of the poem I wrote, copied and pasted directly from the translator with the program’s punctuation.

"Além do sono"

Andando à beira de uma paisagem sonhada; meus capturas respiração,

pendurado como a névoa cinza nas escarpas negras em Faraway.

Uma palavra, duas palavras, três palavras ...

O * trecho higanbana antes de mim, sem fim, e uma vez que eu sabia

seu outro nome. Ele perdeu na fronteira deste país.

As palavras de novo, querida e sono e outro, mas neste

palavras estabelecimento são sibilina, como diáfana como gossamer.

Uma palavra, duas palavras, três palavras ...

Este mar carmesim, um lembrete da mortalidade, e duas vezes falei

o nome que eu sabia. "Vem comigo", eu quero dizer.

Substância moldar a sua voz nos ermos, e no crepúsculo

minhas reflexões são atraídos para a dureza de pedra da minha Distante.

Uma palavra, duas palavras, três palavras ...

murmúrio abafado pedindo meu retorno ao Faraway, "Shhhh, o sono."

As flores acariciar minha perna nua, e eu queria que você estivesse aqui.

It was interesting to see what Google translated correctly, but at least for now, humans really are necessary for translation.  As much as computer translation programs have helped people, understanding the literary devices an author chooses plus the emotional content of a piece is a task for humans. 

Sometimes my hobbies get in the way of my goals; this can be a real problem when I want to do nothing but play and really need to focus on writing or studying.  These days I’m mixing the two.  Studying with others is far more fun than studying alone.  Plus, I get to meet knew people interested in English details I don’t necessarily think about in daily life.  This brings me to my next project: sharing our daily life with others.  I want to do some filming in English for Portuguese speaking friends to hear English speakers talking informally together.  A lot of the recorded material available sounds stiff and unnatural, and I think it would be nice for friends to hear some native speakers talking together without the script.  The U.S. is never going to be the land of formality, and while we are polite with one another in business, our dealings with teachers, and (for the most part) parents, we do have a tendency to speak quite informally the vast majority of the time.  Even some of my teachers in high school permitted students to call them by their first names.  By the time I attended university, I realized most of my instructors treated students more like casual acquaintances than students. 

It would also be nice to have a collection of regional English accents on record.  My father’s accent, Northern Kentucky, has softened over the years since he has not lived in Winchester in a long time.  My mother has a neutral accent, probably due to years of moving around the country.  Mine is influenced by a childhood on the West Coast and growing up in the Southern US.  After speaking with people from different areas of Brazil, I hear the difference in dialects, and it’s fascinating to me.  One of my friends sounds much more nasal while another has an almost softened French influence to his accent that reminds me a little of a dialect we call Creole here in the US.  I was really surprised to hear it. 

On that note, I am going to wrap this up with some a bit of cooking talk since I mentioned we were going to try some recipes soon.  I know, big jump from accents, but this has been a very busy past couple of weeks.  I made vatapá because it sounded delicious, and it is.  I think the recipe was very basic, and I would change it somewhat in the future to suit our personal tastes a bit more.  The stew had shrimp, cod, cashews, almonds, and coconut milk-along with peppers-to name a few of the ingredients.  Mine was pale in comparison to others, but I think the blanched almonds made it appear more white than the deep yellow color.  I served it over rice, and my son complained a great deal about the coconut milk because he isn’t fond of it.  I hope one day he grows out of his dislike since coconut is delicious and useful in so many foods.

I’m going to make it again soon but use peanuts and cashews, roasting them a little longer to give them a better flavor and prettier color.  Still, delicious, and definitely worth the time it takes to make a nice fish stock. 

This week, I'm making the cheese bread I planned on making this past week.  There are several recipes, but this one I'm using has cassava flour.  There are also some other stews and soups in our future, especially since fall is coming.  In our family, we tend to eat a lot lighter in the hot months of summer simply because the heat and humidity make me sluggish.  Now that we've had a few cooler nights, I am in the mood for some real cooking again and am looking forward to trying recipes from the Latin Kitchen site. 

Translating To and From

Of late, I have been running behind; time management is not my talent, and I will sometimes schedule too many activities over the course of a day and night only to find myself so tired I’m ready to pass out where I stand.  This week, I am pacing myself, but I fully expect by tomorrow I will be racing around the house madly like usual.  That being said, I’ve been working on translating my own work to Portuguese and Portuguese poems in English.  

First is a poem by Portuguese poet, Eugénio de Andrade.  This is such a short and simple poem, but I think the beauty is in the simplicity.

"Fão Nocturne" autor, Eugénio de Andrade

De palavra em palavra
a noite sobe
aos ramos mais altos

e canta

o êxtase do dia.

In English:

Word by word

night climbs

to highest branches

and sings

the ecstasy of day.

Régis Bonvicino, of São Paulo, is a contemporary poet.  To date, he has at least 12 volumes of published poetry, and I find myself curious to know more about his writing.   Since these are my personal translations, I cannot promise accuracy or that the intent of the poet is matched, but these are some of the poems that are staying with me lately.  Words like mesmo have multiple meanings, all of which make sense to native speakers in context; please, if you notice a translation that seems wildly inaccurate, don’t hesitate to tell me.

"Não Nada"  autor, Régis Bonvicino

Não nada ainda do outro

semelhante ainda ao mesmo

mínimo ainda o outro

ele mesmo não ainda outro

de um mesmo morto outro

insulado em seu corpo

Vincos dos mesmo ainda

no íntimo do outro tampouco

cicatrizes unem

tatuagens dissipam

antenas clavadas, em tinta

cacos do outro estilhaços do outro

Uma borboleta fixa encobre

cicatrizes num corpo

In English:

"No Nothing" 

No nothing still from the other

similar still to the same

minimal still the other

selfsame still not the other

of a selfsame dead other

insulated in the body

creases still of the same

intimate still even not yet

scars unite

dissipate tattoos

clavate antennas in ink

other shards of shrapnel from the other

fixed butterfly covers

scars on the body

The last piece is my own, short and to the point, but it’s also my first real attempt to translate poetry I’ve written to Portuguese.  I think I am pleased with the result, though I fully expect to change it at least a thousand times.  Since much of my work is free verse, I find myself thinking a lot about the purposely odd structure; I wonder will it even translate to something meaningful?  It's very possible I've translated my own words to say, "Please, purchase a chinchilla, a cake, and three apples on your way home."  

"In Between" author, Tara Saint-Clair

in spaces between,

sinking.

caught in quiet insistence,

a voice rarely heard

belongs in this mind,

memorized.

the echo warming.

rendering cries 

in stillness

as the space ceases,

searching hands,

In Portuguese:

"Entre"

nos espaços entre

a queda.

preso em insistência tranquila,

uma voz raramente ouvida,

pertence esta mente,

memorizado.

o eco me aquece.

assustado chorando,

na tranquila,

as extremidades do espaço,

procurando.

All right, it’s time to dig in and do some real research.  Food.  I was talking with friends today, and a couple of us realized food is difficult to describe, especially if you’re talking about a food that’s not always available everywhere.  Explaining deviled ham to M was a treat, especially after laughing over a picture of a ham-cat dressed as a devil.  Since he's unfamiliar with American foods, I had explained why the cartoon was kind of amusing.  Yeah, there is some weird stuff in this world.  There he is!  The deviled HamCat.

Shoving all that aside, I’m looking for Brazilian recipes; our one local Brazilian restaurant doesn’t serve food from Brazil so much as they offer foods that American travel shows feature as being from Brazil but are totally Americanized.  What little I have discovered-and this I expected-is food varies from region to region.  Again, Brazil and the US share a commonality.  It is one of the blessings from which we do benefit by living in large, culturally diverse countries.  While you will always be able to find burgers and pizza in the US, you can also find French influenced creole cooking, the meat and potatoes of the Mid-West, barbecue that varies region to region, Maine’s lobster rolls, any of our “Chinatowns”, and so much more.  Like I said, blessed in cultural diversity.  Soooooooo…  I’m thinking of tackling Brazil’s cuisine by looking into the different regions of the country one at a time versus the entire country at once, and I’ll probably be checking out some old episodes of Tony Bourdain.  The man knows food.  

All of this searching has made me think a lot about my mother.  (Hello, Mom, if you’re reading this.)  She cooked on a tight budget, something most of us in life understand.  Things weren’t always easy for her, but I never knew they were hard for my parents until I was much older.  Our meals were simple, always delicious, and I couldn’t understand why my friends thought it was so weird my mom made her own noodles.  She did it because it tasted better and was less expensive.  She made a lot of her own breads, too.  We always had a hot breakfast before going to school, and I thought it was terrible we didn’t get cold cereal!  This is where I admit to being a fiend for cold cereal of any kind.  Except for Trix.  They taste like Lemon Pledge smells.  If you’re not familiar with Trix or Lemon Pledge, one is a brightly colored and possibly toxic food for children here in the US, and the other is furniture cleaner.  Mmmm, delicious!  Yeah, those are not two things that should be juxtaposed, and somehow Trix did it.  (Please don’t sue me, General Mills, I have nothing to offer you but advice, which I’ll give for free. Make better cereal.)    Anyway, back to my mother and her cooking, and  yes, Mom, I know we were really lucky to have you there cooking breakfast for us every morning.  

In the spirit of asking for recipes you might know of or links you know are good, I’m going to share one of my mom’s specialities.  Chicken and rice.  Yes, I eat mostly vegetarian dishes, but this one is a family favorite, and even I will take a bite of it now and then.

Chicken Stock: 

whole chicken

enough water to cover the chicken and veggies plus a little extra

2 onions, quartered

carrots, four or five, also quartered

celery, 1 or 2 whole sticks, quartered

bay leaf, one to two depending on size

peppercorns, a tablespoon

rosemary, a good sized sprig

garlic if you want, but I don’t always add it

salt, I add a spoonful, which I don't measure

onion skins, darker the better

Cook at a simmer until the chicken falls off the bone; remove the chicken for later.  Simmer the stock a couple of hours, strain it, skim away the fat if you’re not into chicken fat, and reduce the stock.  It should be deep gold iin color if you used a few onion skins making the stock.

That stock?  Use it instead of water for cooking your rice.  Save the excess 

Chicken and Rice: 

Remove all the meat from the chicken; it should fall apart easily.  Set it aside while the rice cooks and you chop the veggies.  Chop and sauté one large whole onion, four to five carrots, two celery sticks, maybe half a pound of mushrooms, crushed garlic, salt, pepper, and when the rice is cooked, you’re going to add all those yummy veggies and shredded chicken to it. You may need some of the extra broth.  If you’re like a couple of people I know, you might want to turn the broth into gravy since everyone could use gravy.  Okay, probably not, but in all fairness to my gravy loving friends, that stuff is pretty good when it’s done right.

Mix the chicken, rice, veggies, and pour it into a large serving dish.  Some people bake their chicken and rice after already cooking it, but if everything is well cooked, I like my veggies with a bit of crunch.  If I want to eat food soft enough to be from the blender, I’ll just use the blender.

There you have it.  My my mom’s chicken and rice.  If you are like my son, apply hot sauce liberally!  Now to find a couple recipes for some of the foods friends from Brazil have mentioned!  Kel, I still think that risotto you showed me is possibly the best looking risotto I've seen. 

Language Learning in Movie Watching

Learning a language with someone has been an unexpected joy.  I’ve met some really nice people since I decided to learn Portuguese, and one of them, Kel, lives in Brazil and has spent many hours with me over the past three or four weeks as we learn together.  He is a self-motivated learner, and I’ve noticed him taking huge leaps forward in pronunciation as well as grammatical structure.  As his English improves, I find I want to drive myself forward to reach new goals.  Right now, we learn together using a mix of Portuguese and English, but the plan is to eventually structure our conversations speaking half the time in Portuguese and half in English.  It will be really good to get to that conversational point.  As my skills get better, I’m taking a lot of Kel’s advice to heart.

One point especially, I need to do a lot more listening.  Today I’m devoting my energies to writing, studying, and listening to Portuguese only.  Tomorrow I’ll likely be doing the same, but the more words I can pick out at faster speeds, the better my brain works.  I find if I skip a day or two of listening, I fall behind quickly.  Sadly, some of the streaming services don’t offer much in Portuguese, though I have found some excellent films like Cidade de Deus (City of God) and Abril Despedaçado (Behind the Sun).  

Both films are well done with lovely acting, but both films are also incredibly sad.  Cidade de Deus takes place during the 1960’s when tenement housing was being restructured.  It is based on the true story of photographer Wilson Rodrigues.  He grew up in the “City of God”, project housing built in Rio de Janeiro to force the city’s poverty stricken a little further away from the more well-to-do.  We see a lot of this in the US, and one of our most famous examples is the now demolished Cabrini Greens of Chicago, Illinois.  (Cabrini was featured in the horror movie Candyman if you'd like to see what it looked just before it was demolished.)  I genuinely enjoyed Cidade de Deus; it was also very difficult to watch knowing the outcome of the lives of many of the people depicted.  The violence was extreme, and as the film continued, it only escalated to a pinnacle.  That defining moment was incredibly heartbreaking because I knew, like many problems here in the US, some of the problems featured in the film are ongoing in Brazil.  I wondered how many mothers and fathers watched and thought about their own lost children.  The movie made me want to hug my son.

  

The second movie, Abril Despedaçado, is equally sad and deals with a feud between families.  Set in the 1940s, it's got a dusty feel about it that lends well to the scenes.  Again, this one is hard to watch as a parent.  I was reminded of the stories of the Hatfield and McCoy clans here in the Southern United State, and I walked away thinking violence can never ben an answer, but for some people, that is all they choose.  The acting was lovely, and there were a couple of scenes I watched thinking of them as “poetry in motion”.  This was a much quieter story built on the personal hardships of two families, and the choice one of the children makes.  Half a box of tissue later, I was good to go again, but talk about a tearjerker!  Of the two, I cried during both, but I can honestly say both films are worth the watch, especially Cidade de Deus.  I’m going to sit down and watch it again today because the film is that good, and I want to watch without the captions while listening. 

This brings me to my hardest task: finding films and television shows with the Portuguese captions.  Since I’m trying to hear the spoken words, I need more written Portuguese and no English.  I find there are some things on youtube, subbed and dubbed anime, but it would be nice to expand my repertoire.

Today I’ll be watching Inuyasha, a Japanese anime about a time traveling girl and half-demon.  I’ve seen it in both the Japanese and English, but watching it in Portuguese has been interesting.  The voice work is so different sounding it’s taking a bit of time to get used to it.  Still, I am having a lot of fun. 

Razors, Devils, and Hearts

What do razors, devils, and hearts have to do with Brazil?  For that I have to go back to the beginning, which is a fairly short story.  I was born with tachycardia, rapid heartbeat, which has been fairly easy to treat.  I take a beta-blocker three times a day, and my heart rate usually stays within a normal range, at least until about ten months ago when I had my first bad episode.

My pulse jumped about seventy beats per minute in the span of seconds, and then it dropped back within a normal range, but it was startling.  My head pounded.  I realized I could feel my own heart in my toes, a weird sensation, and I thought I was having a heart attack.  It was the first sign of things to come over the past few months that have included many tests and few answers.  Technically, I still do not know precisely what is happening to me or why.  I only know I don't have heart disease, but I am constantly anemic and don't appear to absorb B-12 well.  My doctor tells me they'll figure it all out eventually, and perhaps this is true.  In the meantime, my heart is the catalyst to go to Brazil.  It's what reignited an old desire, just a small thought after pulling the poem I keep in my wallet out to read for the ten millionth upon millionth time.  The idea to go to Brazil and learn more was always there, steadily burning a hole in my brain, but now my heart is involved.  The episodes continue to happen, pulse skyrocketing and then plummeting, and I'm sure I'll have more tests to take over the next few months.  That is life.  Since I spoke to another doctor, I am not as panicked about all of this as I was in the beginning; that is also life.  Learning to cope better daily.

This brings to me to an old phrase, "Tell the truth and shame the devil."  My truth is I am a little scared this is going to end before I even get a chance to buy a plane ticket let alone discover more about the poetry of Adélia Prado and whether the translations I have are even close to accurate.

"The Dark of Night"

I'm singled out by flashes
embedded in half-sleep,
pre-dawn, Gethsemane hour.
These visions are raw and clear,
sometimes peaceful,
sometimes pure terror
without the bone structure
daylight provides.
The soul descends to hell,
death throws its banquet.
Until everyone else wakes up
and I can doze,
the devil eats his fill.
Not-God grazes on me.

Adélia Prado
translation by Elle Doré Watson


Late at night, all my thoughts drag me back to Occam's Razor.  The idea is that the simplest explanation is usually true, but not always.  I apply the razor to the problem of my heart, it leaves me to wonder if it's all in my head.  If I'm doing this to myself, which is a lot scarier than the medical complications of tachycardia.  Still, it's the heart-literally and figuratively-urging me to press forward. If the mind is soil, is the heart a watering can and the blood the flora?  No, that doesn't work.  I'll have to give that a bit more thought before committing to it.

Written in a garden, though certainly not at the "Gethsemane hour", but I imagine Brazil is as interesting a garden as the one we call the United States.

"Oblivious"

She sits, legs folded beneath her, staring into worn out pages
of a dog-eared tome the color of old wheat.
Slim fingers, unadorned and pale in sunlight, turn pages rapidly, 
nearby a man mutters he’d like to be the book.
She holds it gently, a curious quirk to her lips, gasping aloud,
oblivious to her admirer angling himself for a better view.
Once she stops to sip some water, pondering a lifetime, and
the man looks away, as though caught stealing.

Tara Saint-Clair

This is how razors, devils, and hearts can be related to one person's need to live and breathe words that aren't her own, in a place she's never seen outside of photographs and film, but she'd love to know it all better.

Stumbling in Words

Learning a new language can be fun, especially if your goal is to use it in conversation.  It opens an entire new world of words.  There are also people out there like me who love the grammar.  I want to understand the foundation because I want to write and read the language, as well as speak it, fluently.  To me, knowing terms like antecedent, anaphoric, subjunctive, and ligature is as much a part of learning the Portuguese as knowing “eu” is “I” and "livro" is “book”, masculine, by the way.  Thankfully, I have a patient instructor who understands I am as interested in the groundwork as the speaking.  I’m pretty sure sainthood is in my teacher’s future.

All that aside, my pronunciation is horrible!  I’ve taken diction courses for singing, but it’s like everything I remember is gone from my head.  Just gone.  I sit in front of my computer listening to word after word, repeating what I think I hear, and then boom, gone.  Most of the time I’m turning everything and anything into a diphthong, which I’m attributing to living most of my life in the Southern USA.  Nothing against our accents, but what can be a beautiful lyrical quality can also hinder us in learning a new language.  Again, patient listeners in my life,  woo and hoo!

Of all the words with which I’m struggling, amanhã (tomorrow) and homem (man) are two of the most difficult for me to say.  If I sound like I feel, people must wonder if I’m storing marbles in my cheeks.  I keep expecting to bite my tongue at any moment, though family and friends are having a great deal of fun teasing.  I recall learning the guttural “r” in French, and it comes second nature to me now, but applying it to Portuguese has been interesting, especially when that “r” is smack dab next to a nasal “m” or “n”.  It’s probably not uncommon to worry you’re making any native speaker want to beg you to stop talking.  I have visions of causing peoples’ ears to spontaneously begin bleeding.  That being said, I have talked now with a few native speakers online (thank you, Skype), and I am finally getting the hang of the “r” and the “m and “n”, just not when they’re together.  

Along with all the books, notes, friendly people online, instructor, recordings, and basic determination, I use a lot of sources online as well as youtube videos to help me muddle my way through to being understood.

Wikipedia, a handy jumping off point for finding sources and references along with basic information, is especially helpful when trying to understand the diacritics, accent marks.  Learning those accent marks will take any new language learner further in their journey.  Some sites to get started include Portuguese Orthography, Basics to Get Started, and Games and Quizzes.  The last site is geared towards children, but I've found watching cartoons and playing games is a great deal more engaging for me than dry texts, flash cards, and constant grammar lessons.  Most of all, I am having fun learning, especially for the sake of the poetry.

Words like Water

My brain has turned to liquid, you see,
a lapse in things all elementary.

The commas I know are all undone.
Lost in hazes of vocabulary lessons.

Hoje is today and tomorrow I knew,
but eu esqueci is definitely true.

Apparently knowing comes round twice,
saber and conhecer, what about thrice?

Palavras in my head flooded right out,
if words are water let there never be drought!

Tara Saint-Clair