Learning to Spell...again

 

Like our grandson who is in Kindergarten, we are "back in school" and learning to spell!  Well this is probably a lot more difficult for us!  We are taking a ZOOM Portuguese class with about 6 other students and we meet once a week for 90 minutes.  

Our books

One of the first lessons is to learn to spell our names!  That may sound silly but when you consider the Portuguese trying to understand and write names of people from all the different nationalities here...well it makes sense. 

There are NO Portuguese words with the letters K-W-and Y and in fact these three letters were just added to the alphabet in 2009 so Portuguese could spell our foreign names.  Aren't Jack and I special?!!

Unlike Spanish that has only 5 vowel sounds, Portuguese has 15 vowel sounds (that's why the Spanish who come just over the border for Port Wine or the Portuguese who cross the border for cheaper fuel can't understand each other 😆).  

For example the letter A can be written (and pronounced) four ways:  à  á  â  ã.  The use of the grave accent (à), acute accent (á), the circumflex accent (â), the tilde (ã), and the cedilla all denote the amount of  stress in the word.  We get a little relief because only the letter C has the little tail called cedilla (ç).  I have learned that my iphone can change the letters by just holding down the letter and choosing from the "drop down".  

In addition to the vowels, the Portuguese language has many "nasal" sounds such as in Olhão (the "ão" sounds like the English "ow" but with a little nasalization added in.  Oh, and another unique Portuguese pronunciation....they "swallow" the ends of the words- often the E!  So Boa Tarde (good afternoon) is pronounced "bo-tard".  I won't even get into the silent "h" or how they smoosh the words together so it's impossible to hear individual words.   OK, time for another Galão 

Galão is hot coffee, like a latte, served in a glass cost €1

 

Jack is enjoying trying to understand the government in Portugal as we are currently in the middle of elections. This is no easy task since the TV commentators speak, of course, in Portuguese.   But wait it's not anywhere near like in the U.S.  Basically there have been two major political parties in Portugal-the Partido Social Democráta (PSD) and the Partido Socialista (PS) since the 1974 Carnation Revolution.  The PSD are center right and the PS are center left but neither party gets enough votes to have a majority. There are 9 political parties with candidates running in the election.  In order to form a government each party must align themselves with other parties to have a majority.  

In the past few years the PS has allied themselves with the Communists and the "Greens" to form a majority.  It was rather unusual to see these posters!

Strange bedfellows or savvy political alliance?
Portugal Communist Party and the Green Party

Last November however these two smaller parties broke with the PS over the country's budget. President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa (elected every 4 years) dissolved Parliament and called for snap elections which will take place the end of January 2022.  The electioneering for the new parliament only lasts TWO WEEKS and then it is rather low-key.  

We were very excited to be able to obtain our EU Vaccine Covid Certification that essentially converted our U.S. CDC vaccine card into a digital record for the EU.  This, in theory, should enable us to travel without getting additional Covid tests and allow us to enter restaurants and events.   

Portugal is in the Western Europe Time Zone which is the same as GMT (Greenwich Mean Time-London).  We are either 7 or 8 hours ahead of our grandsons, in Idaho and Oregon, which make for lots of questions.  

When we video call they always ask what time it is or want to see outside how dark it is!

Did you know that the Time Zones were adopted by the Railways in the late 19th century to synchronize train schedules! 

To end with another bit of trivia: Portugal has two time zones (mainland & Madeira Islands and GMT-1 in the Açores (Azores Islands) while there are 9 time zones in the U.S. and its territories, they include Eastern, Central, Mountain, Pacific, Alaska, Hawaii-Aleutian, Samoa, Wake Island, and Guam. 

We had fun making tapas for dinner: garlic prawns with sun dried tomatoes, stuffed mushrooms, chickpeas with spinach, piri-piri sausage and chicken empanadas