We are playing a piece in band titled Portugal em Festa. It has three songs in it, and I am having a problem translating them into English (sometimes the translator gives the same word back to me). Can anyone help?
Romaria no minho (Pilgrimage in minho)
Cantar da Serra (Corner of the mountain)
Corridinhos a Fogueira (with a backward accent mark on the “a”) (Corridinho of fire)
We are playing this for a concert in a week, and today I said that I would make up meanings for the different songs, but it might be better if I find out what they actually are!
Minho is a proper name (a region in Portugal), so it should be capitalized: Pilgrimage in Minho.
Cantar is song, not corner: Song of the mountain.
Corridinho is a song and dance in Algarve, so there is no translation. The backward accent in the “a” means that there is the contraction of the preposition “a” and the article “a”. It should be Corridinhos at the bonfire.
In language training, they used the example ‘nya, like in cognac’. The other odd one in Portuguese is the ‘lh’: the word ‘coelho’ (rabbit) is pronounced ‘kwayl-yo’.
But since some Portuguese speaking readers are following this thread, may I ask…
What do Portuguese think about the Portuguese language spoken in Brazil? I heard that the Brazilian versions are not as grammatically or syntactically correct as the original language of Portugal.
There’s always a certain amount of snobbery when it comes to language, so it wouldn’t surprise me. I’m sure that local Indian words have made it into the Brazilian version. I can only tell you this for sure: the Department of State put me through six months of intensive Brazilian Portuguese, then sent me to post in Lisbon. I could barely understand the Portuguese spoken in Portugal. That said, Portuguesas don’t seem to have any difficulty understanding Brasileiras, and vice versa, despite all the sh/jh sounds in the Brazilian version.
There is an Orthographic Agreement between Brazil and Portugal, so the cultivated language is the same in both countries.
The day to day language differs a lot, mainly in pronounciation.
Because Brazilian soap operas are broadcasted in Portugal, the Portuguese are used to Brazilian pronounciation and understand us better than we do them.
I grew up speaking Brazilian Portuguese at home. It took me about a day to get used to the Portuguese accent since you rarely hear it in Brazilian media or TV. The only person I had any trouble with with a waiter in a small restaurant in Porto whose accent was frankly impenetrable to me. I didn’t have any issues with anything written. As SGT42 pointed out, because of the Brazilian telenovelas people are used to Brazilian pronunciations. The bartender at a bar I went to understood what I meant when I ordered a “chopp” even thought the Portuguese use a different term.
The differences are equivalent to UK English and American English.
