Ugh, that one took far longer than I expected. Never mind! I always love the chance to hopefully introduce people to new music that I too like. Anyway. I'm going to Portugal in a few weeks - I'm unsure of the exact number, as time seems just to float by in these massive holidays, but I'm the one in the family who's going to be doing the speaking, so I've got to learn Portuguese. Being given a book labelled 'Portuguese In 3 Months' when I had 1 month was slightly disheartening, I have to say, although I've since realised that these '3 months' constituted of doing 3 lessons a month, and I personally only have to get a functional knowledge of the language.
However, I'm still finding it hard. Self-teaching is rarely easy, and this is proving to follow that pattern, the book's pronunciation guide often being profoundly undescriptive. Que sorte! Hopefully those of you who understand that will pick up the sarcasm.
What's more, whilst French and German, the two languages I've had a crack at so far, use their equivalent of 'to have' as a past tense auxiliary verb (avoir and haben respectively), Portuguese uses it as auxiliary for the future tense, which is incredibly confusing and frankly encourages me to learn Esperanto or simply go on holiday to Benidorm every year. Come to think of it, suicide is preferable to either. And I still don't know how to form the past tense.
Furthermore, the language insists on being infuriating by having no less than 13 forms of each verb, as opposed to 9 for French and German and just 6 for English. That's not counting the form that has fallen into lingual disrepair and is now only seen in classical texts. Although, I suppose it could work if I just learnt the 1st person and had a slight knowledge of the second person, short of any complaints along the lines of 'he/she has more x than I do'. And let's face it, complaining whilst abroad is not a good idea, as wary natives will just blather some gibberish that isn't actually part of the language.
Eh, I suppose when I get back I might take the opportunity to actually learn to speak Portuguese. Frankly, the little I plan to learn is enough to get a B at GCSE with comfort (although that just shows what a joke GCSE languages are), but I could further it, as fluency in multiple languages is always a useful asset to have (unless it's Esperanto), and I suppose it's not too much of a struggle.
Hey, enough pondering Portuguese (points for aliteration?). I don't doubt I've bored you with this post, but hey, life gives you shit sometimes. Such as unwanted tubgirl links (don't search it if you don't know, or you'll scratch your eyes out). Sorry for the somewhat downbeat writings, I'm just not in a great mood.
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