By JUNE LOVER features@algarveresident.com
After 35 years in the TV and film industry, June Lover retired to the Algarve in 2006. Having owned a holiday property here for 12 years she now lives in the hills above Almancil.
One of my most abiding memories is my first English lesson at Grammar School, when Miss Crow, a fearsome ogress if ever there was one, swept into the classroom, her black gown billowing in her wake.
Along with her beady eyes she bore a strong resemblance to her namesake. She slammed her books onto the lectern and announced in one of the loudest voices I can ever remember, “Declamation!” I was terrified! Fresh from a village primary school where voices were never raised and pupils were encouraged to learn at their own pace, I couldn’t imagine why my parents were subjecting me to such verbal cruelty.
I never grew to like Miss Crow, but I did grow to like the English language, and although it was years before I understood her opening statement, I worked hard, with the help of my mother, to ‘speak’ properly.
“The Subject and the Predicate!” Old Ma Crow would bellow. What did that mean to an 11-year-old whose only interests in life were roller-skating and tree-climbing?
English grammar was not my strong point at school and I never did manage to differentiate between an adverb and an adjective, but one way or another I just knew instinctively how to speak the language properly. Well, almost. Thanks, Mum, I owe you.
With equal clarity, I remember my first Portuguese lesson. Fifty years later, the long black gown was replaced by long black hair that framed a friendly smiling face.
Guida came into my life, and whilst her first lesson was just as confusing, it lacked the terror of my previous experience.
We soon became fast friends, and I always looked forward to our Tuesday morning sessions. With the patience of a saint, she encouraged me, praised me, and cajoled me into learning and speaking this alien language.
As a pupil, I was, and still am, a hopeless case. But she never gave up on me and deserves a medal for her perseverance. Tuesday mornings are empty spaces now. The temptation of a ‘proper’ job in Faro left me without a tutor.
It wasn’t long after our first lesson that a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach told me I’d bitten off more than I could chew. The Portuguese language is not easy to learn when you’re past your prime, but I gave it my best shot. My biggest hang-up is still the fact that you can’t do a direct translation.
Guida drilled into me the fact that however you say it in English is not necessarily the way you say it in Portuguese. As soon as I learned that “Two more, please” becomes “Please, more two” I knew I was doomed.
But it’s not just the back-to-front-speak that confuses me – it’s the choice of words and their different meanings. Take the verb pensar for example.
It means ‘to think’. But if you want to say “I think so”, you have to use a different verb – achar. This means ‘to find’, and you add a que just to make it more complicated. Acho que sim – “I find that yes”.
And whilst it’s perfectly correct to say compreendo for “I understand”, the verb perceber is more commonly used.
This also means ‘to understand’, but it’s a bit more expansive and includes perceiving, or seeing, or realising.
On this basis, I assume that não percebo could mean “I don’t get it!” That could be jolly useful.
At the risk of repeating myself – it’s not what you say, it’s the way that you say it.
I pride myself on being able to pronounce the few Portuguese phrases I know with a convincing accent and correct grammar. This in itself is a mixed blessing, because whenever I explain in perfect Portuguese that I don’t speak Portuguese, it carries no credulity whatsoever, and I’m left in the embarrassing situation of not understanding the reply.
I can go shopping with confidence (you can’t take that away from me!) as long as the shop assistant keeps her mouth shut. But the moment she asks me a question, I go into a panic.
Words ending in -em or -am, of which there are zillions, still bring me to a complete standstill. Funnily enough, I can cope with bem, meaning ‘well’, or sem, meaning ‘without’, but I can’t handle cem, meaning ‘hundred’.
They’re all pronounced the same, but I just can’t handle the last one. Where’s the sense in that?
Unfortunately for me, most ‘third-person-plural’ versions of Portuguese verbs (i.e. ‘they’) also end in the offending -em or -am, which means I never speak of, or refer to, ‘they’.
This is turning out to be somewhat restrictive, so ‘I, you, he, she and we’ have taken over my life. ‘They’ don’t exist, which is a shame because some of them are my best friends.
However, I think I may have found the answer, and I’d like to put it to the test. Would you do me a big favour, and say out loud the word foram (which means ‘they were’), but try and pronounce the letter ‘m’ without closing your lips.
Does it work? Do you get that funny sound that comes from the back of your nose? You do! That’s brilliant. I feel better already and think I might patent this discovery.
I’ve re-learnt my vowel sounds and I’m getting used to where the ‘stress’ of a word should be. I’ve also come to terms with the fact that Portuguese is a phonetic language, and you pronounce everything you see.
Actually, this is a bonus, although there are still a few tongue-twisters that catch me out. Cabeleireiro is a classic.
One thing Old Ma Crow drilled into us was that we must never, under any circumstances, use the double negative. It’s either “I know nothing”, or “I don’t know anything”.
Não, não, não, says Guida. In Portuguese the double negative is alive and well and is absolutely the correct way to speak. Não sei nada. “I don’t know nothing”.
Poor Miss Crow – she would turn in her grave if she could hear me now. And to be fair to her, I still find it extremely difficult to break the golden rule. Não quero nada. “I don’t want nothing”. It makes me cringe.
As always it comes back to the basic fact that you have to ‘think’ in Portuguese. That’s a Catch-22 situation if ever there was one.
How can I think in Portuguese if I can’t speak Portuguese?
My devious nature has taught me to form questions that require a simple sim or não answer. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work because there is no such thing as a monosyllabic reply.
The verbosity of the Portuguese pales my own wordiness into insignificance. They love to talk and simply have to expand the answer.
“Fala Inglês?” I ask. The answer I want is “sim”. The answer I get is “Falo Inglês um pouco, sim.”
I give up! Or at least, I’m tempted to. But something keeps saying “don’t quit”.
Maybe Old Ma Crow is haunting me. Or is it Guida? Spooky!
