Kotro

I grew up hearing American vocabulary and accents via the television or movies, while at the same time learning and practicing British English in school. I must confess I developed an affinity for British, mostly due to my anglophilia, but I am quite apt at English from both sides of the pond. I will occasionaly get the odd Americanism in a phrase, but Brits tend to forgive my faux pas on account of me not being a native speaker.

I'm guessing it would be much more pleasent if recommendations were given in a genre you enjoyed most. Are you sure you can't give us any clues? I know quite a bit of French music, and it would be easier for me to recommend something having a better idea of your tastes.

William Strunk Jr. would be rolling in his grave if news of this topic got to him! Personally I think it's one of the great strenghts of the English language, this abbility to constantly reinvent itself and add more and more, and adapting what's already there. Most languages aren't as flexible, and they are paying the price by loosing their former influence (looking at you, French). I can be as curmudgeony as Mr. Strunk on some occasion where I think adjectivation was taken to far (like when the problem lies in the speaker's own lack of vocabulary knowledge), but in general I am open to these inventions.

I remember having them, but I never had any idea of the cost! Just how expensive would you say it was? Well, it's available on the Internet now - I just wonder if Muzzy is still a useful tool in this age.

There are not many instances of English-looking words in Portuguese, unless, of course, they are of English origin. However, there is one English sounding word that I have seen causing some minor confusion among English speakers and Portuguese speakers, which is the word "puxe". The reason it's so confusing is because it's part of the combination "push/pull" found on many doors throughout the world. Portuguese uses "empurre" for "push", and "puxe" (which sounds exactly like "push") for "pull". You often see English speakers in Portugal pushing doors they're suposed to pull, and Portuguese speakers pulling doors they're supposed to push.

I don't believe we have nothing of the sort in Portugal, at least to my knowledge. Closest thing we have to a language competition would be some translation context, but those are mostly held at academia and college-level (though some may exist at high-school level).

Chat in different languages. Uh. I have never tried it, nor have I felt inclined to do so, but reading about it and thinking for a bit, I can't help but asking myself why the hell not? I constantly write in different languages, would it be so weird to make the jump to speech? Gonna see if I can find the time to explore that Polyglot link, seems interesting.

Thanks for the link, Daedalus. I recognized all the languages they threw at me, but then they got me trying to figure out Romanian phrases, which I obviously didn't understand at all - got 3 out of 12 correct, and only on one of them did I have any degree of certainty. I'm surprised at how different my perception of it is different from other Romance languages. I was also surprised to recognize a lot of Latin words (and I mean actual Latin) - wasn't aware how much of the language had survived in Romania.

I try to text the same way I speak - properly. Occasionally, because my phone will not accent certain characters, I will go out of my way to find a word that fits, even if I don't use it often in speech. I avoid abreviations at all costs, and will often refuse to reply anyone who texts me like that (partly because I'm a curmudgeon, partly because I simply can't understand them).

Learning Arabic has always been one of my desires. I have always had a soft spot for Arab history, especially closer to home in the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa, and am also quite curious about Arabic culture. My college used to offer Arabic as an option, but sadly when I found the time to enroll it wasn't available anymore. I thought I could try to approach it on my own, but it seems like a daunting task, to try to learn a language with what appears to be a different alphabet, word-phrasing and speaking register. So I am asking your advice on what would be the best way to start, any helpful links you can point me to, any hints you might have, I am all ears (or eyes, in this case)!

I don't think this ever happened to me, at least not that I'm aware - if someone was having a laugh at me, it has always been behind my back. However, I must confess that I've been guilty of this. I try to hold myself together whenever possible in front of the person, as I don't mean to be disrespectful. But sometimes I have to ask to be excused, go around the corner and have a good laugh. I feel a terrible person for it, but some accents are simply so culturally charged, and so weird associations come into your head (like remembering Allo Allo when hearing French or German people speak English), that you just can't help it.

Voltaire's Candide is a great read, have you tried his other novella, L'Ingenu? Victor Hugo is also great, Notre-Dame de Paris is one of my favourite books. A bigger challenge would be my all-time favourite French books, François Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel.

I did come across a lot of culinary lingo when developing my English skills, but I'm not sure I'd be brave enough to cook and eat English food.

I love some of the French-speaking singers from the 50's and 60's, like Jacques Brel, Serge Gainsbourg or Leo Ferre. Among the most recent singers, the only one I enjoy (and which I would consider a bit of a guilty pleasure) is Mylène Farmer. My main love is French Rock bands, especially Progressive Rock. Groups like Ange, Arachnöid, Magma, Clearlight, Pulsar from the 70's, or the more recent Noir Désir, Nemo, Lazuli and Taal.

In college, during my MA in Translation, we were often reminded not to use the term "bilingual" to describe ourselves. It was explained that bilingual was used to describe someone who had been brought up to learn two languages from birth, such as a child of parents who spoke different languages, or the child of immigrants in another country. If we spoke more than one language, we should refer to ourselves instead as "fluent in more than one language". It was explained that being "bilingual" did not necessarily entail being proficient in either language - thruth be told, we got to experience it first hand, in a class where we had a bilingual foreign exchange student who spoke both English and Portuguese worst that any of us, non-bilingual classmates.

Hello Simmyao. Unfortunately Portuguese can be very tricky to learn if you don't have some background in Latin-based languages. French shares a similar grammar, but it's not one of the closest related relatives of Portuguese, so I'm not sure how much help that will be - you'd probably do better starting from scratch. I don't mean to get your spirit down, but I have tutored English native speakers in the past, some of them with a background training of Spanish, and after a year's dedication to learning Portuguese at a Portuguese university they still couldn't converse at light table-talk level without resorting to English or Spanish phrasing often. My advice is to try and focus on grammar and vocabulary, forget pronunciation, as that takes years to get even close. Read a lot of Portuguese before trying to speak it. When in doubt, have your girlfriend help you and explain the different meanings of the words and the sense, as Portuguese is often filled with metaphor and metonymy. After you get aquainted with the written word, then it's time to speak it and hear as often as you can. Humour is always a good way to test your progress: watch Portuguese and Brazilian comedy videos on the Web - the faster and the more by yourself you're getting the jokes, the better you're doing. Good luck!

I have and often use the Merriem-Webster Dictionary and Thesaurus software on my computer, but wasn't aware there was an app version for Android. However, if you say it's lightweight and free, then I assume it requires an Internet connection to work, right?

I think I am the minority here. I am passionate about words, few things delight me as much as learning new ones. I rather enjoy when people use somewhat obscure words (if they use in the right context and with the proper meaning). It brings a smile to my face to know that people still care for their language. I could go on about it, but frankly, when it comes to English, which I believe is what's under discussion here, there are wordsmiths who can make the defense of unusual words much better than I ever could. Champions of language such as the wonderful Stephen Fry:

In Portugal we do say "sounds/looks chinese to me" when confronted with something we don't understand (doesn't have to be necessarily language-related). However, we also have an idiom, "vi-me grego" (literally, "I found myself Greek") when involved in some kind of more or less difficult situation. It could be translated perhaps as "I found it hard" or "I could hardly" (as in "Vi-me grego para chegar a tempo por causa do trânsito" to "I found it hard to be on time because of traffic"), but it kind of loses something in the translation. I have no idea of the origin of the idiom, though.

Whether in my native Portuguese or English, using a keyboard at a distance or speaking face to face, I always try to respect every single grammatical rule in the book. I don't use abreviations, I punctuate accordingly, and I'm absolutely anal about it, to the point of not bothering replying to someone whom I find to be abusing the language in such a way. I often find myself correcting my friends mid-sentence, which they find rather annoying, but I can't help it, I can't stand having educated people massacring the language, it grinds my gears.

There isn't a specific author I enjoy, because I tend to read few books from a single author, so I can only discuss individual books instead of body of work. I really enjoyed Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5 and Margaret Atwood's The Handmail's Tail, but I think these aren't considered your classic sci-fi. There is a classic author of whom I read two books, and enjoyed both greatly: Clifford D. Simak (the books were City and The Visitors). These were definitly more typical sci-fi, but I enjoyed the unusual storylines greatly. I'm not a great fan of sagas and series, but have been curious lately about the works of Iain M. Banks. Are they recommended?

Uh. I find that I really don't do that, I'm always jumping from one to another, it's actually rare for me to read more than a couple of books by any given author - no matter how much I enjoyed him. By American, I trust you mean from the USA? Looking at my Goodreads shelf of most read authors, it's actually an American topping it, but it doesn't count because it's a comics writer, Brian K. Vaughan. After that it's Woody Allen and Nathanael West, both with four books read by me. Woody's are all short stories, so it is bound to be an uneven read. As for West, I quite enjoyed all his books apart from The Dream Life of Balso Snell, but I wouldn't consider any of them outstanding (well, maybe Miss Lonelyhearts). From the top of my head, the only author of which I read more than one book, and greatly enjoyed both, is Cormac McCarthy (the books were No Country for Old Men and The Road - I read both before the movie adaptations, of which I only saw The Road). So that would be my recommendation.

Just came across this light, funny version of the History of English. Thought you guys might enjoy it:

There is this successful comedy meme Facebook page called "Portuguese Sayings" (search it!), which takes Portuguese idioms and makes a literal translation into English - the results are often absurd and hilarious. It has grown into a small industry lately, mostly putting the absurd translations into T-shirts, but still has its charm.

I think he meant a more specific translation section, oriented towards a sort of exchange of favours mechanism, not simply discussion about translation. But I agree that the existing sub-forum should sufice - all you have to do, Scottman, is open a dedicated topic there! Cheers!