Archive for November, 2007
English Experts Posted by Transparent Language on Nov 8, 2007
This really fantastic blog for Brazilians learning English is quickly gaining steam. Over the past few months I have gotten to know (and respect) Alessandro Brandão, the publisher of English Experts. English Experts has been around for over a year, and as of late has been receiving much praise in the online community. Alessandro was…
Portuguese Treebank Posted by Transparent Language on Nov 8, 2007
Here’s one for the linguistics enthusiasts out there! A treebank, according to Wiki… …is a text corpus in which each sentence has been annotated with syntactic structure. Syntactic structure is commonly represented as a tree structure, hence the name treebank. Treebanks can be used in corpus linguistics for studying syntactic phenomena or in computational linguistics…
Obrigado Posted by Transparent Language on Nov 7, 2007
Obrigado means thank you in Portuguese. The first word many people learn in Portuguese, obrigado is certainly extremely useful. Since the word is the past participle of the verb obrigar, it is necessary to use the appropriate gender of the word. Males should say obrigado and females ought to use obrigada. As one might imagine…
False Friend: “Advertência” Posted by Transparent Language on Nov 6, 2007
Advertência does not mean Advertisement The word advertência actually means warning in Portuguese. In order to say advertisement, use either anúncio or propaganda.
Priberam Posted by Transparent Language on Nov 6, 2007
Priberam Informática is an irreplaceable online resource for the Portuguese language You may have noticed there aren’t a lot of traditional resources such as expansive, accurate dictionaries and grammar reference. Though this can be frustrating perhaps to the beginning student, once you know your way around the language a bit (i.e. are able to read…
CéU Posted by Transparent Language on Nov 1, 2007
Great new record from a Paulista singer named CéU From the Six Degrees Records website: Just when you think that Brazil must surely have exhausted its supply of irresistibly jazzy, funky, sexy, soulful electro-pop singer-songwriters, someone like CéU comes along and makes you think that maybe that particular well is bottomless after all. I came…
The Word “America” Posted by Transparent Language on Nov 1, 2007
Have you ever referred to the USA as ‘America’ in front of a Brazilian? If you have, then you have also undoubtedly heard something like this: “Você acha que na America só cabe um pais?” (you think the United States is the only country in America?) As a citizen of the United States, I made…