Originally Posted by macliam

"Swallowing" parts of words is very common all over Portugal, but more educated people or those used to speaking to foreigners might do it less. Portuguese is very like English in this respect - words are pronounced according to context - for example "Estou" should be pronounced "eh-STOO" but is normally pronounced "'Shtoh" apart from when answering the phone when it becomes "'Toh" almost universally.

Here in the Alentejo they use some words far closer to Spanish than the "normal" Portuguese - but then, they have a massive shared border. Equally, they appear to have multiple names for the same thing, but actually they describe a tree at different stages of growth, etc. - that's hard to decode! - and a horse is almost always an "Egua" rather than "Cavalo" -straight from Latin! Plus, you must remember that you are in the Algarve, not Portugal - no slight intended, but the Kings were always titled "King of Portugal and the Algarve" and my wife (from Lisbon) looks on the algarvios as being "different".

In Lisbon, I find people use a lot of popular constructs taken from TV adverts etc. - i.e. "Es sempre a mesma machina, pa" "You're always the same machine, mate" which means "you never change", but comes from some old TV advert...... But conversational language is never like lessons - once your ear attunes, Portuguese is far more homogenous than English in the UK - no real equivalent of Geordies, or Makems or Glaswegians - or Irish, here.

By the way, when my father first ventured to the UK in 1941, he stayed in Bath. There he always recalled being called "my cocker" or "my lover" by everyone, male or female - and one expression he never forgot was "Thee casn't kist likes thee coulds't cas't?" - you don't kiss like you used to! Some contructs were still straight from German (or Anglo-Saxon?). As a poor Limerick boy, he found life "interesting"! Now tell me about Portuguese!!!

Originally Posted by morpeth

I read that Dutch is the easiest of the Germanic languages for English-speakers to learn.

Geordie via Northumbrian is the real English, closer to Middle English than Modern English, or so they at least by some near the Tyne by intellectual Geordies.

Originally Posted by GeniB

Oh oh that sounds exactly the way the Dutch talked about the difference between the north .meaning Amsterdam and the Hague ,and those in the south 'below the river' (The Maas) being of a different and in their case -inferior breed.
Brabanders (the south) would disagree as they had both French and Spanish influence and therefore boast of being Burgundian.More hospitable, generous and speak with a softer accent instead of the guttural sounding north.

The Algarve was of course Al Garb the home of the moors for hundreds of yrs. The Lucitani were further north There is still a turning up of the nose at the 'Arabs' in some quarters so I am told.
Luckily today we can't generalise anymore as people move about so much. Many ex-Lisbonites live here ,and Algarvians in Lisbon.
How about this for a twist. I am English being taught Portuguese by a Dutch woman from Amsterdam who used to live in Cascais and taught classical Coimbra (supposedly the most pure) Portuguese at a Lisbon college. If I speak to her in Dutch she sometimes has to correct me as I speak some words with a Brabant accent.Lessons are far from straight forward sometimes

Originally Posted by GeniB

My OH would probable dispute that claim Morpeth. He learn't German at school and found Dutch far more difficult.. He's from Geordie stock too..Gateshead... He has found Portuguese pretty easy as he took Latin at school. It should be easy for me too as at least 600 words are practically the same in English.. just have different endings. It's the words I can't attach to anything,even to take a guess that floor me every time...Like Tambem.demesiado etc... aaghhhhh.

Originally Posted by morpeth

I can read Portugese fairly well knowing Spanish and French, it is the accent that throws me. Then again, I can understand Spanish spoken in Mexico or Colombia a lot easier than in Spain.

Originally Posted by macliam

Coimbra being THE University in Portugal (and for many the only one worth attending), your teacher probably would speak "perfect" Portuguese. Unfortunately most other people don't!

As with fado, there is a big difference between Coimbra Portuguese and the Lisbon sotaque - and since my Portuguese is learned by ear, on a base of Latin, French and Castillian beaten into me by the Christian Brothers (and cúpla focal of Irish, which doesn't help much!), my vocabulary is huge, I don't have too many problems with the pronunciation, but my grammar is dire! Luckily so is that of most of the people I talk with and they gently correct me if I'm really wrong. Or not, as in the case of my brother-in-law, who in early days, when I "voce'd" him immediately shot back with "eh pa, es brasileiro, o que?" with a huge grin. That cured me.

Your ear will attune to the way people speak, but it takes time and practice. If you speak good Portuguese back to them they'll know - and maybe try to up their game. But don't be shy about telling them you don't understand what they're trying to tell you, there's always more ways than one to skin a cat!