Haha, that’s a pretty cool idea!
No worries, mate. It also means the male private part, but it depends on context. I make linguistic mistakes all the time too, so yeah, no sweat.
Interesting you should say that… when my dad or mum wants to talk something controversial with us in public, we speak in Malay. When my dad alone want to speak something controversial with my siblings and I in public, we speak in French. And when my dad and mum want to say something that they don’t want my siblings and I to hear, they speak in Hokkien (but we’re slowly picking it up!).
Other than ‘Portuguese for Dummies’, I saw this book at Kinokuniya (a Japanese bookstore chain). I borrowed the Chinese version from the local library and I understood the first few lessons with my rudimentary Mandarin.
I also bought two phrasebooks from the same store a few weeks ago - but these ain’t your granny’s textbooks!
Bear in mind, there are some pretty strong language in these books, so if you’re, like, not old enough to be watching Quentin Tarantino movies, you really shouldn’t be reading these! Also, most of the negative reviews on Amazon for ‘Dirty Portuguese’ is because the users were discontented that it wasn’t European Portuguese, but Brazilian, so bear that in mind, if you’re considering it!
Wow nice books.
I’d love to learn to speak Spanish.
Spanish would be my second choice
Do you plan to take a class any time soon?
Well, I already speak Spanish, so I should improve my English.
I know my school offers some language courses such as Latin, Spanish, Italian, and French. I guess if I were to take one of them this year it would have to be French.
Wow, those are a lot of options! My high school only had French, German, and Spanish. And they cut German!
My college offers Sign Language, German, Spanish, French, Latin, and Italian.
I wish they offered Portuguese!
Yeah, we do have quite a bit of options. I think if you don’t pass a language course your Senior year, you would have to retake 12th grade. I could be wrong on that though.
Italian is one of the choices at one of the high schools i could go to.
Is it the one you’re going to learn?
I dont even know if im goin to that high school.
My school is going to be cutting French in a couple years.
That’s what I took. I took 2 years of it.
^ Thats hporrible!
Ill probably take french. (unless I go to the Italian high school)
That’s exactly what happened with at my High School, only it was German.
Yeah, and I’m scared it will happen to OUR German classes too, years down the line. It’s boring to only have Spanish to choose from. I even think having the three choices is boring. I want to learn Italian.
Yeah, they cut French before German at my school. Spanish will never be cut. There needs to be variety, I agree, and choices for students.
I was at a bookstore of another university last week, and there were heaps of books on French, German, Spanish and Italian. I had to squat and stare at the last shelf at the bottom before I found two Portuguese dictionaries.
I feel there are too many people at my uni taking Japanese and Mandarin. The former cos’ it’s cool and the latter cos’ it’s a future global superpower. I saw a Swahili dictionary the other day in Kinokuniya (a Japanese bookstore in the city) and I was so delighted - this was after all the language that inspired the names of the characters in The Lion King! Hurray for ‘underdog’ languages!
I’m pretty peed that ‘Portuguese for Dummies’ has the wrong pronunciation for ‘r’ - the book advocates it as ‘d’ (like pronouncing ‘caipirinha’ as kai-pee-din-yah), but according to other reviewers, other books pronounce it as ‘r’! And I’ve been running around telling my friends and parents the supposed ‘correct’ pronunciation of the infamous drink.
I borrowed this book from the library recently. Brings back all those memories of those frustrating conjugation lessons at Alliance Francaise de Singapour. <3
At least you have choices, we don’t have any. I live in East Germany, the former German Democratic Republic, and we only learn English and Russian at my school as those were the only languages thaught back then. So it’s easier to find an English or Russian teacher than a teacher for any other languages. Although I heard another school around here has a French teacher.
I personally would like to learn French, Spanish, Portugese and Italian.