The iguana's tale- Portuguese, Spanish, Haitian Creole and Ladino

[kunsttyv]

Perhaps I may do something similar with Portuguese.

Please do! Brazilian cinema is a huge blind spot for me, so I would love to follow a log like that.

Pedro Costa from Portugal is in my opinion one of the most interesting filmmakers working today. If you're new to his work I could recommend checking out In Vanda's Room or Colossal Youth. I haven't seen anything like it.

[iguanamon]

... It took me a long time to realise that it was strange for us to keep our potatoes and bread in the fridge. I thought everyone did it. When I found out more about bread bins, I thought it was a thing upper middle class white people had. It was only reading your post that I realised that this was a cultural hangover. ...
(And, while we're on the subject, we never put ripe plantain in the fridge, although we tend to refrigerate green banana. I wonder if that is what you refer to as green plantain? The differences in the food terminology across the islands sometimes astounds me!)

Thanks for stopping by, Elenia. I enjoy reading your log too. Living in the Caribbean is different. Ice cream is another example. I live without air-conditioning for various reasons, among which are high cost of electricity and not wanting to become dependent upon a/c when the whole point of being here is to be outside. So, back to ice cream. My kids live in Northern England. When they were younger and would come down for the summer to visit, I had to train them on how to eat ice cream in the tropics- basically... very quickly! Elsewise, the ice cream soon melts into sweet milk and you need a straw rather than a spoon to consume it. I do have a trick to compensate somewhat. I put the bowl in the freezer beforehand. Then wrap the bowl in a tea towel with the ice cream inside, and, hope for the best! The kids were used to having some ice cream, then leaving it for a bit while they watch tv or do something else and come back to it. Here, with the ambient indoor temperature being 10-20 degrees Fahrenheit hotter, that's not a good strategy!

Which brings me to a cultural observation about England. Cultural habits are hard to break. It used to annoy me to no end when I'd ask for a coke in a pub and would get a glass with no ice in it. If I asked for some ice, I'd get my glass back with a whopping two cubes! I imagined that ice must be valuable and they were keeping it in a safe in the back. Later, I was told that English people would feel that they were getting ripped off if they had ice in their glass. "Ice water" is an unknown concept. The very idea of "iced tea" (without milk, but lemon instead) is repugnant to most English folks. Might as well ask them to try a peanut butter sandwich! I had to import ice trays from the States because my ex didn't have any and I couldn't find adequate ones in the grocery! In the tropics, you can never have too much ice. Want to impress your host at a party? Bring a couple of large bags of ice with you, you'll be a hit! Don't worry, I love and appreciate Britain and British culture.

There are two main types of plantains here on the island. "Green plantains" looks like this

This is the starchy one. If left outside in the tropical heat, they will turn yellow and get sweeter. When they do, they're not right for making savory "tostones" but can still be used to make sweet, fried plantain chunks for desert.

The second type pf plantain is what we in the VI call "Sweet Plantain" and they look like this:

I fry these whole and flatten them out as they fry. Their consistency is between mushy and firm. They are significantly sweeter than bananas and the result is like eating a banana pancake without the need for syrup. I can buy a bunch of six of these for a $1 at the farmers' market. They freeze well after they're cooked. Of course, if the power goes out for most of the day...

[iguanamon]

Haitian Creole
I've been enjoying reading the book of articles from the magazine/journal "Boukan Dife" which basically means a barbecue fire. This journal was written in the late 1980's and early 1990's in Kreyòl. One of the things I like about this 176 page pdf (which, in my experience translates to about 350 pages of a book) is the varied content and corresponding varied vocabulary. Topics range from interviews to health and societal issues- like deforestation and youth homelessness.

The language situation in Haiti is worse than diglossic. Only about 3% of the population can speak French proficiently yet 100% of the around 10 million population can speak Kreyòl. So, of course, most education and government work is done in French!

This is a problem because not even the majority of the teachers have full competence in French, let alone the students. Education tends to be rote memorization with little interaction and debate to spur intellectual curiosity as a result. Obviously, it should be better for kids to be educated in a language that they understand, but the colonial legacy of French is a burden in this regard. Kreyòl, under the most recent Haitian Constitution is an official language in Haiti alongside French, but it receives second class status due to certain prejudices as regards Creole languages- such as: Kreyòl is not a "real" language; Kreyòl can't be used to discuss complex topics; Kreyòl can't be used to teach courses like physics, biology, chemistry, etc. There is a lot of stigmatization involved. Kreyòl is not a minority language in Haiti. It is the main language by far of all Haitians and recognized in the Constitution, but the stigma continues even after the Haitians overthrew the French and almost everything French over 200 years ago to become the world's first Black Republic. Still, it's hard to get rid of all colonialism.

Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, None but ourselves can free our mind.

Things are changing with the work of Creolists like MIT Professor Michel DeGraff who is working ceaselessly with MIT's Haitian Initiative to provide new learning materials for students in Kreyòl. Anyone who is interested in learning more about the linguistic situation in Haiti and how it is harming development there can read this scholarly paper by Benjamin Hebblethwaite of the University of Florida- French and underdevelopment, Haitian Creole and development Educational language policy problems and solutions in Haiti. After having learned Kreyòl to a high level, I can testify that it is indeed a real language and can be used for anything any other language can be used to do.

The following short, 3 minute or so, video talks about the situation in English and Kreyòl with subtitles


Ladino/Djudeo-espanyol
I've started a new/old novel Los amores de Ozhie (Odjie/Udjie/Uzhie/Ujie/Ojie?) Leves printed in "Estambol" (Istanbul) Turkey in 1911 and scanned into a Spanish Library.

The titles of most Ladino/Diudeo-espanyol books, for some reason I haven't quite worked out, use Hebrew Meruba Square text- probably for some reason of prestige. The text says (my own translation and transliteration):
Anri Kuatro/Henry IV Rey de Fransiya King of France Sinkena Parte/Fifth Part
Los amores de Ozhie de Leves/The Loves of Ozie de Leves Kapitulo 1/Chapter 1 El tavernero Letorno/The Tavern Keeper Letorno (Le Torneau?)
Afuera de Paris por la puerta de Montmartre se via en 1572 por la parte syedra de el kamino tuerto i bistuerto una chika morada en medyo de una guerta avayadada kon un vayado de punchones i altos arvoles. Esta morada ke era de un monako de nuestra dama, avia sido merkada por una dama llevando vestido de lutiyo.
Outside of Paris by the Montmartre Gate, by the left hand side of the crooked and twisted road, a small dwelling was seen in 1572 in the midst of a garden fenced with a split log fence and tall trees. This dwelling which belonged to a monk from Notre Dame, had been bought by a lady wearing a widow's dress...

The text that follows the title is in Rashi script. This is how I read nowadays in Ladino. Mostly in Rashi script and some Solitreo, which I have now learned. I can now read all four scripts in Ladino- Rashi, Meruba (Hebrew Square), Solitreo (Ladino cursive based on Rashi) and of course- Roman characters.

This book was written by a prolific French writer Pierre Alexis de Ponson du Terrail (en français). Ponson du Terail was most famous for the book "Rocambole". He died young at 41 years of age but left a long list of books that he authored. I'll give this book a chance. It has 208 pdf pages in letter size (A1) format. I have 5 or 6 of his translated books in Djudeo-espanyol. If I like this one, I'll make my way through the next one. I'm also going to experiment with making a parallel text using the pdf's of a shorter text and transliterating the Rashi to help future learners to learn how to read Rashi script. I could probably also make one with Rashi and Solitreo side by side too, and, Solitreo/Roman. It's going to be tough to figure out how to do it though.

Portuguese
Still listening to Portuguese every day. I followed the tragic news from Portugal about the fire in the Pedrógão Grande area. This was horrific. The Portuguese people are very resilient. My thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families.

For Brazilian Portuguese learners, Folha de São Paulo has a really good TTS feature on many of their articles. I tried it out and it does a good job of rendering the article's text to speech. This article about preserving habitat for amphibians in the Atlantic rainforest has the TTS feature Área de São Paulo e US$ 25 mi por ano salvariam anfíbios da mata atlântica.

Spanish
Spanish continues as always. Just so you know, I'm a zombie fan. I've read most of "The Walking Dead" comics in Portuguese and I've watched all of the TV seasons in Portuguese dub too. I have watched most of the sequel "Fear The Walking Dead" in English. The sequel takes place along the US Mexican border and in both countries. Last Sunday's episode, called "100", was a first for US mainstream TV as almost the entire 42 minute episode minus commercials was broadcast in Spanish with English subtitles. One of the actors is one of my favorite salsa singers, Rubén Blades of Panama. He sings politically conscious salsa lyrics, is a Grammy winning recording artist, graduate of Harvard, served in the Panamanian Government and ran for President of Panama once, in addition to acting.

I've been watching an HBO series from Mexico- "Capadocia". It's a drama about a women's prison, government and business corruption, and narco-trafficing for good measure. The HBO dvd's in Spanish come with a Portuguese dub too. So,if I watch it again, I can listen in Portuguese dub.
Spanish Trailer (English Subs)


Brazilian Portuguese Trailer (Portuguese Subs)

[iguanamon]

I discovered a new blog today about bilinguals in Psychology Today called Life as a bilingual. The specific article I read was an interview with NPR (National Public Radio- US) reporter Eleanor Beardsley, based in Paris, who is an American who speaks fluent French. There are plenty of posts, nothing earth-shattering, and not much we don't already know here, but some of the posts may be of interest.

Ladino/Djudeo-espanyol
Still reading Los amores de Ozhie de Leves in Rashi script. The scan is pretty good. Having a good scan is very important for me when I'm reading in Rashi. The actual plot of the story is not gripping. Royal intrigue isn't exactly my cup of tea, but, in minority languages with few resources available, I take what I can get. I guess 19th century readers liked this kind of thing as a romantic escape. The story is set in 1572 near Paris. It involves Henry IV- then King of Navarre, his coterie, a beautiful widow named Sarah and some unsavory characters. I'm on page 45 of 208 (letter-sized/A1) pdf pages. The good thing is that the text has several Turkish loan words to learn like "lokanda": "inn/restaurant/pub". I don't know where "negra konfafa": "evil plot" comes from, in Spanish the word for "plot" would be "complot". I like "konfafa". It reminds me of Trump's Twitter-created word "covfefe"- Ha! This will all prove useful.

Portuguese
This came to me via Twitter also, a video of people from all over the Portuguese-speaking world reading from O paraíso são os outros by Angolan born Portuguese writer Valter Hugo Mãe. The accents come from everywhere Portuguese is spoken as a native language- Angola, Moçambique, Guiné Bissau, Cabo Verde, São Tomé e Principe- in Africa, Goa/Diu/Cochim- in India, Macau and Timor Leste in East and Southeast Asia, Portugal- all regions including Azores, Madeira and several regions of Brazil. There is an amazing amount of diversity in Lusofonia. For someone who wants to learn a non-typical world language, Portuguese definitely fills that bill and is a worthy option.


Spanish
Last week, I talked about Panamanian singer/actor Rubén Blades. Rubén Blades is a legend of salsa music who has played and sang alongside other legends such as Willie Colón, Ray Barretto and Hector Lavoe. His album Agua de Luna was my introduction to his work. It first came out in 1987. Blades' career is extensive and incredible. He is a true "Renaissance man". His songs are a little more than salsa with social commentary. They are almost short stories in themselves and touch on subjects such as the assassination of Achbishop Óscar Romero of El Salvador (El Padre Antonio y su Monaguillo Andrés), Gabriel García Márquez, environmentalism, urban Latin American life and Latino pride. I'm not from Panamá but listening to his song Patria (con el alma en la garganta) brings a tear to my eye. If you've written off salsa music as just dance music, listen to Rubén Blades and you will find so much more.

I've always been fond of his song "Pedro Navaja" which is basically the Latin American version of "Mack the Knife". It gives off a very cool and edgy Latin American Caribbean urban vibe. I love the lines "La vida te da sorpresas, Sorpresas te da la vida". Yep, if there's one thing I've discovered along life's way, it's that "life is full of surprises". If you are learning Spanish, you'll find a lot to study in Rubén Blades works and lyrics. Now a wider Anglo-American audience is getting to know him through "Fear the Walking Dead". His character, Daniel Salazar is supposed to have fled El Salvador after the Civil War but he's so Panamanian, so Caribbean. He is exactly the opposite of his character's politics too.


Haitian Creole
Still reading the book of magazine/journal articles Boukan Dife. The topics are wide and varied and that keeps my interest going. I've got a couple of new books to read in HC, if I can ever finish all the others I have waiting in my other languages... the eternal dilemma of a "language juggler" is time- there's never enough of it.

[iguanamon]

Ladino/Djudeo-espanyol
I'm still reading the book I started a couple of weeks ago. I'm not making a huge effort with it, just a little each day in the mornings, sometimes an hour sometimes 20 minutes. Reading in Rashi script is something I very much enjoy doing. It gives me a feeling of exhilaration knowing that I can just pick up a text in this funny looking script and make sense out of it. The book, Los amores de Ozhie de Leves has nothing to do with Judaism. It's a secular novel about royal intrigue in the time of Henry IV. There's a fair bit of swashbuckling sword-play, rogues and impetuous heroes to liven things up a bit. This was the time Alexandre Dumas was all the rage in France and I guess Ponson du Teraille was riding that swashbuckling wave too.

One of the little things that makes this translated novel conform to Djudeo-espanyol is the use of "Diyo" (God) when referring to the deity, whether the characters are Protestants or Catholics. In Spanish, of course, "God" is "Dios". In Judaism God is one, so they don't refer to God as Dios (as the Sephardim consider the Spanish word Dios to be plural) but Diyo (singular) to reflect this core belief. It even stretches to using "adiyo" for adiós. The characters even go to church on "alhad" (borrowing from Arabic because "Domingo" comes from Latin "Dominicus"- "of the Lord") instead of on Sunday, when they're not hanging out drinking wine at the inn, riding their horses running back and forth to the Louvre, and sword-fighting.

I came across this article about a University professor who teaches Yiddish and is a non-Jew, which I very much relate to: Reflections from a Non-Jewish Instructor of Yiddish

Once, at a university cocktail party, I was introduced as the “first gentile instructor of Yiddish at UC Berkeley.” Which I believe might be true; Hello, my name is Jenna Ingalls and, as far as I know, I have the dubious honor of being the first gentile instructor of Yiddish at UC Berkeley. I also teach German, and through my experiences teaching both languages, I have learned much about identity and culture and what it can mean to teach a language and culture of which you are not a representative in any traditional sense.

Professor Ingalls talks about how when she teaches German, her students think she's German and she tells them she isn't and is from Fresno, California. She says it helps her students bond over their shared "otherness" and they "discover" German culture together as the students learn the language.

However, when she teaches Yiddish, it's more complicated since Yiddish is so closely associated with Judaism

...I remember when I was learning Yiddish, and like in any language class, the instructor would activate prior knowledge to prepare students for the day’s concept. One day, we were discussing Passover. My classmates shared their family’s traditions, and when my turn came, my instructor, Yael Chaver, a deeply kind and supportive person who knew I am not Jewish, reframed the question: “Jenna, what does your family do for Easter?” The kindness of this question and its inclusion still astonishes me, but in subsequent years, I have come to see that it also broke the “inside.” By this I mean that within Yiddish culture, an integral part of communication is the understanding that we Yiddish speakers are on the inside, we are part of a protected minority within a larger majority. And by speaking Yiddish, we signal that we are Jewish and on the inside, and that communication on this inside is safe and protected. So we say things we wouldn’t on the outside, in the majority culture. There is a security and safety in this inside. And by signaling that I am not Jewish, but somehow on the inside of this culture, the barrier between inside and outside is broken, or perhaps ruptured, and I cannot help but think that this is a good thing. This rupture has the power to open Yiddish language and culture to the outside. Don’t we all want more people to learn, read, and speak Yiddish? Perhaps through my missing membership card, I can signal that Yiddish is open, open to all, Jewish or not.

So, in a sense I too am "on the inside" with Ladino. What having learned Djudeo-espanyol has done for me as a non-Jew, is it has given me an access to Sephardic culture that I wouldn't and couldn't have otherwise. That access has given me new insights and deep respect for a people who have endured so much to keep that culture alive...

..Which leads me to this For Turkey's youngest Jews, ancestral tongue fading away

...Can this language be saved by the awareness raised by documentaries and new opportunities created by special courses from the Cervantes Institute and online courses?
“The Ladino heritage can be saved if we support the Ladino magazines, reprint the books and dictionaries and keep singing the songs,” said Bencoya. “But it is unlikely that it will be ever be actively spoken either at home or on the streets again.” Does he speak it at home? No; his wife, who is Muslim, does not understand the language.
“My 30-year-old daughter is curious about the Ladino culture but she does not speak Ladino,” said journalist Gila Benmayor. “No, I think it is unlikely that the language will ever become active again, but it is important to keep the heritage — with its literature, cuisine and music — alive.”
Only Ender, who screened her documentary in the Paris Cervantes Institute in early June, is more hopeful. “After the show, a French colleague, of Basque origin came to me and said that languages that are dying can be brought back to life,” she told Al-Monitor. “That is, if there is a common desire to do so by the government and by the people.”

Ladino isn't coming back as a first language. The unique combination of factors that created it no longer exist, and will not exist again. It can be preserved and this is where the language is heading when the last of the native-speakers are gone in about 40 years or so.

To this end the Cervantes Institute is adding its weight to the effort to preserve Ladino/Djudeo-espanyol. I saw this article recently in El País ¡Salvad el ladino!

...La RAE promueve la creación de la primera academia del judeoespañol y busca el acuerdo entre diversos estudiosos e instituciones para saldar una deuda histórica con los sefardís...Lo principal es salvarlo. La diáspora y el holocausto lo hirieron de muerte. Pero existen peligros contemporáneos que lo pueden rematar. De ahí la urgencia, para Fernando Martínez Vara del Rey, encargado de relaciones institucionales de la Casa Sefarad-Israel. “Frente a las amenazas, existen elementos a favor como las posibilidades de comunicación que garantizan las redes sociales, o el apoyo de los poderes públicos españoles a través de entidades de diplomacia cultural como Instituto Cervantes o el propio Centro Sefarad-Israel. Una academia del ladino que contará con el respaldo de la RAE y de la Autoridad Nacional de dicha lengua, sería un organismo adecuado para velar por su salud y promover la literatura como uno de los cauces habituales de expresión”.

My translation, warts and all:
The RAE (Spanish Royal Academy) is promoting the creation of the first Academy Of Djudeo-espanyol and is seeking an agreement among the various academics/scholars and institutions in order to pay a historic debt owed to the Sephardim... The main thing is to save (preserve) it. The diaspora (emigration) and the Holocaust mortally wounded it. But there exist contemporaneous dangers that can kill it for good. Thus the urgency, for Fernando Martínez Vara del Rey, head of institutional relations of the House of Sefarad (Spain)-Israel. In face of the threats, there exist elements that are favorable, such as the possibilities of communication that are guaranteed by social media, or the support of Spanish public powers like the Cervantes Institute and the very Seferad-Israel Center. A Ladino Academy that will have the support and backing of the RAE and the Ladino National Authority, would be an appropriate body to watch over its health and promote the literature as one of the usual methods of expression.

This is the future of Ladino- preservation. It will always be alive, in a sense, as long as there are people left who can speak it, read it, learn it and appreciate the culture of the people whose native language it once was.

Yiddish is way ahead of Djudeo-espanyol in this regard. The Yiddish Book Center has a vast collection of books, writing and recordings (including audio books) available for free download. The University of Washington is beginning a similar initiative with Ladino, but it will take time.

I had a glance at a Yiddish word frequency list and was taken aback at how many words are cognate with English and of course, German. The Yiddish Hebrew alphabet is different to what I have learned with Djudeo-espanyol but similar enough that I could learn to read in it fairly quickly. I don't know if it's something I want to invest my time in learning though, just now. Having learned a few languages, I know that even an "easy" language takes a lot of time to learn and to "get right". It's a commitment.

[iguanamon]

Summer is here, which means for me that I wake up earlier with the sun. It rises here at 5:45 in the morning and goes down now at around 7:00 pm. This time of year, in my 17 degrees north latitude, it rises in the northeast right in my bedroom window at sunrise, which definitely wakes me up. So, I have more time to read in the morning, which is always a good thing. People think there are no seasons in the tropics. We have them, though the changes are more subtle here. The difference in summer here is that the sea temperature is perfect relative to the air temperature and quite pleasant. The morning lows are much warmer- around 80F or 27C, highs around 89/90F or 32C. It will be like this til late November when the lows drop into the low 70's and highs in the low 80's.

Ladino/Djudeo-espanyol
My progress with Los Amores de Ozhie Leves , the translated novel by Ponson du Terail in Rashi script, is now at the halfway mark. It's getting better. I'm more than just "tolerating" it now. I'm close to possibly enjoying it. There are better things to read in Ladino, like the folktales, but they're not in Rashi script. Here's a short Djohá tale- my translation:

La kamiza de Djoha
And'avia de ser de un rey ke stava hazino, i le trusheron tantos medikos i no se sano.
There once was a king who was ill, they brought him a lot of doctors and he didn't get well.
Vino una vieja, ke azia kuras a los ijos del rey, i disho ke, para ke el rey se amahara, karia ke se vistiera la kamiza de un ombre orozo. Ma, tanto ke bushkaron, no se topo un ombre orozo, porke kada uno tinia su ansia.
An old woman came along, who did "folk cures" for the king's children, and she said that, in order for the king to get well, she prescribed that he should dress himself in the shirt of a happy man. But despite that they searched so much, they didn't find a happy man, because each one had his worries.
Asta ke, bushkando... bushkando, arivaron a un kampo i lo vieron a Djoha ke stava aya riyendo i kantando. Le demandaron: "Tu stas orozo?!"
Until, searching... searching, they came to a field and they saw Djohá who was there laughing and singing. They asked him: "Are you happy?!"
"Si," les disho Djoha, "yo sto muy orozo! No me sta mankando nada!"
Le disheron: "Te vas azer rico i vas a star mas orozo de lo ke stas; solo damos tu kamiza!" Ma kuando vinieron a desnudarlo para tomarle la kamiza para el rey, toparon ke Djoha... no tinia kamiza!
"Yes, "Djohá told them, I am very happy! I'm not lacking anything!"
They said to him: "You are going to be rich and you're going to be happier than you are; just give us your shirt!" But when they came to undress him to take his shirt for the king, they found that Djohá... wasn't wearing (didn't have) a shirt!

Apparently, Djohá was so dirty they thought he had a shirt on! French speakers- "orozo"/"happy" is a borrowing from French "heureuse". The "j" in Djudeo-espanyol is pronounced like a French or Portuguese "j"/"zh". "Dj" is like an English "j" sound.

Spanish
I finished the first season of Capadocia, the HBO women's prison series set in Mexico. Funny how most Americans have little trouble with Mexican Spanish and I find Caribbean Spanish so much easier , but; it doesn't take long to get used to "güey" again

Speaking of México, Laura Martínez Belli has become my new favorite Mexican author. Her new book, Carlota, about the short lived Empress of Mexico, just arrived in the mail last week. Speaking of Laura Martínez Belli, I follow her on twitter and she tweeted out a course she teaches on creative writing from La Escuela de Escritores.

La escritura es un oficio que se puede aprender. Si quieres escribir, puedes, pero primero debes conocer las técnicas de un oficio tan antiguo como el hombre: el de contador de historias. Porque una historia puede adoptar muchas formas: la de un cuento o una novela, sí, pero también la de una conferencia, un anuncio publicitario o una biografía.

The course costs €345 for three months and starts July 18th via online instruction. If I weren't going away soon for a few weeks, I'd be sorely tempted. Laura is one of the teachers and essays are corrected and critiqued... by writers. The online courses range from "Business storytelling", "Introduction to fantasy" and "Microrelatos"/"Micro tales". This looks like just the kind of course that would be challenging for advanced learners.


Portuguese
I will be watching another Akira Kurosawa film Trono Manchado de Sangue, or "Throne of Blood". This is a film of Kurosawa's that I haven't yet seen. It's subtitled in Portuguese. Afterwards, on youtube, there's a 26 minute discussion in Portuguese about the film. It's been praised as the best film adaptation of "Macbeth" ever made. Looking forward to it!


Haitian Creole
Reading an interview with an Ongan (Vodou Priest). Just got a couple of novels in the mail. More about this later.

[Systematiker]

Did I miss that you're a Kurosawa fan, forget it, or is this the first time you've mentioned it? Anyway, throne of blood is great.

[iguanamon]

Portuguese
Yes, Systematiker, I am a Kurosawa fan. The man was a cinematic genius. I love the long shots, the sets, the characters, the plots, the soundtracks. I highly recommend his films in any language. I saw "A Fortaleza Escondida" (The Hidden Fortress) earlier this year with Portuguese subtitles. It was great. "Trono Manchado de Sangue" (Throne of Blood) with Portuguese subs was superb. I hadn't seen it before. Kurosawa's Samurai remind me of Star Trek Klingons on steroids... or maybe Klingons are Samurai on steroids... and why are Samurai always shouting?

I've started a new book in Portuguese, A casa das sete mulheres by Letícia Wierzchowski. The book is about the Revolução Farroupilha in the mid 1830's. If successful, it would have seen Rio Grande do Sul become an independent nation and could have possibly led to the breakup of Brazil into smaller successor states, as happened with Spanish-speaking South and Central America. (I wonder if Portuguese would be a stronger language if there were several independent Brazilian nations.) Oh yeah, all of this was also wrapped up with slavery... and Giuseppe Garibaldi for good measure. Yeah, that Garibaldi- a father of Italian Unity who fought in Santa Catarina, Brazil before moving back to his homeland.

Today, people from Rio Grande do Sul are still known as "Gaúchos" (cognate with Spanish "Gaucho"), whether they ride the pampas on horseback herding cattle or not. Gaúcho Portuguese has distinct features, as distinct as the Portuguese from the Northeast of Brazil. There's a lot of Rioplatense Spanish influence on the dialect. In the book, so far with only 5% read, I am coming up on many words I've never seen before in Portuguese like "vossemecê" for "você" and "mui" for "muito"- which are pretty close to "usted" (vuestra merced) and "muy". In fact, one of the characters uses "usted" in her dialog. As if I needed more portunhol in my life!

I've watched two novelas and have read several books set in the Northeast already but nothing from the Southeast except the standup comedian Rafinha Bastos (whom I consider to be really more of a Paulistano. He's quite funny). Soon after the book's debut, in a true life love story set into motion by another Brazilian gaúcha author- Martha Medieros, Letícia met the publicist who would become her husband (also gaúcho) a year later. They began an email correspondence in 1998 and were married in 1999. Apparently, Gaúchos stick together. In 2003 TV Rede Globo debuted a 51 epsiode miniseries based on the book which I have on DVD but haven't seen yet. It was part of a group of six box sets of DVD novelas and miniseries that I was able to buy on ebay. So, that's why I'm reading the book.



Spanish
I spoke in Spanish much of the day today and yesterday. No big deal. It's just a part of my life.

Djudeo-espanyol/Ladino
I'm still reading the Ponson du Terail book in Rashi script with about a quarter of it left to finish. I remember having trouble remembering where to pick up when I left off reading back when I first started reading in Rashi over a year ago. Now, that's not a problem at all. I'm not as quick in reading Rashi as I am in Latin script but some of that may be due to the scans with text lines being slightly angled and not straight and some letters and words being quite light or blurred. My own estimate is that I'm about at 85% of my rate with the Latin alphabet in Rashi.

Haitian Creole
I'm happy that I have two new contemporary novels to read at some point soon

[iguanamon]

It's hard to believe that it's been a little over two years that this forum came about and we moved from HTLAL to here. Everything that made HTLAL a special place- knowledgeable and helpful posters and a sense of community, transferred over quite easily. We lost some members and picked up many more new ones. We went from a dying platform to a dynamic, living forum that will hopefully continue to serve for many years.

Since this is a forum dedicated to learning languages, it often happens that longtime members diminish their activity as they become more advanced in their languages over time. That has happened with me to some extent. Of course, nobody is ever "finished" in language-learning. I know enough about this to know that I never will be. So there's that, but polishing a language is not the same as trying to learn one. Sometimes it seems, living outside the L2 country, we will never be satisfied with where we are. I accept that. I'll just try to get a little bit better every day and not worry about what I can't do and try to keep my focus on what I can do. In Spanish and Portuguese, that's a lot. It was hard work, but it has been well worth the effort and has enhanced my life significantly.

Summer for me means that my kids from England visit me for the summer school break. This year my daughter has had other commitments and it was just my son joining my life for six weeks. We started out up in the States for a little over a week visiting my parents and extended family. My son is quite used to hearing me speak and listen to languages other than English, but it can still throw him for a loop from time to time. While I would like him to carry on my tradition and learn a language, I know enough about this to know that without a desire to do so, it won't happen. He's 13 years old and it was about at this age that I became interested in language-learning with Spanish. So, there's hope.

I will be traveling in Portugal and Spain later next month, after I visit the UK briefly to catch up with my daughter. So there will be plenty of opportunity to use both languages.

Até mais, Hasta luego, orevwa pou kounyea mezanmi

I wil provide some specific language updates about what I've been doing later.

[galaxyrocker]

So I came across some traditional Ladino lullabies today, and thought you might be interested.




It said both were in Ladino, but I really have no way of telling myself. Anyway, it got me thinking: what is the state of traditional music in Ladino? I'm sure, like with most minority languages, that it's in a pretty sad state, at least things like lullabies and such that are likely being replaced by their majority-language counterparts.