"Despite all the obvious linguistic hurdles, though, it feels a bit like it’s not just the language at work."
BINGO! As a native speaker, I will tell you. This happens all the time and is not a language issue. Telling you the same thing over and over, with different words, is like "I want to give you an answer, but this is ALL I now... So I'll keep talking and 'answering' your questions because I am nice, but I have no further information and it would be rude or unprofessional to tell you that".
So happy that saga is finally over! Enjoy your new connection. 😊
That's quite interesting. And helpful. I wonder, is there a polite way for me to find out that this is what's going on or should I just assume there's no more information to be learned and exit the conversation (which is what I have been doing)?
There's not much to do. Maybe you can repeat back all the information you have and ask if they have any more details than that. It's easy to assume the customer knows more that they actually do.
Yes, so far my attempts to learn Portuguese are mostly doing nothing but causing me to lose the caveman Spanish I had! I've hoped my brain would know how to keep Portuguese and Spanish in separate compartments, but nooooo. I don't know how polyglots do it. I think it's curious that Portuguese is the only language I've brushed up against that has given up naming the days of the week after pagan gods. Yes, of course the reason is (click click search) "This stems from the 15th century, when priest Martinho de Dume, from Braga, Portugal, established the names of the days of the week based on Christian—and not Pagan—names." Except that there's nothing Christian about "first, second, third, fourth, fifth, Sabbath, Lord."
I found out some years ago, when teaching portuguese to a jewish french woman, that in hebrew it is (with a little "Sunday adaptation") the same! I was amazed! So, it goes like this: "The Hebrew names of the days of the week are numerical: Sunday - Yom rishon - "first day", Monday - Yom shani- "second day", Tuesday - Yom shlishi- "third day", Wednesday - Yom r'vi'i- "fourth day", Thursday - Yom hamishi- "fifth day", Friday - Yom shishi- "sixth day" (and also cErev shabbat -"eve of Sabbath"), Saturday -Yom Shabbat "Sabbath Day"!
Still on the portuguese names of the days, it is also fun that the latin "feria" (which is now in PT "feira" meaning also festival, holy day = holiday, fair/market) meant then, in Ecclesiastical Latin, "weekday" (day without a feast). "Féria" in PT exists too, meaning "the pay of a day's work". And so... we have now in PT (stemming from the same Latin root) "feriados" (public holidays) and "(as) férias" (holiday/s) - always plural (see before cf. "féria"). In conclusion: "feira" and "féria" and "feriado" and "férias" is enough to confuse any PT learner...
SOME smaller Protestant Christian denominations, notably Quakers (Quacres), object to pagan names and use numbered days in English: First Day for Sunday, Second Day, etc. Thank you for listing the "féria/feriados/férias" variatons, which is indeed confusing to THIS Portuguese learner.
If you look into it a little further you'll see references about it (segunda-feira, terça-feira...) being related to the Easter week. A recent discovery for me as well!
I have to laugh. When Frontier came to upgrade my equipment a few weeks ago, I thought it would take an hour or so, tops. Wrong! It was more like 3, with multiple conversations between the tech guy and the home office. They apparently have this new software which clearly still has some bugs. Frontier is trying to save money, so of course their new software isn't user friendly, far as I can determine. Of course we all spoke English, which helped. Last week their server went down, and I couldn't get my equipment running again after the server started working again. The tech guys had forgotten to tell me what to switch on and off to reboot the system. Happily, a couple of calls to Frontier resolved the issue and I learned what I have to do on this end. Kudos to you both for getting your tech stuff done in Portuguese. Btw, are you ever going to get into the Portuguese class? But even when you become fairly fluent, there will still be words and tech/business words and phrases that you may not know. It is certainly true with my French, I'm not sure I could have communicated with your French speaking guy. Anyway, all's well that ended well in manana land.
We start the Portuguese classes in late September. And yes, it'll be years if ever before we can have a conversation on the level we'd need to for something like the cable.
And boy oh boy, as I already knew but your experiences are underlining, there is a BIG difference between "I want to reserve a room" and "Three weeks ago I was told that the service would be installed the next week..."
Yes. I am getting relatively proficient in Caveman Portuguese. I go to the store yesterday. Tomorrow I eat good food.
I am having a hard time getting out of the present tense. I can't even name the tenses in English much less understand how to conjugate the verbs in Portuguese.
he funny thing is that in dozens of tiny ways, Portuguese is very slightly close to English than Spanish is. Basically, in anything that's borrowed from Latin, Spanish adds a little twist, and English and Portuguese don't. So "almost" is "quasi" in English, "quasi" in Portuguese, "casi" in Spanish. Lots of words in Latin that start with "f" get changed to "h" in Spanish. So "filio" in Latin gives us "filial," Portuguese "filho," and Spanish "hijo." I didn't even realize that "hijo" is a modification of "filho" until I started on Portuguese. "fungus" in Latin is "fungus" is English is "fungo" in Portuguese... but "hongo" in Spanish. And Spanish adds all those little "ye" and "tuh" twists. "Time" is "tempus" in Latin, as in "tempus fugit," and "tempo" as in music in English, and "tempo" in Portuguese... but "tiempo" in Spanish. "Terra", as in "terra firma" and "terrestrial" is "terra" in Portuguese... but "tierra" in Spanish.
That's really interesting. The fact that I learned some Spanish in school is both helping and hurting. It's hard to know which has the upper hand overall. Maybe I just need to learn to untwist the Spanish. (He says, as if that will be easy.)
Well, back in the Ma Bell days the story was ALWAYS that we were spoiled in the US and that getting a new phone, practically instant here, took months and months in Europe. So that might still be true. Oddly, there was a posting on Facebook in our local Medford group the other day by someone who was told that she can't get Verizon FiOS even though everyone in our neighborhood, including houses on both sides of here, can. Because of the engrabulated cetacious spifflex. I don't know if that was resolved.
With regard to "not your native language" I really feel for non-native speakers. I have tutored half-a-dozen Brazilians who speak fluent colloquial English, many now in college, and the severity of a language barrier is serious. It is a terrible handicap even when everything is simple and straightforward, but it leaves them extremely vulnerable to scams and near-scams... and difficulty navigating anything slightly bureaucratic. "Marca dos para español" doesn't help if you speak Portuguese. Or Haitian Creole. And (around here) those are the big ones, but in Norwood there important numbers of speakers of Chinese, Arabic, Russian, _Albanian_, Gujarati, Hindi, etc.
Hooray! I am very happy you finally have this resolved.
Thanks. Us, too. It's both aggravating and mystifying that our neighbors in the same building aren't set by now.
Yay! Now everyone else in the building will have to make appointments too. The count down for the whole building continues. 😁
Our downstairs neighbor got connected yesterday! I don't think the upstairs neighbors are set yet, though.
Congratulations on getting off the hotspot! ☺️
Obrigado! It'd be nice if the rest of the building were similarly equipped...
Hilarious dark comedy. I couldn't get enough of it!
Whoo hoo! And now, get Netflix and watch The Diplomat and Dead to Me right away.
I've been keeping a list of shows. It's maybe a couple of dozen long by now. I'll add Dead to Me to it ...
"Despite all the obvious linguistic hurdles, though, it feels a bit like it’s not just the language at work."
BINGO! As a native speaker, I will tell you. This happens all the time and is not a language issue. Telling you the same thing over and over, with different words, is like "I want to give you an answer, but this is ALL I now... So I'll keep talking and 'answering' your questions because I am nice, but I have no further information and it would be rude or unprofessional to tell you that".
So happy that saga is finally over! Enjoy your new connection. 😊
That's quite interesting. And helpful. I wonder, is there a polite way for me to find out that this is what's going on or should I just assume there's no more information to be learned and exit the conversation (which is what I have been doing)?
There's not much to do. Maybe you can repeat back all the information you have and ask if they have any more details than that. It's easy to assume the customer knows more that they actually do.
Yes, so far my attempts to learn Portuguese are mostly doing nothing but causing me to lose the caveman Spanish I had! I've hoped my brain would know how to keep Portuguese and Spanish in separate compartments, but nooooo. I don't know how polyglots do it. I think it's curious that Portuguese is the only language I've brushed up against that has given up naming the days of the week after pagan gods. Yes, of course the reason is (click click search) "This stems from the 15th century, when priest Martinho de Dume, from Braga, Portugal, established the names of the days of the week based on Christian—and not Pagan—names." Except that there's nothing Christian about "first, second, third, fourth, fifth, Sabbath, Lord."
I found out some years ago, when teaching portuguese to a jewish french woman, that in hebrew it is (with a little "Sunday adaptation") the same! I was amazed! So, it goes like this: "The Hebrew names of the days of the week are numerical: Sunday - Yom rishon - "first day", Monday - Yom shani- "second day", Tuesday - Yom shlishi- "third day", Wednesday - Yom r'vi'i- "fourth day", Thursday - Yom hamishi- "fifth day", Friday - Yom shishi- "sixth day" (and also cErev shabbat -"eve of Sabbath"), Saturday -Yom Shabbat "Sabbath Day"!
Still on the portuguese names of the days, it is also fun that the latin "feria" (which is now in PT "feira" meaning also festival, holy day = holiday, fair/market) meant then, in Ecclesiastical Latin, "weekday" (day without a feast). "Féria" in PT exists too, meaning "the pay of a day's work". And so... we have now in PT (stemming from the same Latin root) "feriados" (public holidays) and "(as) férias" (holiday/s) - always plural (see before cf. "féria"). In conclusion: "feira" and "féria" and "feriado" and "férias" is enough to confuse any PT learner...
SOME smaller Protestant Christian denominations, notably Quakers (Quacres), object to pagan names and use numbered days in English: First Day for Sunday, Second Day, etc. Thank you for listing the "féria/feriados/férias" variatons, which is indeed confusing to THIS Portuguese learner.
If you look into it a little further you'll see references about it (segunda-feira, terça-feira...) being related to the Easter week. A recent discovery for me as well!
Yay!!
I have to laugh. When Frontier came to upgrade my equipment a few weeks ago, I thought it would take an hour or so, tops. Wrong! It was more like 3, with multiple conversations between the tech guy and the home office. They apparently have this new software which clearly still has some bugs. Frontier is trying to save money, so of course their new software isn't user friendly, far as I can determine. Of course we all spoke English, which helped. Last week their server went down, and I couldn't get my equipment running again after the server started working again. The tech guys had forgotten to tell me what to switch on and off to reboot the system. Happily, a couple of calls to Frontier resolved the issue and I learned what I have to do on this end. Kudos to you both for getting your tech stuff done in Portuguese. Btw, are you ever going to get into the Portuguese class? But even when you become fairly fluent, there will still be words and tech/business words and phrases that you may not know. It is certainly true with my French, I'm not sure I could have communicated with your French speaking guy. Anyway, all's well that ended well in manana land.
We start the Portuguese classes in late September. And yes, it'll be years if ever before we can have a conversation on the level we'd need to for something like the cable.
Wonderful writing! Sorry about World Cup outcome. Lots of smiles were counting on a win.
I loved your technical writing too. I could follow it and lingered on every word!
Thanks, Ann! We appreciate the kind words and that you're following along.
And boy oh boy, as I already knew but your experiences are underlining, there is a BIG difference between "I want to reserve a room" and "Three weeks ago I was told that the service would be installed the next week..."
Yes. I am getting relatively proficient in Caveman Portuguese. I go to the store yesterday. Tomorrow I eat good food.
I am having a hard time getting out of the present tense. I can't even name the tenses in English much less understand how to conjugate the verbs in Portuguese.
he funny thing is that in dozens of tiny ways, Portuguese is very slightly close to English than Spanish is. Basically, in anything that's borrowed from Latin, Spanish adds a little twist, and English and Portuguese don't. So "almost" is "quasi" in English, "quasi" in Portuguese, "casi" in Spanish. Lots of words in Latin that start with "f" get changed to "h" in Spanish. So "filio" in Latin gives us "filial," Portuguese "filho," and Spanish "hijo." I didn't even realize that "hijo" is a modification of "filho" until I started on Portuguese. "fungus" in Latin is "fungus" is English is "fungo" in Portuguese... but "hongo" in Spanish. And Spanish adds all those little "ye" and "tuh" twists. "Time" is "tempus" in Latin, as in "tempus fugit," and "tempo" as in music in English, and "tempo" in Portuguese... but "tiempo" in Spanish. "Terra", as in "terra firma" and "terrestrial" is "terra" in Portuguese... but "tierra" in Spanish.
That's really interesting. The fact that I learned some Spanish in school is both helping and hurting. It's hard to know which has the upper hand overall. Maybe I just need to learn to untwist the Spanish. (He says, as if that will be easy.)
Well, back in the Ma Bell days the story was ALWAYS that we were spoiled in the US and that getting a new phone, practically instant here, took months and months in Europe. So that might still be true. Oddly, there was a posting on Facebook in our local Medford group the other day by someone who was told that she can't get Verizon FiOS even though everyone in our neighborhood, including houses on both sides of here, can. Because of the engrabulated cetacious spifflex. I don't know if that was resolved.
With regard to "not your native language" I really feel for non-native speakers. I have tutored half-a-dozen Brazilians who speak fluent colloquial English, many now in college, and the severity of a language barrier is serious. It is a terrible handicap even when everything is simple and straightforward, but it leaves them extremely vulnerable to scams and near-scams... and difficulty navigating anything slightly bureaucratic. "Marca dos para español" doesn't help if you speak Portuguese. Or Haitian Creole. And (around here) those are the big ones, but in Norwood there important numbers of speakers of Chinese, Arabic, Russian, _Albanian_, Gujarati, Hindi, etc.
engrabulated cetacious spifflex
Brilliant