Learn how to use and understand long titles
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Paloma: Olá! Eu sou a Paloma! |
| Gina: Gina here! Welcome back to PortuguesePod101.com. This is Upper Beginner Season 2 Lesson 7 - An Important Brazilian Meeting. In this lesson you’ll learn how to use and understand long titles in Brazilian Portuguese. |
| Paloma: This conversation is between Rogério and Vitor, and it takes place in the morning at a meeting. |
| Gina: The speakers are co-workers, but Rogério is the chairman of the committee, so the speakers will be using formal Portuguese. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Paloma: Since the dialogue was about school, let’s talk a little about education in Brazil. |
| Gina: Most Brazilians spend over a decade in school as in many other countries. |
| Paloma: In fact, education is written into Brazil's constitution as the right of every citizen. |
| Gina: The Brazilian school system has both public and private schools. The private schools are usually better than the public ones, as the teachers are paid better and the students have better materials. |
| Paloma: But it isn't always like that. There are many public schools in Brazil that are very highly ranked. This is especially true of universities. |
| Gina: Yeah, I think it’s something like 7 of the top 10 Brazilian universities are public universities, right? |
| Paloma: Right! Also, public education is totally free. |
| Gina: It sounds like it’s a big deal to get into a good public school in Brazil! |
| KEY VOCAB AND PHRASES |
| Gina: Let’s take a closer look at the usage of some of the words and phrases from this lesson. |
| Paloma: Okay, the first two words we’re going to look at are planejar and programar. |
| Gina: Right. In Portuguese, these words can often be used interchangeably. But not always. |
| Paloma: That’s right. So planejar and programar both mean “to plan”, but programar can also mean “to program.” |
| Gina: That can be confusing, but in general, when you’re talking about computers and you use the word for “to program” you’re talking about programming software. |
| Paloma: In contrast, when you’re talking about an event and someone uses the word programar, they’re probably referring to making plans. |
| Gina: It might help to think about it as “to make a program for” as in a program or agenda for an event. |
| Paloma: Yeah, that’s a good one. Our next phrase is com prazer. This phrase is very common in Portuguese but more importantly, it’s very polite. |
| Gina: It’s usually used when someone requests something of you, like to help them finish a task or some other favor. So you can politely answer, “Yes, certainly, with pleasure.” |
| Paloma: But since this phrase is so polite, sometimes it’s seen as too formal for casual conversation. So you should avoid using com prazer when you’re just with friends. |
| Gina: Good tip! And what is our last phrase for this lesson? |
| Paloma: It’s mudar de local, which literally translates to “change of locale” or “change of place.” Also, this phrase is usually used for permanent changes. |
| Gina: I see. Could it also be used if you move a book from one side of the table to the other? |
| Paloma: Not really! It would sound weird. But it was very appropriately used in the dialogue, where they were describing the move of an entire school from one building to a new one. |
| Gina: Okay, got it! Now, onto the grammar. |
| GRAMMAR POINT |
| Gina: In this lesson, you’ll learn how to use and understand long titles in Portuguese, which is a very difficult task for learners of the language. |
| Paloma: Deciphering very long titles is confusing at best. |
| Gina: That's right. And what's worse is that many Brazilian organizations have very long titles or names, and it’s often very difficult to know what to call certain places or companies as well as how to translate them into English. |
| Paloma: So in English, we create long titles usually by compounding adjectives. For example, “International Phonetic Alphabet Creation and Marketing Committee”. |
| Gina: Here, the “committee” is preceded by everything that describes it. It’s an international committee, a phonetic alphabet creation committee, a phonetic alphabet marketing committee, and many other things depending on how you rearrange the adjectives. |
| Paloma: Portuguese generally reverses that structure but it’s more complicated than English. |
| Gina: Indeed. But there are short titles, aren’t there? They have just the name of the entity like "committee" at the beginning, which is then followed by its adjectives. |
| Paloma: Yeah. A short title example would be Comitê internacional which in English would be “International committee”. |
| Gina: Okay, that’s not complicated. But, then we have titles such as “International Phonetic Alphabet Committee”, and since Portuguese requires the use of phrases and prepositions inside the title, how would you say this? |
| Paloma: Comitê do alfabeto fonético internacional. Notice how the word do is inserted between comitê and the alfabeto. This is because committees need to do something or exist for some reason, and that reason needs to be in the title. |
| Gina: So a word for translation of this title would be, “Committee on the international phonetic alphabet.” |
| Paloma: You got it! Now, moving on to even longer titles, things become even more complicated. So, let's reuse our example from the beginning of the grammar point, which was Comitê para a criação e divulgação do alfabeto fonético internacional. |
| Gina: Oh right! You mean the “International Phonetic Alphabet Creation and Marketing Committee”? |
| Paloma: Yes! Very good! This title is more like a sentence describing the committee rather than a list of adjectives. |
| Gina: Word for word, this title would be “Committee for the creation and marketing of the international phonetic alphabet.” |
| Paloma: Exactly. The dialogue had a very good example of a title like this which was Comitê sobre os assuntos acadêmicos da escola Inovação. |
| Gina: “Academic topics committee for the Innovative school.” This title is even more complex, but not because of grammar; it’s because of the situation. |
| Paloma: Right! The school is going through a large change and this committee has been organized to help deal with that change. |
| Gina: In other words, since the relationship between the committee and the school is more complex, the title for the committee will also be more complex. |
| Paloma: When titles are very long, you can usually break them up into smaller parts. In this case, the title has three main parts. The first part is only one word; comitê. |
| Gina: This part is the main part or “core” of the title. All the other parts refer back to it in some way. The next part of the title is “about the academic topics”. |
| Paloma: ...or sobre os assuntos acadêmicos. This is the first description used in the title about the comitê. The next part, da escola Inovação, doesn’t describe the “core” directly. |
| Gina: Instead, it describes the “academic topics” or rather identifies whose academic topics they are, namely, “of the Innovative school” |
| Paloma: When you put these three parts together, you get Comitê sobre os assuntos acadêmicos da escola Inovação. |
| Gina: “Academic topics committee for the Innovative school.” |
| MARKETING PIECE |
| Paloma: Listeners, looking for a cheat sheet to memorizing Portuguese vocabulary? Have you checked out our Video Vocab series? |
| Gina: These themed video lessons combine visual cues with the voices of native speakers. |
| Paloma: Just another effective method of learning and retaining thousands of vocabulary words. |
| Gina: Go to PortuguesePod101.com... |
| Paloma: ...click on the Video Lessons tab... |
| Gina: ...and hit play! |
| Paloma: It’s that easy. |
| Gina: But don’t take our word for it. |
| Paloma: Try it for yourself at PortuguesePod101.com |
Outro |
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| Gina: That’s all for this lesson listeners. As always, make sure to check the lesson notes to reinforce what you’ve learned in this lesson. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time! Bye! |
| Paloma: Até mais! Tchau! |
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