sábado, março 21, 2009

I have been living here about 5 years and I generally can hold my own in Portuguese, although occasionally on the phone I have trouble with people who don't understand that they need to speak slower rather than louder. I was trying to spell something on the phone yesterday - I generally have no problem remembering to say the letters in Portuguese rather than English, except for a few like Q. But what to say when you want to differentiate between things like B,V,D,E etc? I found myself reverting to names, rather than words - V de Victoria, B de Bernardo. I could not for the life of me come up with the usual things like we use in English like B as in boy, V as in valentine. I have no idea what the "regular" words used in this kind of context are. I should probably find that out.

12 comentários:

pamela disse...

wow, i'm impressed you can speak another language. i've always wanted to, but never really tried too hard.

markuza disse...

hah- I still mix up 'i' and 'e' when I try to spell stuff... I pay close attention to my wife whenever she spells stuff out loud for the same reason. The mall TV tells me that K, W, and Y have been re-integrated into the Brazilian alphabet....

AkuTyger disse...

Yes, and there are no longer ^ on double vowels, there are - instead of compound double vowel words, and they took out some other accentation stuff. I am waiting for a simple rule list for me to reference.

lovelydharma disse...

Hi Aku! Glad to have found your blog.

I still have mini panic attacks when I have to make phone calls and find myself pacing and hair twirling in conversation.

The spelling out of names also vexed me. I've now got "B de batata" and "D de dado" down to a script. But V and E... still stump me mid-sentence! Even now calmly, with time I can't think of any!

Anônimo disse...

I think it is "v de vitória" but "b de bola". I know it is "d de dado", but am clueless about the rest. I have to spell my mom´s name a lot down here (Evashevski) and I always need to do it at least twice.

Adam disse...

I've had a few Brazilian girlfriends and when they were on the phone, I always noticed this, made a mental note to learn these one day. I'll try to put a request out to my readers and friends, see what I can come up with. Thanks for the reminder, I got the same prob

Abraços

Adam disse...

The offical list!

A Antonio
B Bola
C Casa
D Dado
E Ernersto
F Faca
G Gato
H Agá...
I Ivan
J João
K Cá...
L Lua
M Maria
N Nair
O Osvaldo
P Ponte
Q Queijo
R Roberto
S Sapo
T Tatu
U Uva
V Valdir
X Xis...
Y Y...
Z Zona

Anônimo disse...

Z -> Zebra :-)

Mimi (Mae) disse...

I was JUST thinking about this! I am bringing my son with me to Brazil soon (his 1st trip, my 3rd) and I was thinking about what to do if I had to spell his last name...it is hard enough in the USA cause his name is Southern African and has 10 letters including 2 v's and a z...very tricky to spell for English speakers...probably crazy for Portuguese speakers...I look forward to seeing how they pronounce his name there...

Karina disse...

You should try the NATO (The NATO phonetic alphabet, more formally the international radiotelephony spelling alphabet, is the most widely used spelling alphabet). That's what airplane pilots use to communicate with the tower : ) Check it out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet

Anônimo disse...
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Anônimo disse...
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