Raimund speaking portugese?
With all the characters speaking English its so easy to forget what language they are actually speaking. So are we supposed to believe that Raimund, a Swiss, can speak flawless Portugese? I dont buy it at all.
shareI understand that Raimund is a teacher of languages.
shareWe never see him talking portuguese, but he was able to read and translate it to english...
shareMy assumption is that all of the characters were to be considered as always speaking in languages other than English. English was used in the soundtrack of the film for obvious reasons for the target audience.
shareI haven't watched the film yet, but in the book, Raimond starts teaching himself Portuguese once he realizes he must get on that train to Lissabon. Similarly, in the books, most characters do speak English to some extent, so if they all speak English in the film, it's not entirely off from the book.
shareHow can someone be fluent in a language in just a couple of weeks? There is no way he can be fluent in Portugese in such a short amount of time. Regarding English, none of the characters were speaking English. It was either Portugese or German (which the English speaking was representing).
shareWell, in the beginning we learn that he ordered a persian grammar book, so we can assume he was really into languages and actually could speak portuguese.
Also, the Amadeu's book "O Ourives Das Palavras" was written in portuguese and he could easily read it apparently without any help of a dictionary or a translator.
Nevertheless, I wish they had made it in portuguese. First because it would be more realistic, and second because it would make it more interesting for the fact that the language barrier could give him a whole different experience of the city and the film could be slightly different, in a good way, but I understand the audience issue. And third, by the way, because it is my language.
Is Portuguese really as challenging as I've heard it is? I would think Raimund's knowledge of Latin ( and probably a few other Romance languages such as like French, Spanish and Italian ) would make Portuguese a relatively quick study.
Anyhow the Swiss seem to be pretty good at switching tongues and a Swiss language teacher would probably be a master at it. ( that might be why his wife found him boring - his head was always in the books ).
But I read somewhere ( I can't remember where ) that Portuguese isn't quite as easy as Spanish and Italian. Raimund could probably guess a lot of the Portuguese phrases but actually speaking it would be harder
Switzerland has four official languages, so, as you said, they seem to be pretty good at switching tongues. None of them is portuguese tho.
I think it is difficult. Of course it depends of which language the learner speaks. I assume you're english. Every english person I know have a hard time learning portuguese, specially when it comes to pronounce words, because portuguese requires some tongue moves and some nasal vowels that english don't use.
Not counting with the speakers of all those latin-based language you referred (that naturaly can learn portuguese more easily) i think ukrainians, russians, and also some nordic seem to catch portuguese idiom easier than others.
Grammar can be very tricky sometimes, from an english speaker perspective. Portuguese adjectives (with few exceptions) have diferent terminations according to the object genre. They also have plural form. In english they are always the same.
A RED apple. - Uma maçã VERMELHA.
A RED car. --- Um carro VERMELHO.
RED nails. ---- Unhas VERMELHAS.
RED eyes. ---- Olhos VERMELHOS.
But perhaps the major pain for the english speakers to learn are the verbs. It's because in english they basically have always the same form while in portuguese they are always different (with few exceptions). Let's take a quick and random example:
GO - IR
I go ------------- Eu vou
You go ---------- Tu vais
He/She/It goes -- Ele/Ela vai
We go ----------- Nós vamos
You go ---------- Vós ides
They go --------- Eles vão
also:
I did go ---------- Eu fui
You did go ------- Tu foste
He/She/It did go - Ele/Ela foi
We did go -------- Nós fomos
You did go ------- Vós fostes
They did go ------ Eles foram
Future tenses have their own forms too, and so on.
Plus: in english you have basically two tenses. In portuguese you actually have about ten. And each tense has its own form and different terminations depending on the pronoun you're refering to.
Just to mention adjectives and verbs. Ehehe
Now you tell me! Is it a challenge or what?
He's not. Raimund stumbles and falls over the Portuguese language plenty of times in the books.
As regards the language, I believe he did use English in the books to talk to some of the Portuguese people, but I cannot recall 100%.
Portuguese is similar to Spanish, so a linguist who spoke Spanish, Italian, French etc could possibly learn to read Portuguese (moderately) in a couple of weeks. Linguists use linguistic "tricks" such as comparing the common or similar words between similar languages, and in that way they can learn a language pretty fast. But I'm not sure if he had any linguistic training.
Fanboy : a person who does not think while watching.share