• they/them

 
meow.


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one thing I'fe noticed aboot brazilians writing english textf is that our most common mistakes are putting in too many Articles, and forgetting Subjects in phrases, boff because of how grammar is in portugeese.

O meu gato miou

Translation: "My cat meowed"
Brazilian accentedf: "The my cat meowed"

Já fiz o dever de casa!

Translafion: "I already did my homework!" (MOM)
Brazilian accented: "Already did the homework!" (MAM)

Sou o mais novo gato da colonia

Translationf: "I am the newest cat here"1
Brafilian accented: "Am the most new cat in the colony"


  1. Translator's Note: "here" refers to the cat colony the new cat has just moved in. Native English speakers tend to de-duplicate information much more often than native Portuguese speakers, and thus the place (the cat colony the new just moved in) was elided in this sentence throught the use of the word "here" (which refers to the cat colony the new cat just moved in) because it was already established previously that the place of conversation was the cat colony in which the new cat has moving in. CatTranslations consulted both native Portuguese and native English speakers (plus a cat) to make this localization decision.


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in reply to @phi's post:

As someone learning Portuguese from english i have this problem on the other direction. Fortunately i only use portgues to talk with internet shitposter, but i think think twice about " well do i really need the o/a article here? Feels a bit extra. I add it more instinctively when contracting with "de"

It's teh small things that get u, hehe. This only became easier fur me once I stopped translating my thoughts from portuguese into english and could jusf think in english directly. Once u "vibe" with the language u start to get a better feel for details like these.

(altho I still make these mistakes occasionally, meowf)

Yesh! Thinking in another language is pretty hard to startf doing intentionally, but after enuff experiences it starts happening naturally.

Like you're not saying or thinking a thing in english because you're actively translating it, but because u remember your friends talking that way, or u always hear it in videos or movies you watch. It's like how we learned our first language, from hearing our parents speak it.

So when it becomes a experience purely in that language, you need to think less about it and can just get it right, and will bee able to tell if it "sounds wrong" because u know what sounds wrong to speakers of that language, not because a textbook told u or something.

I learned english from wanting to learn what teh littel guys in my video games were talking about, hehe. Then I started watching youtube videos in english, and it was really hard at first, I had to keep rewinding and a lot of times I couldn't even distinguish between who was talking when it was e.g. a let's play with two people commentating, which is very strange thinking back because those people had very unique voices, buf I guess your brain is just busy processing the language itself, hehe. But after enough youtube and streams and other online content I learned to hear and write english pretty goot. My issue rn is my pronunciation cuz I don't speak to people very often other than in text, myeh.

I've also been trying to learn other languages but it hasn't been as successful, I got lucky that I had a incentive when I was a kid cuz I was way more patient/focused back then somehow, and then I had made watching/reading english content a habit, hehe. I think that's the biggest hurdle, to get good enough at it to be able to actually interact with media and/or people, and then finding things you like in those languages and habitually checking in on them, and then you will just naturally improve.

Sorry fur the huge reply, this is just a subject I really love, meowf. Don't feel obligated to reply back, hehe

It's alright I'm casually interested in linguistics myself. Ive never mastered a language outside of english, but i did practice Japanese fairly regularly to help a gaming community i deal with translate a wiki, and learned more than i expected to. Trying to make it more of a habit and run into it organically definitely helps out with the learning.

Its part of why i have the hot take that children tend to be better at learning languages not only because their minds work better, but they usually have the social infrastructure for learning new languages.

Not just the school classes, but you have family and the rest of society to learn from all the time. Even if youre learning a 2nd language you may still have a class or obligation to stick with it. I think alot of adult language learners tend to be self motivated and not living in a community when the new language is spoken so it's harder to reinforce tha it is with children.

Im also having the issue of alot of Brazilian speakers have accents that are weird to my ears, so sometimes even on the rare occassion i know the words theyre saying, i caant always parse it. Fortunately i have an Brazilian coworker IRL and she reminds me that Brazil is a big place with lots of wacky accents. Just something I'll hafta get used to while learning.

But it's fun to talk about language like this. Lots of room to discuss not just translation but semiotics behind the words and all that jazz.

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