Brazilian Podclass

Two weeks from today I'll be flying to Salvador. So I'm trying to get back in bikini shape (I've, uh, I've been working really hard... no time for exercise...and, uh, too busy for Donna's dance classses... uh.... and it just is part of Lions culture now to go out for a three-hour eating session of beer and onion rings after every two-hour rehearsal... it would be rude not to!). I'm also getting a bit worried about getting in shape for my potentially-grueling month of mountain fieldwork this July in the Grand Tetons. And I also need to sharpen up my Portuguese.

So this week I hit on the perfect training combination: a two-hour hike each day up the steep ridgeline of Portland's massive Forest Park, while listening to Brazilian Podclass on my iphone.

I've got to say... there is little to match the feeling of having finished all your teaching for the year, and having hours and hours and hours of magnificent, unbelievable FREE TIME stretching in front of you, and spending it hiking each day through a vast cathedral of mossy trees. Shafts of sunlight streaming through the trees all around you, ferns and flowers everywhere, warblers and towhees singing, fairy sprites flitting around, angelic choirs singing overhead (seems like it, anyway. Forest Park is that beautiful). And looking forward to a summer in one of the most fascinating cities of Brazil and the most beautiful mountains of the entire American West. While listening to Portuguese!

I just stumbled across the Brazilian Podclass podcast recently. It is at brazilianpodclass.com. Highly recommended. The teacher, Marina Gomes, is a Brazilian native who now lives in Canada, and has been teaching Portuguese for decades. She has a nice, clear Rio accent, and her podcasts are the perfect bite-size lessons to sharpen up your rusty (or nonexistent) Portuguese. You can pick episodes from any level - beginner, intermediate, advanced - and there are some video lessons as well.

The best thing is, the podcast downloads are free! (You can pay extra to get a printed transcript and worksheets.) There are well over 100 episodes available.

It's a simple format - she reads (clearly and slowly) a short text on the topic of the day, then spends a few minutes on some grammatical issue, and then she starts peppering you with English sentences that you have to translate into Portuguese.

I listened yesterday to an episode about Carnaval in Salvador. I particularly liked this bit:
"Translate into Portuguese: Timbalada is the best band and bloco in Bahia."
... a wee bit opinionated, are we? :)

I also learned to say such useful phrases as:
"There are little blocos just of people playing guitars, and blocos of men in drag."
"You must have a special t-shirt, called an abada, to get into the camarotes where the bathrooms are."
"Oh no! I left my wallet at home!"

Then came the deja-vu moment (in the next episode I tried, one on the Pantanal) when she suddenly asked me to translate "Maned wolf" into Portuguese. Maned wolf! An image leapt to my mind: the "fox on stilts", the huge, leggy, gorgeous, animal with the bright red coat and the black mane, and the black, black, long, long, LONG legs. Nobody's whose ever seen one can forget it. Or at least I can't:



Sudden flashback to the first ever time I visited Brazil - to deep in the interior of Goiania, assisting on a research project on the 3 large carnivores of the Brazilian savanna: puma, jaguar, and maned wolf. Now, what were they called in Portuguese.... um.... Onca-parda ("tan leopard"), onca-pintada ("painted leopard"), and....

LOBO-GUARA! Got it! Lobo-guara, wolf of the guara fruit. (It is the only wolf in the world that is mostly herbivorous - its primary diet is the guara fruit. Which is borne by a tree called the "lobeira", which of course, when you look at it, means "wolf tree". )

"Lobo-guara!" I said happily.
"Lobo-guara." confirmed Marina.