Hey Bo Portuguese is really hard indeed, many people say that when they talk with argentinians, mexicans or any other spanish talking people they can understand what they say, but not the other way. Also it is easy for portuguese talking people to understand most of the "hard" words in Latin so when we used to read documents in french in the University, latin prefixes and sufixes made easier to understand the subject of the text ( i mean it is easier to understand political, filosophical texts than reading a modern french kids books). But i heard that it happens in some ways with english too regarding northern european languages is it right? And Asian countries using ideograms...
If you guys are interested in language, besides the famous bossa nova that made portuguese more familiar to the world you could try a poet called Fernando Pessoa, he has several heteronyms and with one them he used to write in english, one of my most beloved poets....if there is an english translation u could try " A Tabacaria". There is this link
www.weeklywire.com/ww/07-27-98/boston_books_1.html , but i could not find the translations i would like you to read, so i will put my own translations from Tabacaria (some parts of it):
(Eat chocolates, little one;
Eat chocolates!
You should know there are no more metaphysics in the world than chocolates.
You should know that all religions teach no more than a bakery.
Eat, little dirty one, eat!
I wish i could eat chocolates with the same truth that you eat!
But i think and, as i take the silver leaf off, which are tin leafs,
I laid everything to the ground, as I have laid my life.)
I made of myself what I didn¡¯t know,
And what I could do, I didn¡¯t.
The suit I dressed was wrong.
Soon they knew me for whom I wasn¡¯t and I didn¡¯t deny, and lost myself.
When I wanted to take the mask off,
It was attached to my face,
When I took it off and saw me in the mirror,
I was already old.
Drunk, I didn¡¯t know how to dress the suit I had taken off.
I laid down the mask and slept in the locker
Like a dog tolerated by the manager
For being inoffensive
And I will right down this story to prove that I am sublime.
Musical essence of my useless verses,
I wish I could find you as something I did,
And didn¡¯t stand at the front of the Tobacco shop at the front,
Wearing at my shoes the conscience of existing,
Like a carpet in which a drunken fellow fells,
Or a doormat in which the gypsies stole and wasn¡¯t worth anything.
But the owner of the Tobacco shop came to the door and stood there.
Looked in discomfort of the head unrest
And in unrest of his ill understanding soul.
He will die and I will die.
He will leave the sign, and I will leave verses.
At a certain point the sign will fade, and also my verses,
After that the street where the sign was will fade away,
And also the language in which these verses were written.
And then the planet were all this happened will die.
In other satellites in other systems anything like people will keep doing things such as verses and living under things like signs,
There will be always something in front of the other,
Always one thing so useless as another,
Always the impossible as stupid as the real,
Always the mistery on the bottom as right as the mistery sleeping in the surface,
Always this or always that or neither nor other.
But a man came to the shop (to buy tobacco?),
And the plausible reality suddenly fells over me.
I stand up convinced, humane,
And I will intend to write these verses in which I will say the opposite.
I light a cigarette as I think in writing them
And I taste the cigarette as the liberation of all my thoughts.
I follow the smoke as an independent route,
And enjoy, in a sensitive and competent moment,
The freedom of all speculations
And the conscience that metaphysics is a consequence of being ill disposed.
Then I lay back in the chair
And keep smoking.
While the fate allows me, I will keep smoking.
(if I married the daughter of my maid
I might be happy.)
I dress this, stand up from the chair. Go close to the window.
The man left the Tobacco shop (putting his change in his pockets?).
Ah, I know him: is Esteves without metaphysics.
(The owner of the tobacco shop came to the door.)
By a divine instinct, Esteves turedn at me and saw me.
He greeted me and I yelled Good bye my fellow Esteves!, and the universe
Rebuilt in me without ideals nor hope, and the owner of the tobacco shop smiled.
This are from Fernando Pessoa by the heteronym Alvaro de Campos he had 74 and wrote more than 25000 texts¡¦