Quote:
sao is the lazier tongued portugese equivalent of san for saint
There are rules for that: when the name of the saint begins with a vowel, then you use "Santo" [this is due to the liaison of the letter "t" with the first vowel of the following word, example: Santo António de Pádua (Saint Anthony of Padua); some saints even join the name with "santo(a)" using the apostrophe: Sant'Ana (Saint Anne)]. "São" is used when the first letter of the following word is a consonant: São Pedro (Saint Peter).
True, Portuguese speakers tend to communicate better with Spanish than the other way around. This is due to the fact that the Portuguese language is much more similar to Latin than Spanish. As of the difference between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese, the Brazilian one isn't quite understandable for me. The accent and the way they say some letters is very weird and sometimes I can't even recognize the language. And I think that the European Portuguese is for Brazilian Portuguese what British English is for American English: more polite and sophisticated.
Its puzzles me about Spanish that sometimes they say " Santa Anna" ( as in the Mexican general at the Alamo and the winds in Califorinia) and sometimes they run the words together into the one : "Santana" ( like the rock star and the name of Hunphrey Bogart's yacht).
26 May 2012, 7:22 pm
