Re: OT: Brazilian Portuguese help (LONG, sorry)

My greatest thanks to Antonielly Garcia Rodrigues and the private message
from Haggen Kennedy for their full and informative explications of the
text!! It increases my appreciation of the song 1000%.

It was my great pleasure, in 1967-- oh so long ago-- to spend about 3 weeks
no vosso pais tão belo-- São Paulo, Rio, and a quick trip to then-new
Brasilia. I had intended to go to Salvador, even Belem and possibly Manaus,
and/or Fortaleza-- but Brazil came at the end of a 3 month trip, and I
simply got very tired of airplanes and travel. My loss.

I seem to have had a fascination with South America for a long time, perhaps
first inspired in childhood by the Disney movie about los tres caballeros
:-) which led ultimately to my concentration in Spanish, and beginnings in
Romance Linguistics-- but I got side-tracked to Indonesia (at least the same
warm climate and lovely people :-) ). Have read a lot of the history on my
own, since universities up here (in the olden days) didn't offer any
courses.

Two movies from Brazil have impressed me no end: the 1950s "O Cangaceiro"
(beautiful music, but no longer available here), and "Orfeu Negro", at the
end of which I cry unabashedly.

When I was in Brazil, I mainly got by in Spanish ~improvised Portuguese, no
doubt offending many, but occasionally amusing them. What little further
knowledge of Port. I have is, oddly, from perusing grammars and dictionaries
of languages of the Indonesian Timor area, produced by Catholic missionaries
way back in the 1900s.

Viva o Brasil!!

Muito obrigado,
Roger