Saturday, September 18, 2010

Não quero, não

Another note on language usage:
I haven’t been making too many comments on the language anymore I guess I just pick up on things discretely without even noticing it, which I imagine happens to most people.
But não is used very interestingly. Sometimes people put não at the end of things like “Quero não, quero não” instead of “não quero” so it would be like “I don’t want it” and “I want it not”. Although it’s not as awkward in Portuguese. It adds more emphasis to the não. Or people use it twice like “you know we take the classiest pictures, não brinque com isso, não” like “there’s no joking about that” [literally: don’t play with that, no].

Another:

"mais um" is much more common than "um mais" or "dois mais" for 1 more, or 2 more. you reverse it, which is something else I had caught onto but didn't even notice it until later. It just seems natural to say it like that.

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