There are no porches in Portugal…

and there are no gulls.

Well, I am sure many houses in Portugal have verandas or porches and many beaches have many gulls.

However, if you consider how many Americans pronounce the word Portugal and how the Portuguese pronounce the name of their country, you will understand my quip.

Many American pronounce the name of the country as Porch-uh-guhl or Porch-you-guhl where "uh" is the most frequent vowel in the English language, the schwa, an unaccented form of a short u.  Some may get closer to the Portuguese pronunciation with Porch-uh-gahl.

In the Google Translate (http://translate.google.com/#en/pt/portugese), the English speaker says POUR-chyu-gahl, but the Portuguese speaker says Por-tu-GAHL with the "l" held a bit longer.

Spotting a non-Italian playing an Italian

Tonight we watched "Inspector Morse 23: The Death of the Self".  Chief Inspector Morse and Sgt. Lewis go to Italy to check on a suspicious death.  They work with an Italian detective who spoke Italian now and then to other Italians.  His Italian seemed to be Italian.

Then he answered a phone.  The Italian custom is to say "Pronto", that is "Ready".  However, he said, "Prahntoh", like we say it in the U. S.  We learned it as "Prohntoh" in Italy.

It could be that they say the former in Vicenza were the movie took place, but …

Well, I checked the cast and found Georges Corraface as the detective.  He is French and

"A classically trained and versatile actor, his gift for languages and his multi-cultural background has enabled him to work in eight languages and an even wider variety of accents."

Is "Prahntoh" used in Vicenza or did his extensive use of English make him lapse into the English pronunciation? Non so! (I don't know!)