Rafael’s Comments (group member since Apr 01, 2016)

Rafael’s comments from the Never too Late to Read Classics group.

Anisha Inkspill wrote: "I'm just highlighting how the nominator who has nominated the book is also making a pledge to read that book, so that book has at least one guaranteed reader, which, in this methodology is not noted."

But, by this method, every nominated book has already one support. So, it's pointless.

I support Wuthering Heights.

I nominate Dom Casmurro. I am just unsure of its category.

Oh, sorry!

Anisha Inkspill wrote: "support The Lusiads"

Anisha have supported it too.

I support The Lusiads as well.

The Tale of Genji and Arabian Nights would be great choices to be read.

Aesop's fables is a classic by default. even those that don't know the author know some of the fables. It will be a good read if chosen.

The Prince and The Second Sex could be good reads.

Samantha wrote: "Happy late birthday, Rafael!"

Thank you!

Thank you, Lesle, Rosemarie, Karin, and Luis! :)

I didn't see your messages yesterday.

Luís wrote: "Rosemarie wrote: "Luis, I understand written Portuguese but the minute some one speaks I am completely lost!"

Sim. O povo brasileiro pensa a mesma coisa! Eles pensam que o português fala muito ráp..."

It's lack of exposure. I usually answer this question to my students: "why "they" speak so quickly?" when they are talking about native-speaking-English people.

Depending on the accent of the Portuguese person I get it very well, but some...

Lesle wrote: "Rafael
Francisco Manuel da Silva (21 February 1795 – 18 December 1865) was a Brazilian songwriter and music professor, notable for composing the Brazilian National Anthem.
Are you related? or just..."

Probably not. It is the most used surname in Brazil.

The Brazilian anthem is indeed very poetic, but you have to really use the dictionary to understand it. There are a lot of archaisms in it.

The area that study it is called comparative linguistics. It is not an exact science indeed, but there's no such thing in any area. This area is considered a science. It uses a lot of statistics to compare languages, the spread of words, etc.

The regularity of sound changes make it quite unlikely to be loanwords. In these cases, the words tend to not suffer much changes or in some cases the word is adapted to the phonetical characteristics of the language that receives the word. This was not what happened. We can study current loanwords to see that. It's not a handful of words that have similarities, it's a great part of the languages but not so.

The grammar is similar too. The grammar is something very intrinsic to the language family. This is how in germanic languages the adjective comes before the noun, in romance languages it's the contrary. It 'was using comparative linguistics that we could decipher the hittite language. A language spoken some 4 thousand years ago in the Anatolian peninsula. This language was an indo-european language.

I had watched the series and the movie before read it. The book was a very interesting read.

Russian, Irish, English, Persian, Hindi, Greek, Italian and others are all related. They are all indo-european languages derived from the proto-indo-european language. The proto-indo-european people originated somewhere in the Anatolian peninsula (Turkey) or Crimea, and from there they spread to conquer (or intermarry to) a great part of Europe and Asia. These languages have a lot of similarities. Sometimes these similarities are not easily visible.

Two/2 = dos (Spanish), zwei (German), dva (Russian and a lot of slavic languages).

Man = wer (old english), vir (latin), vir (irish)

God = deus (latin), deva (sanskrit - ancestral language of India), theos (ancient greek)

There are a lot more similarities between these languages and are very regular occurrences, unlikely to be caused by coincidence. Or even to be loanwords because the phonetic shift (change of the sounds) are traceable and regular.

The Nordic countries are mostly united by language as they all speak languages related to each other, all north germanic languages (derived from the Old Norse). Finnish is a finno-ugric language and related to the Estonian language, but not to the Lithuanian language neither to the Latvian language. These two are balto-slavic languages, distant related to English, Irish, Portuguese etc.

Lindenblatt wrote: "Hi Rafael, could you please add these two classics that I am currently reading (and hopefully counting for the Bingo challenge)?

Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by [autho..."

It was written by Lansing, Shacleton is the subject of the book, so Lansing is who should be considered.

Interesting. I didn't know it. I had never been to Rio de janeiro,

It's the Rio de Janeiro. This specific place is called Pão de Açũcar (literally Sugar Bread).