Auauau---Talking to Animals, Portuguese-style

Canine language is the yap of the day in Lucky and Taffarel's website devoted to their canine friends, "http://members.tripod.com/luckytaffarel/..." . Equally devoted fans can even find an auauau e-mail address there to publicise their interest in four-legged friends.

What animals say in Portuguese, or tens of other languages for that matter, can be found at "http://www.georgetown.edu/cball/animals/..." . Here you will find the Brazilian and Portuguese forms of animal language. The noises make excellent practice for perfecting your vowel sounds because languages mimic their own vowels in animal-speak. An interesting explanation of this, aimed at younger readers, is to be found at "http://www.georgetown.edu/cball/animals/..."

So little cats say miau in Portuguese, with the same nasal ow sound as their arch enemy, the dog.

Cats (os gatos) come in for attention too in the cheerful caes e gatos pages first started by a group of vet students in the early days of their training: "http://members.xoom.com/caes_e_gatos/hum..." The animal humour ranges from photographs of owners with their pets (spot the likenesses) to jokes and cartoons. Anyone who has ever tried to feed an unwanted pill to a cat will sympathise with the pages of instructions involved and quite understand that the final outcome is more likely to be a hospitalised owner than a pill-popping cat.

My favourite is perhaps the Dalmatian surrounded by loads of black and white spotted kittens supposedly saying pathetically, "eu posso explicar....". (I can explain......)

There are some excellent short stories in the "Contos" (stories) section and the site gives sensible advice and support to animal lovers everywhere.

More animal chuckles can be found at "http://riso.busca.net/Animais/" where if you want to "rir a serio" you can find jokes relating to 21 animals from cabras to vacas. These are short Christmas cracker type jokes to give you bite-size practice at translating from Portuguese. Favourite butt of the animal kingdom is the poor elefante, with 18 jokes against him. How do you fit four elephants in a mini? Use your Portuguese to find out.

This is good learning material because it is Portuguese as it is spoken, the jokes are short and self-contained so you are motivated to tackle just as many as you have energy for and thirdly, you are helped in your translation by trying to guess the punchlines.

As a beginner, you will learn rules and exceptions in the doing. In forming Portuguese noun plurals--animal and therefore other words ending in -al form the plural in -ais, in this case animais.

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