Lisbon - Watching Movies In Portugal

Rainy skies greeted us in Lisbon, Portugal. The inclement weather steered us indoors to the Gulbenkian Museum, an impressive art collection donated to the city of Lisbon by an Armenian oil tycoon in gratitude for the asylum granted him during World War II. Afterward touring the museum we noticed a nearby cinema and remembered reading that in Portugal the movies are shown in their original language with subtitles. This is a refreshing change from Spain where pretty much all movies and television shows are dubbed into Spanish. This also explains why the Portuguese are better English speakers than the Spanish.

There were American, British, Spanish, and French films being shown at the multiplex. We chose the Clint Eastwood-directed “Hereafter,” and were gratified to hear the undubbed English dialogue, even as we tried to ignore the Portuguese subtitles. Then, much to our surprise, we discovered that one of the subplots in the movie was in French. The Portuguese subtitles didn't help us much. Still, we got the gist of it and enjoyed the movie (Deborah more than me).

Written Portuguese looks like mutated Spanish with a bit of pseudo-French thrown in, but the pronunciation is quite different from Spanish with a lot of nasalized vowels (again, like French) and a lot of “zh” and “sh” sounds thrown into the mix, especially at the end of words. The latter characteristic actually makes the language sound a bit like Russian. Weird. And very confusing. But we've been pleasantly surprised by how many Portuguese – at least here in Lisbon – actually speak English, and quite well. That takes the pressure off me having to frequently break out my Portuguese phrase book and dictionary. But with what little studying I have done comes my favorite translation, which relates to the push/pull signs shown on doors. “Pull” is “puxe” in Portuguese and, believe it or not, is pronounced “push.”

Rain falls on the decorative pavers.



One of the plazas near our hotel.