History & Etymology — the 1755 Lisbon earthquake
What's happening in my life this week?
I could almost say that I was serious when I said i needed rest but... I never learn my lesson and ambition is my problem. Because i don't have enough already i'm going to be developing my youtube channel further (so send your questions) and i'll also be planning a C1 level. On top of that the CIPLE/ DEPLE ... exam mockups for you to practice for the exam.
Historical Fun fact
On the morning of November 1st, 1755 — All Saints' Day, when most of the city was in church — Lisbon was hit by an earthquake now estimated at magnitude 8.5–9.0. It lasted around six minutes. What the shaking didn't destroy, the tsunami that followed did. What the tsunami didn't reach, the fires that burned for days after did. Somewhere between a third and two-thirds of the city was gone. Estimates of the dead range from 12,000 to 50,000 people, in a city of roughly 200,000.
The man tasked with the response was the Marquês de Pombal, the king's chief minister. Asked what should be done, his answer has survived almost 300 years as one of the most quoted lines in Portuguese history: "Enterrar os mortos e cuidar dos vivos." Bury the dead, and take care of the living.
It's a brutally practical sentence, and it became a governing philosophy. Pombal didn't rebuild Lisbon's medieval tangle of alleys — he commissioned a completely new grid, wide straight avenues, uniform building heights, and a genuinely radical piece of 18th-century engineering: the gaiola pombalina, a timber lattice cage built inside the new buildings' walls specifically to flex and absorb earthquake shock instead of collapsing. Portugal was quietly inventing earthquake-resistant architecture while most of Europe was still building the way it always had. That grid is the downtown — the Baixa — you'd walk through in Lisbon today. (add the japanese intervention, also add the fact that streets were made bigger because one dya they would be needed - visionary )
The phrase cuidar de — to take care of, to look after — is one of the first practical verbs most students learn. It's easy to teach as a flashcard: cuidar de alguém, take care of someone. It's a different sentence entirely once you know it's the second half of the line a country used to talk itself through rebuilding its capital by hand.
Casa Portuguesa catch-up
This week we are migrating fully from our last app to the new one and I am very excited. The Foundations courses A-B are done and the the side quests are being finished and getting ready to launch.
I am also going to be opening 3 workshop dates in October to answer all your questions about the CIPLE A2 exam and help you prepare. I'll be doing a mockup test with time and grades so that you know where you are at in your studies. If you are interested email me and i'll give you further details ( the landing page is not ready yet).
Portuguese in a nutshell
In Portuguese certain verbs work with specific prepositions like:
Gostar de ; precisar de; cuidar de; necessitar de...
These verbs alone don't need the prepositions but if they are in a sentence you need to add that preposition. Let's use "cuidar de" and "gostar de" as examples.
Eu cuido de ti. Ela cuida do cão.
Eu gosto de chocolate. Ela está a gostar das férias.
As you can see, the preposition "de" is there and can fuse with the article that comes after (if there's a need for one).
Before we go...
Did you know you can submit your questions about portuguese and Portugal? I'm going to start doing " Questions of the week" here on the newsletter and Youtube. So submit your answer and i'll get back to you via Email and with a video as well.
With Café e caos,
Catarina Bento
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