Elementary 75: Onde canta o sabiá

MP3 Audio (Lesson) | MP3 Audio (Dialog)

The famous poem by Gonçalves Dias entitled “Canção do exílio” speaks of a longing to hear the song of the sabiá, which is a type of thrush. Most Brazilians know about the poem, but not everyone knows a lot about the national bird, the sabiá. In today’s lesson you can get up to speed on all of it

Lesson audio

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Dialog audio

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 A: Sabe, sempre ouvi falar do poema “Canção do exílio” do Gonçalves Dias, mas confesso que não sei quase nada sobre o sabiá.
You know, I always heard about the poem “Canção do exílio” by Gonçalves Dias, but I confess that I don’t know anything about the bird.
  B: “Minha terra tem palmeiras onde canta o sabiá. As aves que aqui gorjeiam, não gorjeiam como lá.”
“My country has palm trees where the thrushes sing. The birds that sing here don’t sing like those back there.”
  A: Exato, você sabe alguma coisa desse passarinho?
That’s it, do you know anything about the bird?
  B: Bom, sei que o nome mesmo é o sabiá-laranjeira, por causa da cor que tem na barriga, não é?
Well, I know that their name is really sabiá-laranjeira, because of the color of their stomachs, right?
  A: E tem gente que diz que é a ave nacional do Brasil, mas nem sei se isso é verdade oficial ou não.
And some people say that it is the national bird of Brazil, but I don’t know if that’s official or not.
  B: Olha, até onde que eu sei é oficial sim, mas é uma coisa recente, isso é do ano 2000 pra cá.
As far as I know it is official, but it’s a recent development, after the year 2000.
  A: Dizem que o canto dele é lindo, não é?
They say its song is beautiful, right?
  B: É verdade, lá no sítio do meu pai tem muitos e já ouvi o canto deles, sim.
That’s true, back at my father’s farmhouse there are a bunch of them and I have heard their song.


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  1. Joseph Aaron Shir

    Thanks so much for these podcasts!

  2. David Griswold

    I just moved to Brazil and love your podcast as a way to help me grow my Portuguese. Some of the lessons mention additional aligned resources like vocabulary lists, etc, but I can’t find anything like that. Is the premium option gone? And if so is there any way I could access those materials for at least the podcasts they were created for?

    1. Orlando Kelm

      Thanks for finding us David. As to the other items, go to our homepage:
      From there, you can click on “How to Use Lingua da Gente” to get the pdf files of all of the lessons, etc.
      Hope that helps, boa sorte, Orlando

  3. Sam

    This site seriously has to be the best source on the internet for learning Portuguese. Thank you so much for all of your hard work and allowing us to use this for free. What a huge service you have done for us!
    It has been a while since you guys have made a new episode, have you guys terminated this project? Are you going to continue making episodes? I was hoping to see more intermediate lessons (or even advanced lessons if you guys ever got to that point).

    1. Orlando Kelm

      Thanks Sam. Hang in there, everyone! We are currently working on a new project, similar to Língua da Gente, where we use photos around Brazil as the basis for our podcast lessons (instead of dialogs like we do in LDG). Coming soon!

      1. Sam

        Otimo! Estou animado ver este novo podcast. Estou estudando meu portuguese cada dia no seu Lingua da Gente. Que beneficio!

        1. Orlando Kelm

          Oi Sam, que bom saber que esteja aproveitando das lições. Essa do sabiá foi bem divertida. E sabe, fui eu que tirei a foto do sabiá!