Something from Portugal is...

[IndieSinger]

... portugese, portuguese or either? Obviously not "either", but you know what I mean. I've always thought Portuguese, my dad and Microsoft Word concur (but the latter means nowt), but Craig Armstrong, who wrote the music to Love Actually, called one of his pieces "Portugese Love Theme", which has confused me. Is it the portuguese word for "Portuguese", maybe? "Portugese" returns "about 497,000" results on Google.

[bernardo]

Portuguese. Indeed, verily, the non-U version googles 497,000 times, but the U-version googles 10,100,000 times. The Portuguese word for "Portuguese" is "portugues" with a circumflex on the final e. (pronounced "port-oo-gesh"). Craig Armstrong (whoever he is) is, among other things, an anagram of "I am a gr-gr-C snort", so I wouldn't rely on whatever he thinks.

[IndieSinger]

Yes but bernado is an anagram of "Darn bore"... ;�]

[bernardo]

No it isn't. You've put in an extra r (albeit after having removed it in the first place) :-)

[bernardo]

Incidentally, I don't do darning either. I'm too busy reading Marxist-Leninist literature instead.

[IndieSinger]

Oh buggeration! But it is an anagram of... um... "ernado... B..."

[IndieSinger]

And there's no need to mention whether you "do" anything I've just mentioned in my last post this time!

[bluedolphin]

I think the prob might be MS word....as with encarta ms uses regional settings so if u buy encarta in argentina u get the malvenas sitting off the coast ...and in the uk version u get the falklands.....

[Quizmonster]

Neither the OED - the only real 'bible' re (British) English words - nor Chambers even offers 'Portugese', without the 'u', as an option. Google is a wonderful source, but I wouldn't recommend it as a spell-checker! Nor, it seems, are modern song-writers too reliable.

[pinus]

Google will pick up the silly spelling mistakes and deliberate mis-spellings that people have on their web sites. It will only pick up what is out there, whether it is correct or not. And don't ignore significant differences British English and the dialects found elsewhere. For instance "medival" appears on many sites devoted to mediaeval (or even medieval) history.

[Ewood27]

Correct me if I'm wrong, QM, but doesn't the "u" serve to make the "g" hard? Otherwise you would have "Portu-jeeze".

[bernardo]

Yes Ewood27, you are correct.

[bernardo]

How come the notoriously dreaded hated and despotic thought-police in the AB profanity filter didn't splatter Indie's "******ation"? And will it also ignore the abovementioned word in this meassage as well?

btw, not I don't (since you didn't ask) because I am too busy walking to do that sort of thing. Sorry did I say walking? I meant winking.

[bernardo]

I have a theory about how you might have done it, so I will try a variation:

buggér

[bernardo]

I wrote é instead of e because my HTML book does not tell me what the code number for e is :-)

[IndieSinger]

That's not how I do it, but that may well work! Hadn't thought of that.