“Portuguese is a magnificent language – intimate, sensual, and fun.
The great poets make it sound like a musical incantation of
slurred elisions and rhythmic dissolves, and day-to-day, corrupted,
vital, and undisciplined, it is ideal for the dissolute life of a modern city,
though what it gains in humor and intimacy it loses in precision
and resolution. In fact, it is, when compared to English,
almost like baby language.”
– Mark Helprin,
Memoir From Antproof Case, p.9