The Pan American Games bring together athletes from the countries of the Americas in a festival of sport and international friendship. The Games are held every four years in the year preceding the Olympic Games. The first Pan American Games took place in 1951 at Buenos Aires, Argentina, but they originated more than two decades earlier.

At the Olympic Congress coinciding with the 1924 Olympic Games at Paris, France, the International Olympic Committee members from Cuba, Guatemala and Mexico proposed the establishment of regional games for the countries of Central America. These games became reality two years later when Mexico City hosted the first Central American Games.

At the 1932 Los Angeles Olympic Games, representatives of the Latin American delegations proposed regional Games for all the Americas. This proposal eventually led to the first meeting of the Pan American Sports Congress at Buenos Aires in August 1940. The Congress selected Buenos Aires to host the first Pan American Games in 1942, but World War II forced postponement of these games.

A second Pan American Sports Congress met at the 1948 London Olympic Games where plans were revived. The first Pan American Games opened on February 25, 1951, in Buenos Aires. More than 2,500 athletes from 22 countries participated.

The organization governing the Games was renamed, in 1955, as the Pan American Sports Organization (PASO). Currently, 42 nations of North, Central and South America and the Caribbean comprise the organization. The official languages are
Spanish and English. PASO has headquarters in Mexico City and is presided over by Mario Vasquez Raña of Mexico, who also is a member of the International Olympic Committee.

The PASO emblem is a torch superimposed over five concentric circles of the colors green, yellow, white, red and blue. At least one of these colors appears on every national flag of the Americas. PASO’s motto “America, Espirito, Sport, Fraternité” incorporates four of the languages in common use in the Americas: Spanish, Portuguese, English and French. The phrase loosely translates to English as “The American spirit of friendship through sports.”

Adapted
from la84foundation.org

“De acordo com esse folder, o self-service fica logo ali, passando o outdoor com a foto do homem de smoking. Mas eles também fazem entrega delivery em casa.”

Have you ever noticed the amount of English words we use in our daily vocabulary in Portuguese? Impressive, huh?

The only problem is, very often those terms and expressions are not actually used right or according to their real meaning; and even a native speaker of English would be really puzzled trying to understand a sentence like the one above.

Here we put together some of the most common things we say – and what we should use instead, at least in a conversation in English:

Stay tuned for more examples on this!

Hoje chega ao Brasil a primeira parte da biografia do fundador da Apple, Steve Jobs. A obra foi escrita por Walter Isaacson, ex-diretor da revista Time, traduzida para 14 idiomas e será lançada em 18 países. No Brasil, a edição sairá pela Companhia das Letras. O livro é fruto de uma série de mais de 40 entrevistas que Isaacson realizou com Jobs no período de dois anos e de depoimentos de familiares, amigos, colegas, adversários e concorrentes. Vale à pena conferir também a entrevista que Isaacson concedeu ao jornal O GLOBO. Nela, o ex-diretor da Time conta algumas curiosidades da vida de Jobs e dá alguns detalhes sobre a obra.

Vale a pena assitir ao histórico discurso dele na Universidade de Standford, neste outro post: http://blog.cellep.com/goodbye-steve-jobs/