Month: Apr 2022

Posted in Portuguese

Opération Portugal

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Ontem, eu e a minha filha passámos o dia sentados no sofá constipados* com os narizes entupidos, a tossir e a ver televisão. Entre várias outras coisas, vimos um filme chamado Opération Portugal. É um filme francês no qual um polícia árabe (o nome do ator é D’Jal) finge ser português para se infiltrar numa família portuguesa que (segundo a Interpol) está envolvida na importação de drogas para França.

Il n’est pas un “petit flan”

Em primeiro lugar o que mais me marcou foi o número de piadas baseadas em xixi. O bófia mija numa roda dum camião logo no início do filme e depois mija mais quatro vezes em várias lugares durante a primeira meia hora. Os franceses gostam assim tanto de rir de urina?

Antes de entrar na missão, o polícia tem de aprender as bases da língua e da cultura portuguesa para passar por português. Aprende a dizer “obrigado” e “bacalhau” e como dizer o nome do país com o sotaque certo. Afinal, é um católogo de estereótipos nacionais. Coitado do francês: na primeira semana, é forçado a assistir a um jogo de futebol entre a seleção portuguesa e a francesa e tem de esconder as lágrimas e a fingir entusiasmo quando os portugueses ganham.

*=I will never get used to this meaning having a blocked nose instead of a blocked bum.

Posted in English

Palavras Cruzadas (Páscoa)

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I finished this easter crossword slightly late. It was one of the easier ones and I hardly even needed to use the dictionary.

One of the things I learned in the process was how you describe the clues. In English we say “one down” and “seventeen across”. In Portuguese the down clues are “vertical” and across “horizontal” but I’ve never been sure if it was “um da horizontal” or “um horizontal” or what.

So I asked:

Adoro fazer palavras cruzadas. Tenho um livros cheio de palavras cruzadas portuguesas. O autor é Paulo Freixinho e cada palavra cruzada tem um tema.

Uma coisa que não sei é como se referem os espaços (da grelha) e as pistas correspondentes. Por exemplo em inglês, dizemos “one down” para indicar a primeira pista no vertical” mas será que os portugueses dizem “um na vertical” ou “um vertical” ou “um para baixo” ou… Uma outra coisa?

The answer turns out to be pretty simple: it’s just “um vertical” and “um horizontal”. Boring but useful – at least if you are a crossword fan.

By the way, vertical and horizontal, when used as nouns, are feminine, but in spite of that its still “um vertical” not “uma vertical” because we’re not saying that there is one vertical, we’re referring to number one in the list of vertical clues.

Posted in English

Well I Obviously Misunderstood This One

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I mentioned this guy’s YouTube channel a little while ago. He’s on Instagram now, and I’m glad I watched today’s video, because I had totally misunderstood this phrase. I thought it implied dishonesty – like the person was cunning and looking for a way to game the system for their own benefit but apparently not, it’s just someone who thinks they know everything.

Posted in English

Coming Out of the Armário

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I’ve been posting on twitter a lot today. I’m starting to feel a bit icky about my twitter identity though. I chose the assumed name of a Portuguese explorer, Pedro Álvares Cabral, because I wanted to just post as if I were Portuguese, but I’ve been feeling a bit off about it. I think this has really come to a head when discussing Ukraine. There are a lot of fake news bots out there pretending to be Brazilian or portuguese or whatever and talking shite about the war. I like a bit of twitter rough and tumble as much as the next idiot, so I will occasionally challenge these accounts but of course doing that while pretending to be a native of Portugal feels a bit disingenuous and the fact that I also make a lot of the kinds of mistakes only a foreigner would make means they can make the same charge back at me, pretending to think I am on the payroll of MI6 or whatever. Which I am, obviously, but they don’t know that.

So I’ve announced that I’m planning to change my identity to something that is more open about my origins (but still anonymous) so people have a better idea of where I’m coming from.

Now I just need to come up with a good alias…

🧵 👇

Posted in English

Giving Something Back

Posted on by Colin Lusk

One of the great things about the Internet is the amount of mutual help that’s going on all the time. In Facebook and reddit people are helping each other with language queries, and I started doing some marking on the equivalent subreddit for English learners. I’ve actually gone a step beyond even that and taken part in an English speaking marathon on Zoom. I only stayed for an hour because its a sort of rolling membership with people coming and going. So the organisers would pair the participants up for ten minutes, speed-dating style, and at the end of each conversation, everyone would return to the main call and either leave or wait to be paired up again. I participated in 5 ten minute conversations with people from Hungary and Turkey. There were only two of us native speakers there and the rest were just sharing across language barriers. TBH I don’t know how helpful I was: I tend to gabble a lot as I’m quite socially awkward generally, but that’s OK. I think I’d like to do it some more but maybe write down some questions and just try to give a nice calm environment for other people to say what they want to say. In other words, try to be the sort of partner I would like if I were the learner in the conversation. These things can’t happen if people don’t help out, so it’s something good we can all do to just help someone along the path to fluency. Anyway, if you fancy giving it a go, the call is here between 3PM and 8PM on Saturday.

I must say though, it really reminds me how much I need some more conversation in my life. I’m really neglecting speaking Portuguese at the moment.

Posted in Portuguese

Farricocos

Posted on by Colin Lusk
Farricocos em Braga

Hoje é sexta-feira santa, o dia no qual os cristãos se lembram da morte do seu salvador. Ouvi falar ontem de um cargo religioso: o Farricoco, que é um figurante numa procissão católica. Tanto quanto eu sei o nome é principalmente associado com Braga em Portugal mas há outros exemplos em várias cidades do Brasil também. Os bracarenses vestem-se de preto com caras cobertas de sacos, enquanto os brasileiros usam capuzes pontiagudos e bem coloridos.

Thanks to Patis12 for the corrections on this one

Posted in English

Don’t Risk it for the Biscate

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Episode 8963 of the series “words that mean wildly different things on different sides of the Atlantic”

Biscate seems like a useful word to have in your back pocket, but use it with care. In Portugal it refers to a side job, side huddle, or short term job. In the world of the gig economy, it seems like a good one to know.

Olha, aquele é mecânico nos estaleiros, mas faz uns “biscates” de electricidade por fora!

https://www.dicionarioinformal.com.br/biscate/

When this came up in online discussion, some Brazilian contributors found this funny because that’s not what it means in Brazil at all. Over there it refers to a woman who has lots of sexual partners – so equivalent to slut or slag or other derogatory terms.

A menina que ficava com todos garotos do colégio era chamada de biscate.

https://www.dicionarioinformal.com.br/biscate

Navigating slang is more complicated in Portuguese than in English because there seem to be quite a lot of examples of differences like this.

Posted in English

Shake It Baby

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Today’s book exercise includes the phrase “de mãos a abanar”. Checking what ciberdúvidas has to say in the subject, it seems there are two possible variants, one more literal than the other

Ficar/Ir COM mãos a abanar usually means your hands really physically shake (but note, not shaking hands with someone else that’s “apertar as mãos” – you squeeze hands with someone.

Vir/Ficar/Ir DE mãos a abanar means to end up empty handed. Just like in English you can come away empty handed, without being able to gain from a situation, or you can turn up empty handed, with nothing to offer in a situation. The actual example in the book uses vir as the verb, but of course it depends on the situation you’re describing – whether they are setting off with nothing, coming away empty handed or whatever. I’ve also seen a Brazilian page describing “chegar de mãos abanando” which is obviously related. They use it to describe a situation where someone arrives at a party without a present or a bottle of wine or whatever. According to the writer this is related to immigrants to Brazil in the 19th century. If they were unskilled their hands would shake due to inability to use the tools of the trade. Pardon my skepticism but this sounds like bollocks to me.

Posted in English, Portuguese

Primavera – Amália Rodrigues

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Well, I mentioned it’s spring here in the northern hemisphere, so here’s my attempt at a translation of Primavera. I can’t find any videos of Amália singing it but I’ll drop a live recording of Mariza’s version here for those who don’t know it.

Ai funesta Primavera!

Todo o amor que nos prendera /All the love that had stuck to us
Como se fora de cera /As if it were wax
Se quebrava e desfazia /Broke apart and disintegrated
Ai, funesta Primavera! /Oh terrible spring!
Quem me dera, quem nos dera /If only I, if only we
Ter morrido nesse dia /Had died on that day
Ai, funesta Primavera /Oh terrible spring
Quem me dera, quem nos dera /If only I, if only we
Ter morrido nesse dia /Had died on that day

E condenaram-me a tanto /And they condemned me so much
Viver comigo o meu pranto / To live with myself and with my mourning
Viver, viver e sem ti / To live to live without you
Vivendo sem no entanto / But living without
Eu me esquecer desse encanto /forgetting that enchantment
Que nesse dia perdi / That I lost in that day
Vivendo sem no entanto / But living without
Eu me esquecer desse encanto /forgetting that enchantment
Que nesse dia perdi / That i lost on that day

Pão duro da solidão / The stale bread of loneliness
É somente o que nos dão / Is all the give us
O que nos dão a comer / What they give us to eat
Que importa que o coração / What does it matter if the heart
Diga que sim ou que não / Says yes or no
Se continua a viver / If it keeps on living
Que importa que o coração /What does it matter if the heart
Diga que sim ou que não / Says yes or no
Se continua a viver /If it keeps on living

Todo o amor que nos prendera /All the love that had stuck to us
Se quebrara e desfizera / Broke apart and disintegrated
Em pavor se convertia / It converted itself into dread
Ninguém fale em Primavera /Nobody talk about spring
Quem me dera, quem nos dera / If only I, if only we
Ter morrido nesse dia / Had died on that day
Ninguém fale em Primavera /nobody talk about spring
Quem me dera, quem nos dera / If only I if only we
Ter morrido nesse dia / Had died on that day