There are so many things to know, aren’t there? Today I found out how to say “round up”, not the kind of rounding up a cowboy does, but the kind a mathematician does
Round ’em Up!
Category: English
Say It In Portuguese
Oh! I must have accidentally unsubscribed to Say It In Portuguese’s email feed because I completely missed the notification about the last episode. I had been watching out for it because I’m in it, but I’ve just noticed it’s in my podcast app!
It’s this episode which deals with a song by Deolinda called Fado Toninho, and it was inspired by my attempt to grapple with the meaning of the song, in a post in February.
The podcast is definitely one you should be subscribed to if you are working toward B2 or over. It’s not the sort of thing you can listen to as a newbie, but if you already have decent skills, it gives you a wealth of knowledge about expressions and culture, all of which are essential for moving up to the next level. So, in other words, I can’t recommend it strongly enough! Cristina was my teacher for later C1 through to graduating C2, and she is very much a “friend of the blog”, but I would recommend SIIP even if that weren’t the case, because it’s excellent, it’s been around for ages and there’s nothing else like it, really.
Generally, the podcast picks an idiomatic expression and unpacks it for you, but in this one, we discuss the lyrics of a song, mainly trying to analyse the meaning of “Toninho” itself, but there are some expressions in the song too, and those are worth noticing. So if you don’t know the song already, I challenge thee: set aside some time to give the video and the podcast episode a listen and see how much you can learn in fifteen minutes.
Untranslatable
I like how this sentence is something that wouldn’t really make sense at all in English. You could say it of course, but it wouldn’t make as much sense in a language where we don’t really learn verb conjugations because our verbs are so straightforward.
He’s talking about those times in our lies when we do something for the first time ever – the first time you kiss someone, the first time you go out on your own and so on. In this paragraph, he goes onto say that those things don’t always work out as we might expect, and hoped-for first kiss turns into the first rejection.
And to do that he says the verbs “querer” and “ter” are conjugated with very different endings. I like that!
The book is Aqui Dentro Faz Muito Barulho by Bruno Nogueira
Tira-Teimas
I keep seeing the expression “Tira-Teimas” pop up in my socials. Mainly, it’s on these short videos from The Voice Portugal. What can it mean?
Well, apparently, it can mean “objeto ou meio com que se castigam os teimosos” Er… Ok, that’s a very specific thing to have a phrase for, but sure. That’s clearly not what it means here though. I think the relevant definition here is “acontecimento ou circunstância que funciona como desenlace, pondo fim a disputa, competição ou controvérsia”. So a tie-breaker then? Hm, not quite that, because that would normally only involve two people. So maybe some sort of final battle where they shake out some of ghe weaker candidates and get it down to the finalists then? Something like that I think. I certainly don’t fancy watching the whole show to find out, I’m afraid, but I think that’s the gist of it.
There seems to be a brand of disgusting looking crisps called Tira-Teimas as well. I’m not sure why. Do people punish stubborn children with wheat-based snacks?
Airlearn Grifters
I posted a video on here of someone crying while trying to pronounce Portuguese. I realised later that she was just doing viral marketing, hyping up an app called Airlearn.
Since then, I’ve had loads more videos of people doing the same kinds of viral shenanigans. The best known is am American woman who has an elaborate story about how she went to visit her Portuguese boyfriend’s family and could tell they were being rude about her, even though she couldn’t speak Portuguese. LOL, yeah, because colloquial European Portuguese is soooo easy for an outsider to understand! The denouement is that she uses Airlearn to become fluent in Brazilian portuguese. Why Brazilian? Well, because she knew they would hate that because they are so racist. Not because Airlearn doesn’t even teach European Portuguese, oh no no no. Then a few weeks later she goes back and cusses them out in their own language. There were loads of aspects of the story that just didn’t make sense, and it also seemed like an infuriating slander on the Portuguese and their hospitality. Some people were saying she was native Brazilian anyway, so the whole thing was a con, and the video seems to have been deleted now.
So I was really happy to see this Instagram reel and even shared it on my own story… But then I clicked on her profile and I found out she’s an Airlearn shill too. This is a whole other dimension – the inception of rage bait marketing.
Anyway, this is all by way of saying I think we should just agree amongst ourselves to ignore Airlearn because they are a bunch of unscrupulous twats. If you’re looking for an app, start here instead.
Useless Vocabulary of the Day
“Panhonha” – I came across it in one of the half dozen books I am reading and not finishing. It just means a thicko.
Essay Number 2 Down 💪
I’m a little surprised I’m actually managing this! Well, well see what the results look like!
Inêmoji de Castro
I know everyone’s attention span is super-short these days, so here’s a TL;DR summary of all the Pedro e Inês content so far.
Ol´ Heron-Tits is Back
One more thing about Inês de Castro before I change the subject: She is often referred to in poetry as “colo de garça”. A garça is a heron, and colo is a funny little word that doesn’t have an exact match in english. The first and third meanings given by Priberam both refer to the upper part of the bust, but there are others indicating the upper part of the chest below the neck, and also the lap… It often comes up when talking about babies – they are “no colo”, in other words cradled in a pair of arms or sat in someone’s lap, being held by a parent – and it has a bunch of figurative senses too, relating to being welcomed with open arms, cared for, looked after and protected.
But being me, after a brief period, I asked reddit
Porque é que vários poetas chamam Inês de Castro de “colo de garça”? Uma garça=uma ave, não é? E colo de garça é um elogio porquê? Fiz uma pesquisa (ou seja googlei) e nesta página existem 3 teorias:
Tinha um pescoço esbelto como uma garça (adoro mas nunca antes ouvi alguém a dizer “colo” para referir ao pescoço)
Tinha seios brancos como o peito de uma garça (mais natural mas se alguém chamasse um inglesa de “heron tits”, garanto-vos que não seria um elogio)
Era vista como uma prostituta pelos nobres (provável, mas como origem da expressão, é duvidoso na minha opinião)
Será que alguém sabe mais? Ou tem uma teoria ainda mais rebuscado?
Recebi poucas respostas mas ao que parece a primeira versão – pescoço esbelto – é muito acreditável.
Crónica: Tradução
I’m having trouble focusing on this poem, which I mentioned in yesterday’s post about Pedro and Inês, and holding it in my head while translating, long enough to take it all in so I’m going to write out a translation of the five pages I have in English. I can’t find a version of it online other than this which only really allows you to see a tiny piece at a time so if you want the original you’ll need to buy it like a decent upstanding citizen.
CAPÍTULO XXVII
COMO ELREI DOM PEDRO DE PURTUGAL DISSE POR DONA ENES QUE FORA SUA MOLHER REÇEBIDA E DA MANEIRA QUE ELLO TEVE
How I predicted the night. How many times.
How many times I rested on the deep darkness
Or your sleep only noticing one or another small sound
By night I search for your earthly now
That tiny god-space* like those ships ate deserted
Like everything is strange to anything that lives. Under the night here
I enclose the secret of these rites,
Taking apart this, my bodily landscape
Feeding an ancient glow
Hair I understood. I say nothing, this time must be valued
Little by little I renounce the sun
For the water of your eyes
I have to wait so long. This death happens slowly
I have no hunger, thirst or desire
I just come back by another road
These ships are ours
The little greyhound that sits here
Was the one that was born out of the cold we learned about
Tonight I lost myself in your fingers
I repeated your steps walking not
as fast as you wanted
that before the sunrise we would say it
See how the landscape changes. I don’t even find despair
and how many times I say I don’t have anyone here
Only this ship, undoubtedly the most beautiful
To show you.
Apparently nothing changed but in truth everything changed
A wind passed me by like the wake
of gulls on the surface of the sea
These stones in place, these arches covered in limes
Your absence drawn by a stone
Walking toward me
I don’t remember any more
My memory has swept itself clean of your face under the work of hands
And however many times I say
You can’t bear alteration
It’s late. The moon is dying. I let myself sleep.
COMO ELREI DOM PEDRO DE PURTUGAL DISSE POR DONA ENES QUE FORA SUA MOLHER REÇEBIDA E DA MANEIRA QUE ELLO TEVE
The day on which the arrival of summer was announced
The month of June, I tried to hear, drom the valley
The singing and the shouts that say the arrival of the traveller
By words of the present
Maybe I won’t find you again while this body
Stays until the time of your death
There won’t be movement. How will I be able? If
I have to separate destruction in myself
You will have to set out to find me. By the road and in the course of centuries
Those who will come to life, what part of them will come to be the same,
We are alone. Without a third person let alone more
While the night is what we alone open – that
By night you wait, seeming like earth, the earth itself in the nighttime still
Over time I will bring as much as you need. A long time ago
Chance had no part in our meeting, searching for the
Most distant, the thing that grows. It’s what I want to tell you
Far from trying at each step the beginning or the reliable piety
For sustenance over the years. The lack of response will never
Cease to pursue me. Reply to me.
We feel the pain, the knowledge the causes the forms
The things break like everything and what remains stands out
The difference, the meaning among the innovation
The inception in the act and in the wanting. The wise
finality of existence.
The end is to know you. Nothing else. I see you watching me
Even in the mirror of the sword blades, eroded
By rust, by so much
The sun still hasn’t set
There are men who think a lot. I don’t know if they bring a joyful heart to their work with the stone. They greet us and offer consultations. Nobody contradicts them. They don’t have the one thing I need to win: Your praise.
Nothing erases it from my memory. Because
I imitated the acts. I bring them with me. I guard them.
It’s a small thing.
Please, repeat with me the song:
The eyes are light
And anyone who stares into them
Has the rain, the sun,
That he requires
The current emphasises
the green, the green of your eyes.
* “esse mínimo espaço deus” – sounds like it should mean something but I’m not sure what! Deus isn’t capitalised so I am taking it as him meaning the space has some sort of godlike power, rather than it being some sort of space for God
Oof. I probably could have written a lot more footnotes for that one because there are lots of lines that make little sense to me.
Luso 