Category: English

Posted in English

1 Day of Summer

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I had one of those moments on social media where I see something I don’t really understand and I have to go off and unravel the mystery and learn something along the way. It started with this Instagram post from Cinema São Jorge:

I guessed the origin, although I haven’t seen it for years. It’s from the pinnacle of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl movie era, 500 Days of Summer:

And I guess they’re excited because it was July the 31st, the day Quim Barreiros, accordionist and master of Música Pimba has decreed to be the best day to get married. Why? Because “depois entra agosto” (then comes August). It’s explained in this Sapo article but they’re not explaining it quite well enough for a non-native, so let me unravel the pun in all its corny glory.

“A gosto” is used in recipes in the way “to taste” is used in English recipes. Season to taste =Temperar a gosto, or you could just have “(a gosto)” in place of a specific quantity after the name of the ingredient (see this absolutely disgusting recipe, for example), meaning as much or as little as you like. So when he says “depois entra a gosto”, he’s just saying after you get married you can enter (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) whenever you please.

Posted in English

Assim ou Assado

Posted on by Colin Lusk

So I was reading a graphic novel called “E Agora” by Raquel Sem Interesse yesterday and I came across this frame, in which the protagonist is on the wrong end of an overbearing, shouty boss.

Ooh, intriguing! What does that second bit, “Não é assim, é assado!” mean? Assado means roasted, so “It’s not like that, it’s roasted!”

But why? Well, it’s nothing to do with actual roasting, literal or figurative. Assado just happens to sound like assim, so if you want to say “it’s not like this, it’s like that”, then “No é assim, é assado” works quite well.

You get the same word pairing in other situations – as “assim ou assado” or “assim e assado” or “nem assim, nem assado’ this or that, this and that, neither one thing nor the other.

Here’s a children’s book by Ana Pessoa, for example, which is about making choices, and Marco Neves, who I’ve mentioned before as a great explainer of the portuguese language, has written a book with the same title. And if you dig around you’ll find restaurants and podcasts and all sorts, using variations on the theme.

When I asked reddit, I got a couple of examples. If a child says “eu quero assim”, the parent might reply “não é assim, nem é assado”, which I guess is just a way of saying “well, tough!”. And if a client at work has very detailed requirements, you might say “ele disse que queria assim e assado”. It’s pretty common to hear such things, apparently, but I guess I just haven’t been paying attention!

Posted in English

Back

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Well, as you can see from that last update, we’re back at home, doing laundry and catching up on sleep. I seem to have picked up a cold, or maybe it’s just the change of weather, but I’m all snotty. Better to have it at home than while I’m away though, so I’m not complaining. And I have to work today too. Le sigh.

Luckily, the weather has been pretty wet and cool in London. Why is that lucky? Well, I’m sorry your barbecues were ruined, fellow Londoners, but I’m just relieved all the plants in the allotment didn’t die of thirst as I’d expected, after being left unwatered for two whole weeks in July.

Anyway, I’ve been publishing contemporaneous, uncorrected journals of each day, as you can see, and I’ll be updating them with corrections as they come in. I’m up to day 8 now, (thanks, Dani), but day 9 onwards ate still uncorrected and probably pretty terrible.

Posted in English

Os ricos são foleiros

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I came across this quotation by Adília Lopes in a video discussion between Bruno Nogueira, Miguel Esteves Cardoso And Rita Blanco (respectively, a comedian, a journalist/writer and an actress). It’s from a book called Bandolim and I’m not sure but I think it might be a whole poem. “Os ricos são foleiros”. I didn’t recognise the word “foleiro”, which is why I started looking at it more closely. A foleiro is someone who makes or sells “foles”. What is a fole? A leather bag, a device for squeezing air into an organ, a bellows, the bag part of a bagpipe (“gaita-de-foles”) or the interior of an accordion… You get the idea. It’s windy. But foleiro, informally, can also mean ordinary, bad quality, shabby, corny… that kind of thing. It’s the fourth definition in priberam.

Adília Lopes
Adília Lopes

So the general gist of the ‘poem’ is that the rich are corny, uninteresting and not really worthy of admiration; they just know about money. Well, I can’t argue. Like all extremely true things, it isn’t true, or at least not always but it feels like a good, satisfying, sweeping generalisation and if you’ve ever spent any time reading the twitter feeds of certain silicon valley gazillionaires you’ll know what she’s driving at.