I never remember to use idiomatic expressions in the real world but I pulled out “Fazer Ouvidos de Mercador” the other day, while simultaneously making a pun, and I felt like a black belt
Category: English
I’m a Lombo, Jack and I’m KO’ed.
The verdict on the most recent post was that the phrases “É nos lombos que elas nos doem” was referring to things being a wearisome, hard labour. It’s not as violent as my suggested “stab in the back”. Lombo generally gets used for the back of a beast of burden so the mental image is of hard work wearing someone out.
Ceca e Meca
I was intrigued by this sentence. Ceca e Meca? What the heca… um… I mean what the heck’re those?
Meca is easy – it’s just what we would call Mecca. Ceca needs a little more digging: it’s an arab word that means treasure-house, but it was the popular name of the great mosque in Córdova during the muslim occupation of the iberian peninsula. So according to Ciberdúvidas, the expression “correr Ceca e Meca” recalls the pilgrimages made by arabs between the holy places in southern europe and in the middle east itself. In other words, it means you’ve been all over, you’re well-traveled.
What about the rest though? Já vi muita coisa – I’ve seen a lot. Não andei a comer palha – I haven’t just been eating hay (this seems to be related to the expression “todo o burro come palha” – she just means she doesn’t just believe what she’s told). Corri Ceca e Meca e aprendi com a vida – I’ve been all round the world and I’ve learned about life.
I’m not really sure about “É no lombo que elas nos doem”. Lombo is sometimes translated as loin, but it’s really about the area in the upper back, below the shoulder blades, either as a cut of meat or on the human body. So… i think she’s saying something like “They stab you in the back”. Not sure though. Doer means hurt, not stab. Maybe she just means things wear you out and make your back ache…? Hm, I think I might askabout that one. I’ll keep you posted.
É Uma Expressão Portuguesa Com Certeza
This beautiful gift was sent to me on Reddit and I went in search of the original. Its a blog post from a few years ago. As I have probably mentioned before, people who mark language exams live a good idiomatic expression, and the author of this piece has constructed an entire blog post out of nothing but expressions. There’s hardly a single word that isn’t part of one. It’s a magnificent achievement and certainly a lot more fun than the C1/C2 workbook I am ploughing through, where fully one third of the book is about expressions.
I heard you the first time
Right, I see WordPress have fixed that bug that was causing double posts and it’s now doing triple posts instead. Sorry if you got that last one three times. He is very dishy though, isn’t he. The eighties, man, what a decade.
Tia Angústia
I used the phrase “Tia Angústia” as the original title of yesterday’s post and that made me wonder if there really was a Portuguese equivalent to the English expression “Agony Aunt”, that would be better than my all-too-literal translation. I asked…
Acabei de usar esta frase no meu texto dia. Foi uma piada, porque aposto que a expressão não existe em português mas “agony aunt” em inglês significa alguém que dá conselho, principalmente sobre amor, por exemplo num jornal ou numa revista. Tipo: “Cara Tia Joana, Amo um rapaz mas é casado com um caranguejo. O que é que devo fazer?” / Já consideraste vestir-se a vermelho e andar de lado para chamar-lhe a atenção? Será que tais pessoas existem/iam lá? E se existem mesmo, qual é a… Sei lá… O título deste cargo…?
Anyway, it turns out that, no, agony aunt columns were never really a thing in papers, but that seems to have been largely because there was a magazine called Maria, launched in 1978 that absorbed all this action. People would address their letters to “Maria” and so having another personality, an agony aunt figure, wasn’t really necessary. A lot of this is based on people speculating so it’s not an authoritative answer or anything.
Maria still exists but it has modernised and moved on to fashion and lifestyle tips, but you an find old advice from it if you look around. Here, for example. Apparently the letters were real, and the people who answered them were psychologists, according to the magazine’s own account of itself.
So, bottom line, nobody will know what you’re on about if you refer to a Tia Angústia but if you need a cultural reference point in the same sort of area to drop into conversation, a revista Maria is probably the right one to reach for.
Foca à Doca
I managed to mistype “fica a dica” (“here’s a tip”) as “fuca a dica” which sounds vaguely rude. Anyway, here’s a foca (seal) at the doca (dock) to remind you to check your spelling.
TFW You Think There Are Only Two Languages
This made me chuckle. Bless him, he’s trying
A Nossa Senhora dos Substantivos Abstratos
Religious Post. Well, not really. Recently, I write a post that had no errors in it. I attributed this miracle was due to “a Nossa Senhora de Reddit” but then (embarrassingly) that joke had a mistake in it: it should be “do Reddit”, Reddit being the name of a site.
I replied to the person pointing out the error that they were “Nossa Senhora da Minuciosidade” (Our Lady of Attention to Detail). But then I got paranoid. Is it Da Minuciosidade or De Minuciosidade? After all, Attention-to-Detail is an abstract noun (Substantivo Abstrato). If you don’t know what an abstract noun is, don’t panic, it’s not a Portuguese thing, it just means a noun that refers to an emotional state or an idea – so hope, happiness, liberty, anxiety – things like that.
Anyway, I googled “Nossa Senhora de Piedade” and “Nossa Senhora da Piedade” to find out which was right and of course found examples of both. Then I started to worry – is Minuciosidade really a good quality or will it sound like I am accusing the person of pendantry? So I write a text in the subject and also asked in the Portuguese language subreddit.
And I’ll tell you what I found out after this brief interruption…
Hoje, numa resposta a um texto de há uns dias, usei a frase “Nossa Senhora da Minuciosidade”
Tenho duas dúvidas quanto à esta piada:
Antes de mais, espero que não tenha cometido um erro ridículo, semelhante à Muphry’s Law – o erro de fazer referência a um erro (embora neste caso seja erro meu) e, no mesmo comentário, fazer um erro de gramática: será que é “da Minuciosidade” ou “de Minuciosidade”?
Pesquisei “Nossa Senhora DE piedade” e “Nossa Senhora DA piedade” e ambos existem, mas DA é mais comum do que DE, portanto, apesar de Piedade e Minuciosidade serem substantivos abstratos, acho que levam um artigo neste contexto. Às vezes, parece-me que o uso do artigo é aleatório mas provavelmente existe uma regra…
Além disso, quanto à palavra “minuciosa/o”: é evidente que prestar atenção aos pormenores é uma qualidade ótima (sobretudo neste sub!), mas, regra geral, ser pedante não é elogio. Não sei como as palavras neste dominio* soam em português: acho que “minucioso” é um elogio. (ou seja, espero que sim, porque já utilizei a palavra!); picuinhas significa excesso de minuciosidade e pedante é ainda mais enfático…? Escrupuloso, diligente, rigoroso e os outros quase-sinónimos têm os seus próprios lugares também… Mas e então? Onde fica a fronteira entre elogio e ofensa? Depende sempre do contexto ou existem palavras que ficam sempre no campo da ofensa?
In answer to whether its “de Piedade” or “da Piedade” opinion was definitely in favour of da. Although it’s an abstract noun, its also a religious concept so in a sense it was a thing and needed to have an article in front of it. Thank you Uyth and Butt_Roidholds for this info.
As for minuciosidade, obviously these things vary slightly in context, but minucioso, escrupuloso and all those qualities are definitely qualities, not defects. Pedante is more negative and opinion is slightly split on picuinhas. Its a weird adjective that always ends in as even when describing a singular, masculine noun, but it’s generally more negative – like “nit picking” but, again, you can use it in a jokey way and not have it be insulting. Thanks to Uyth and JCliving for these answers.
*I wrote “área geral” – words in this general area, translating my own sloppy English expression literally, but in Portuguese you think of them being in the same domain.
[IN]Pertinente – Podcast
I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this podcast before: I heard about it a while ago on twitter and Portuguese tweeps were praising it as being an good listen. It’s put out by the Fundação Francisco Manuel Dos Santos. They bring together experts, eggheads, brainboxes and boffins to discuss a different topic each week, ranging over politics, economics, science and society. I have quite a few “serious” podcasts in Portuguese and tend not to be very good at listening to them because they require sustained concentration over an hour or so which is usually more than I can cope with, so I usually stick to shorter stuff. As a result, it’s been on my list for a while but I hadn’t given it much eartime.
Anyway, recently I listened to an episode about Britain and I found it both easy to understand and very detailed and interesting, so I based that day’s Portuguese text on it. And just to confirm my good opinion, the marker said it was one of her favourite podcasts too!
Now obviously when I say “easy to understand” I don’t mean the language is simplified: you’ll still need to be at a decent intermediate level of learning to follow it, but they speak clearly, don’t talk over each other, don’t ramble or drone on in a monotone or do any of the other things podcast hosts sometimes do that make it hard to follow the thread of what they’re saying. I appreciate that and I hope the episode I heard was representative of the series as a whole.
Anyway, here’s what I wrote. Thanks to Dani for correcting it.
Hoje, ouvi um podcast chamado In Pertinente. Os apresentadores estavam a falar sobre a história do meu país. Tocaram nos temas* “Astérix e os Bretões”, Shakespeare, Alan Turing, Blackadder, a guerra entre a Escócia e a Inglaterra e mais alguns outros. Fiquei muito impressionado com a profundidade da discussão. Não costumo de ouvir mas acho que, de futuro, isso vai mudar!
*I originally wrote tocaram no “Astérix e os Bretões” but it seems you need to write “touched on the theme(s)…” and not just “touched on..”
Luso 