I’ve mentioned before that there’s a Portuguese version of Wordle called Termo and I’ve been enjoying that in a daily basis. Well, there’s now a termo not on twitter, so this vice is on tap 24 hours a day!
To play, just tweet at this account and tell it a five letter word. It’ll reply straight away and you can keep going till you win. Or don’t.
It’s not as easy to follow as the website because you have to keep track of what letters you’ve used but that’s OK, it’s still fun and challenging and you can do it more than once a day!
Here’s a fun word i heard yesterday: commenting on something I wrote about my daughter’s birthday, someone wrote “Parabéns à tua pimpolha”. Sounds like a zit but isn’t. Pimpolho seems to be a sort of shoot of a germinating seed or, by extension, a child, with a female child being a pimpolha. There’s a brand of children’s shoes with the same name too.
Another word I’ve come across as a slang word for one’s offspring is “metralha”. Metralha is normally a volley of bullets (hence “metralhadora” for machine gun) or a hail of shrapnel but it seems to mean kids too. I can’t actually find any authority for this: it’s not in priberam or the dicionário informal or this thing I sometimes use. There’s a guy I follow on twitter who always uses it though. Presumably he isn’t the only one, but who knows.
While I was reading As Telefones Someone asked me if I was enjoying the book because the author “is pretty militant” which surprised me because I don’t really get that from the books at all. There’s one racist incident I remember from Marremoto, but I don’t really get strong militant vibes. Obviously, by writing about people in the margins of society like Boa Morte da Silva, I guess there’s an implied criticism of the system as a whole there, but I don’t think it’s any more than an author should feel for the subjects of her books. And what’s literature for if not to show us a different perspective on life?
I tried watching an interview with her to see if I could understand what he meant. Here she is on RTP2, drinking coffee with José Navarro de Andrade and talking about Maremoto. My first impression as that she just comes across as just a writer wanting to talk about her book. OK, she admits the dreadful crime of not having read O Ano Da Morte de Ricardo Reis by José Saramago, but she doesn’t say anything I’d describe as “militant”. Interestingly, (if I’m understanding correctly) the interviewer tries, at around the eleven minute mark, to get her to admit that the inconsistencies in the biography of the main character are because she is trying to make him a pastiche, representative of all African immigrants in Lisbon, to which she says, no, the protagonist is just writing his own story in the form of a letter to his daughter and he isn’t always a reliable or coherent narrator. QA lot of his personality comes from a real person she knows and yes, it’s messy, but that’s how life is sometimes.
I’m not sure where the idea that she is militant comes from. She seems very empathetic – to the point of avoiding any attempt to educate the reader because she feels like it gets in the way of the protagonist’s own voice.
She quotes Peter Geach, husband of Elizabeth Anscombe, in the closing minutes. I can’t find the quote online but it’s something like “It’s possible for a man to lose his one chance while he is still young, and live to be old, feeling happy and at ease in the world but in the eyes of God, be dead”. That’s heavy stuff, man, but it’s Christian ethics, not Marxism, feminism, CRT or whatever. So I’m at a loss to know where this “militant” thing has come from, unless she was more of a firebrand in her youth.
Another batch of expressions from the C1/2 Textbook I’m using
Passar pelas brasas (pass through the coals) =have a little sleep
Dar barraca (give a shed) = provoke a scandal
Surdo como uma porta (deaf as a door) =deaf as a post
É outra loiça (It’s different crockery) =much better (food)
Estar em maus lençóis (be on bad sheets) = be in a sticky situation
Falar de poleiro (speak from a perch) = Speak arrogantly, get on your high horse
Ser um bom garfo (be a good fork) = be a lover of good food
Eira
Sem eira nem beira (without a floor or a roof*) = very poor
Estúpido como uma porta (stupid as a door) =daft as a brush
Atirar o barro à parede (throw the clay at the wall) = test the waters to see if someone might be receptive to your idea
De cortar à faca (you could cut it with a knife) =same as the English expression – when the atmosphere is so tense or oppressive that you feel like you could cut it with a knife
Cascos de rolha (corked casks) = a long way off.
De fio a pavio (from string to wick) =from beginning to end. (I think we’re supposed to think of a candle burning all the way down)
Entrar em parafuso (go into a screw) = go into a tailspin, panic
*=There was a bit of debate over this one. Eira is a kind of floor or patch of ground in a village, where harvested grain is threshed and sieved ready for storage. Beira is a word we usually hear when talking about the seaside (“beira mar”) but it can be the eaves of a roof. The phrase is sometimes expanded to “Sem eira nem beira nem ramo de figueira”, adding that the poor bugger doesn’t even have the branch of a fig tree.
The book I’m reading is pretty hard. I judge these things in how often I have to reach for the dictionary and this one is about three times per page. I’ve just come across a really surprising word: “pechisbeque”.
Duas camisolas de malha iguais, de cores diferentes, um pólo cor-de-rosa, uma caneta, um par de brincos de pechisbeque, dentro de uma caixinha acolchoada, dois perfumes em miniatura
As Telefones – Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida
Pinchbeck / Pechisbeque
Not only is it unfamiliar, but what it’s describing isn’t even something I’ve come across in my half century of life. The English equivalent is Pinchbeck and its an alloy of copper and zinc that resembles gold. Is it just me? I’d never heard of it.
I quite enjoyed the roasting this digital nomad bro got after posting this rant about how old cities are old, and there’s a lack of sausages in Lisbon but at least they speak good English.
Everyone in the digital nomad space is hyping up Lisbon lately, nomad king @levelsio set up a relocation service, Lisbon is the new agreed upon best place ever. So I came to check it out. After 2 weeks I'm out. Lisbon is without exaggeration, the worst city I've ever been to 🧵👇🏻
Here’s a review of the audiobook of Vidadupla (“Double Life”) by singer, poet, author and rennaissance man Sérgio Godinho. I listened to it on the Bertrand “Biblio” app, but as I mentioned before, it’s a bit unreliable in that it seems to pause itself when the screen dims or… Something… Something isn’t quite right, at least in the Android version, so I had to keep pinging it to wake it up. That’s probably OK at home but it’s a bit annoying if you’re gardening at the same time, as I was. If you haven’t already seen it, there’s a whole page about different sources of Portuguese audiobooks here. Thanks to Patis12 and Dani_Morgenstern for the corrections
Acabei de “ler” este Audiolivro do Sérgio Godinho hoje. É uma coleção de contos e o vocabulário é bastante fácil para um aluno do meu nível. Mas tinha uns problemas.
É que… A narradora tem uma voz hipnótica portanto (estou envergonhado por admitir) dei por mim a ficar repetidamente distraído* pelo ritmo da leitura e logo depois perdi o fio à meada. Rebobinei a gravação várias vezes mas afinal não apreciei o livro tanto quanto merece. Ou talvez sou eu que não mereço livros bons.
Bem, de qualquer maneira, gostei do que ouvi. Nem sequer sabia que o Senhor Godinho tinha escrito livros. Já ouvi várias músicas dele. É óbvio que é um homem que sabe criar coisas bonitas.
The exercises in the book I’m working through have themes to them. The last few have all been expressions involving body parts. The other day included one that said “Fugir a boca para a verdade” (The mouth runs rowards the truth) meaning if you don’t keep it under control, your mouth just blurts out what’s really on your mind. The very same day, I saw someone using it because George W Bush had given a speech and, as this tweeter commented, his big stupid mouth had done exactly that.
I’d like to thank Heike Dio who commented under a recent post about the Dulce Pontes / Moonspell collab. She suggested I have a look at the Linda Martini performance on Antena 3 with Ana Moura on guest vocals. It’s good: very stylish and original, so I’m really glad to have it on my YouTube music playlist. I must say, I still prefer the chaos energy of the Dulce Pontes one though. I’ve been watching that at least once a day since I first found it. Here is Heike’s recommendatiin though, and I’ll try and translate the lyrics underneath because that’ll help me understand it.
If I Grow*
Espero que te venha o sono /I hope sleep comes to you Que te deites cedo, antes de eu chegar /That you go to bed early before I arrive Que isto de ser dois, longe do plural /Because this thing of being a couple, far from being plural É tão singular /Is so singular
Paredes de empena / Gabled walls Já nem vale a pena /It’s not even worth it any more Resta-nos arder / Now it’s time for us to burn Que esta chama lenta /Because this slow flame Já virou tormenta** / Has become a firestorm E ao entardecer / And as it gets late
Ninguém me diz / Nobody told me O que há depois de nós / That there was something after us E se depois de nós / And that after us both Os dois me Agiganto / I’ll grow.
Eu já fui embora / And i left Já marquei a hora / And i marked the time Pra não me atrasar / So as not to be late Já comprei bilhete / i bought a ticket Deixei-te um bilhete / i left you a ticket E a descongelar / And once thawed out Os restos de ontem / Yesterday’s leftovers Dão pra o jantar / Will be enough for dinner
Ninguém me diz / Nobody told me O que há depois de nós / That there was something after us E se depois de nós / And that after us both Os dois me Agiganto / I’ll grow.
*=Agigantar literally means become a giant, but with that little reflexive pronoun, it becomes a verbo pronomial meaning “get bigger” so “grow” seems like a better translation.
**=Tormenta looks like it ought to mean “torment”. It actually means “storm” but I translated it as firestorm because a flame becoming a rainstorm doesn’t seem right.
Luso 