Here are some expressions from the exercise book. I’m really trying to do these exercises every day now because I have been slacking.
Falar nas costas = talk behind someone’s back
Ter dedo = to have a knack for something
Puxar pela cabeça = think really hard
Queimar as pestanas = read a lot
Bater com o nariz na porta = be unable to achieve a goal because the shop/house/office/whatever was shut
With that last one, when I researched it, I found that there was one page that claimed it could be used in a more figurative sense – in other words you could use it when you were denied or rebuffed in some request, or met with some sort of bureaucratic denial, maybe, but the majority said it was strictly literal: you turn up at the library hoping to find a PG Wodehouse book you’ve never read but you bang your nose on the door because it’s shut. So I asked…
Há uma expressão no meu livro “bater com o nariz na porta”. Entendo o significado mas não tenho a certeza de como se usa. Será que pode ter um significado menos literal – por exemplo “Convidei a Mafalda para jantar comigo mas bati com o nariz na porta quando ela respondeu* que já tinha combinado um jantar com o Joaquim, um halterofilista com dois metros de altura” ou só numa situação concreta** como “Eu e a Janet fomos para o restaurante às seis e meia mas batemos com os narizes na porta porque os portugueses costumam jantar mais tarde
The verdict? No, only the literal sense works. If I go to the restaurant too early and its shut, I can say we banged on the door with our nose, but if I get spurned by Mafalda in favour of her hot date with the bodybuilder, I can’t use it.
* I cleaned up the grammar a little bit following some feedback from Dani. I had tried to use a different word here – ripostar – because I found it in the novel I’m reading and thought it would be more interesting but it turned out to be too interesting for this context!
** I used “específica” but that wasn’t the best choice.
So yesterday I started talking about a couple of Portuguese phrases, one of which included the word “bicho”. I translated it as “beast” because it’s cognate – in other words, bicho and beast both come from the same Latin root, namely the Latin word “bestius”. It can be used interchangeably with “animal” in some circumstances, but not all. For example, it’s used in the title of a classic book by Miguel Torga, Bichos, and in the Brazilian translation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm – A Revolução dos Bichos* But that’s not always true. In some cases, it means something else. And the plot really thickens when we bring in its female equivalent, “bicha”. Common sense dictates that this would just mean the same thing but for female animals, and sometimes that would be right but usually not.
As you can see, I really missed my calling – should have been a graphic designer.
I thought I’d sit down and list out all the meanings of both words and see how much overlap there is – how often is it true that bicha is the feminine form of bicho vs when does it just behave like a totally different word. I’ll ignore the Brazilian meanings completely.
Overlapping meanings
Bicha and bicho are the male and female versions of only one sense:
Some kind of animal – in the case of bicho, this is the primary meaning of the word. For bicha, it’s only the fourth meaning and even then it’s “especially a domestic animal”, so even this isn’t a perfect match. Bicho should, really, exclude humans but the Miguel Torga book I mentioned earlier has at least one story that’s about a human woman so… 🤷🏼♀️
Bicho only
These are meanings that only belong to bicho
A stallion or bull, specifically
An insignificant creature
An imaginary creature like an ogre or goblin, used to scare children
Antisocial person (especially as “bicho-do-mato” (informal)
The person you’re talking about, if you want to refer to them ironically “silêncio o bicho vem aí” = quiet, the beast approaches!
Cancer
A germ or illness – if you search twitter for covid bicho you’ll find lots of people referring to covid as a bicho. In this case, it’s more like “bug” than “beast”
An obsessive interest or taste for something: just like the example above, this seems to be used in the same way we would use “bug” – the example they give is “cedo, descobri o bicho de representação” could translate as “early on, i caught the acting bug”
A secondary school student (name given by students at the University of coimbra) – and again, you’ll sometimes find senior boys in boarding school novels referring to new boys as “new bugs” so the bicho/bug equivalence is confirmed!
Bicha only
And these words are specific to the feminine word bicha
EDIT – since writing this, I’ve had some more feedback about day-to-day use of “bicha” that is definitely worth bearing in mind. It’s contained in the first footnote to this post about finding worms in blackberries.
Any animal with a long body and no legs such as a snake, worm or leach
Some kind of firework – I’m not actually sure what to imagine here. Judging by what I can find online, they seem to be more powerful or dangerous than normal, commercial fireworks because some were confiscated by the police in this story… So… Flares for a flare gun, maybe? I’m not sure.
The wire that connects the conta-quilómetros (milometer) to the wheels
Snake-shaped charm earring
An angry or unreasonable person person
A stripe or decoration on the sleeve of a military uniform (the words “galão” and “divisa” are also used in this context)
The 15th and 16th definition are “male sexual organ” and “female sexual organ” respectively. Er… OK.
A customs launch
A kind of nautical strap with clips at the ends
Aguardente
Related Words
In addition to the noun uses of bicha, we also have some other uses, mainly based on the definitions of bicha, rather than bicho.
Bicha (adjective) effeminate, camp
Bichar (verb) to fill up with worms, maggots or other yucky things (also “abichar”)
Bichar (verb) to form a queue
Expressions
You might be familiar with a few expressions using the same word. In addition to yesterday’s, we have…
Bicha de conta-quilómetros = milometer
Bicho da cozinha = kitchen hand
De criar bicho = violent, intense
Matar o bicho /mata-bicho = breakfast booze, the hair of the dog that bit you
Matar o bicho do ouvido de alguém =to annoy someone with tips and suggestions
Bicho de Sete Cabeças – a really hard problem
So it’s tempting to think of these words as equivalent to each other but for opposite genders, but that’s not really true, and it needs a little bit of effort to relax the mind enough to take in a different way of using them in different situations.
*The Portuguese version is closer to the original: A Quinta dos Animais if you’re interested.
Ooh, I was intrigued by this passage in the book I’m reading. Are you ready for a couple of new expressions and some incoherent ramblings about gender? You are? Then come with me!
Had his colleague noticed that he admired her?
But what creature had bitten him? He had never thought about Marta that way. He had always seen her as like a Maria-rapaz, a partner who, although she was a woman, was able to talk like a man.
Sex is like that. It changes everything completely.
There are a couple of cool new things here. First of all, “que bicho lhe mordera” (“what beast had bitten him”) could be taken literally – there are certainly sites online that use some version of that as a headline to inform readers of how to figure out the origin of an insect bite or sting. In this case, though, it’s figurative. It just means something like “what had got into him?” or “why was he acting so strangely”.
The second phrase is even better. “Maria-rapaz”, as you can probably guess from the context, is a tomboy. According to the Wikipedia entry, there are quite a few different versions of this idea in popular usage, such as “moleca” and “maria-homem”. The meaning of it seems pretty congruent with the English equivalent. The Portuguese article is mercifully straightforward (at the time of writing), in contrast with the English version which has been larded with gender-studies buzzwords because, obviously, girls can’t just play with skateboards without well-meaning adults sticking labels on them. Ugh.
As the article says, the feminine male equivalent – “maricas” is much more likely to be seen as implying that the person is gay, which isn’t present in the idea of a tomboy, and – male gender stereotypes being more rigid – it’s generally seen as a more negative, derogatory word. There isn’t a Wikipedia page for maricas but Priberam sets out the different meanings pretty clearly.
I think that’s all for today. I had an extended side-note about that word “bicho” in the first expression, that was going to unpack the beastliness but I think I’ve decided it needs a blog post of its own so I’m going to do part 2 in this discussion tomorrow.
I’m a day late with this so I’ll backdate it: Feliz Dia da Mãe to all Portuguese mothers, and Feliz Dia Do Trabalhador to all members of the Classe Operária (Portuguese working class)
If you’re both a mother and a labourer, make sure the people in your household bake you two cakes because you’ve earned it.
I was talking to m’wife this morning about May Day and how we don’t really register it as a big deal here apart from having a bank holiday and an excuse to sit in the garden (weather allowing) reading and drinking. If we think about it hard enough we might remember that there’s a socialist celebration known as May Day which happens to fall roughly on the same date as the older, pagan May Day festival, but there isn’t usually a lot of fuss about it. We don’t drive tanks down Pall Mall like the Soviets would have, and Hallmark don’t sell Tony Benn greetings cards or Hallowe’en-style costumes depicting the Spectre of Communism haunting Europe. It does seem to be a bigger deal on Portugal though, with its socialist tradition, dating back to the resistance to the Novo Estado. In fact, according to this tweet from the Assembleia da República, almost the first thing the revolutionaries did after overthrowing the Fascists on April 25th was to give themselves a holiday a few days later. Nice!
Dois dias após a Revolução de 25 de Abril de 1974, o 1.º de Maio foi instituído como Dia do Trabalhador e feriado nacional. Em Lisboa, a população saiu à rua para celebrar o primeiro 1.º de Maio. Fotos de Miranda Castela, Arquivo Histórico Parlamentar. #1demaio#diadotrabalhadorpic.twitter.com/9ZQwaquHkV
— Assembleia da República (@AssembleiaRepub) May 1, 2022
I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this account in here before but it really is a great source of minor historical weirdnesses if you are a fan of Portuguese History. I mean, this for example.
After being held up inside Parliament buildings for almost two days by workers during a massive strike in the height of the post-Revolution turmoil, then Prime-Minister José Pinheiro de Azevedo complains that he "doesn't like being kidnapped" and heads off for lunch (1975). pic.twitter.com/PokiK9d5TL
— crazy ass moments in portuguese politics (@politicanatuga) April 19, 2022
Here’s another song that keeps coming up in my YouTube recommendations. It’s really popular but it’s never really appealed to me. I think it’s the singer’s voice: it reminds me of a certain kind of American Rock bands the nineties like Alice in Chains, Stone Temple Pilots, Blind Melon: that sort of grumbly, sulky way of singing that I find a bit off-putting. But I also know it’s really popular so I wanted to focus on it and try to understand it better. There are a few versions of it on YouTube, including an official video, a really good live version at the Nos Alive Festival, some audio/lyrics versions and a whole range of covers including this really nice one by Serena Kaos and this Fadofication by Camané but I think the easiest one to follow is probably this one because its pretty clear and has veteran actor/musician Victor Espadinha on guest vocals
Here are the lyrics. I’m not totally sure I nailed the grammar in verse 2. Might ask my wife about that later. I read the third verse to my daughter and she said it was “emo”. Correct. I wonder if the female form of emo is “ema”. Probably not.
Ouvi dizer que o nosso amor acabou /I heard them say our love was over Pois eu não tive a noção do seu fim / But I had no idea it had ended Pelo que eu já tentei / As much as I tried Eu não vou vê-lo em mim / I can’t see it in myself Se eu não tive a noção de ver nascer um homem / If I had no notion of seeing a man emerge E ao que eu vejo / And from what I can see Tudo foi para ti / It was all for you Uma estúpida canção que só eu ouvi / A stupid song that only I heard E eu fiquei com tanto para dar / And I had so much to give E agora /And now Não vais achar nada bem / You aren’t going to like it at all Que eu pague a conta em raiva / That I pay the bill with anger
E pudesse eu pagar de outra forma / And could I pay any other way
Ouvi dizer que o mundo acaba amanhã / I heard the world ends tomorrow E eu tinha tantos planos pra depois / And I had so many plans for later Fui eu quem virou as páginas / I was the one who turned the pages Na pressa de chegar até nós / In a hurry to arrive at us Sem tirar das palavras seu cruel sentido / Without taking from the words their cruel meaning Sobre a razão estar cega / As for my reason being blind Resta-me apenas uma razão / I only have one reason left Um dia vais ser tu / One day it’s going to be you E um homem como tu / and a man like you Como eu não fui / Like I never was Um dia vou-te ouvir dizer / One day I’m going to hear you say
E pudesse eu pagar de outra forma / And could I pay any other way Sei que um dia vais dizer / I know one day you’re going to say E pudesse eu pagar de outra forma / And could I pay any other way
A cidade está deserta / The city is deserted E alguém escreveu o teu nome em toda a parte /And someone wrote your name everywhere Nas casas, nos carros, nas pontes, nas ruas / On the houses, on the cars, on the bridges, on the roads Em todo o lado essa palavra / everywhere that word Repetida ao expoente da loucura / Repeated to the point of madness Ora amarga! ora doce / Now bitter, now sweet Pra nos lembrar que o amor é uma doença / To remind us that love is an illness Quando nele julgamos ver a nossa cura / When we see on it our cure
Parsing this paragraph which has two gerunds in it. Gerunds are rare beasts in european portuguese so I thought I’d try and unpick the grammar a bit for my own benefit.
“A long time ago” began Andreia, causing Marta to sigh with frustration, as she realised that the the revelation would be delayed, “wars between peoples were fought body-to-body, steel against steel, eye to eye. Technology kept evolving and automatic weapons arose, like rifles and wars began to be fought at a distance. “
Fazendo com que:
There are a lot of compound verbs in portuguese, where a standard verb (usually a common one like dar or fazer), gets used with a preposition and takes on a different meaning.. Fazer com que means to provoke or cause something (check this ciberdúvidas article for more background). In this case, it’s in the gerund form, meaning it’s just scene-setting: The dialogue is being described and the author is just letting you know what effect it’s having on the listeners
Foi evoluindo
Using Ir + gerund like this is a way of describing something that keeps/kept happening, continuouly over time. For some reason the main example of this I can think of is a clip of a brazilian dancer in a tik-tok video compilation…. OK, OK, it’s a guilty pleasure. Leve me alone! At about the 4:35 mark, she tells you “abre e cruza e vai acelerando” (Open and close and keep speeding it up)
I have been listening to other Xutos and Pontapés songs after getting over my mental block with A Minha Casinha the other day, I like this one: Dia de S Receber. I’m not a catholic so the title is a little bit alien to me, but saints’ days seem to be more of a thing in Portugal than they are in britain, at least if my Twitter feed is anything to go by. the S in the title is short for Sao (“Saint”) so São Receber means “Saint Receive” and that means o Dia de Sao Receber is payday, right? I’m not wrong about that am I? I hope not or this translation is going to be a right old mess….
This is the best kind of video, by the way: It has the lyrics appearing as part of the video, not just as inaccurate subtitles, which is really helpful for us learners. If you want to find out more about them you shouldn’t find it hard: there’s loads of their stuff on Youtube, on Spotify and all the usual places. I’m sort of intrigued by a book I came across on bertrand’s website too: there’s a comic book about them with a free CD. It’s part of a series including eight well-known portuguese bands. I wouldn’t go out of my way to get it but I might bung it in the basket next time I’m shopping for books, I shouldn’t be doing any such thing of course, because I’m on a book-buying ban, but it’s nearly my birthday so I might just treat myself.
Dia de S receber
Aaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiii a minha vida / Oh my life! Aaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiii a minha vida / Oh my life! Embora falar da arte / Let’s talk about art Da arte de sobreviver / About the art of survival Daquela que se descobre / Of what we find out Quando não há que comer / When there’s nothing to eat Há os que roubam ao banco / There are those who rob banks Os que não pagam por prazer / Those who don’t pay for pleasure Os que pedem emprestado / Those who borrow money E os que fazem render / And those who earn money Este dia a dia é duro / This day-to-day is hard É duro de se levar / It’s hard to get up É de casa pró trabalho / It’s from house to work E do trabalho pró lar / And from work to home Leva assim uma vida / A life could get taken up that way Na boínha* sem pensar / Fair enough if you don’t think about it Mas há-de chegar o dia / But the day has to come Em que tens de me pagar / When you have to pay me Ai é o dia / Oh** it’s the day De S. Receber / The day of São Receber Dia de S. Receber / Day of São Receber Já não chega o que nos / It’s not enough what Tiram à hora de pagar / They take from us on payday É difícil comer solas / It’s difficult to eat Estufadas ao jantar / stewed shoe soles for dinner De histórias mal contadas / By badly-told stories Anda meio mundo a viver / Half the world is living Enquanto o outro meio / While the other half Fica à espera de receber / Are waiting to get paid Ai é o dia / Oh it’s the day De S. Receber / The day of São Receber Dia de S. Receber / Day of São Receber Aaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiii a minha vida / Oh my life! Aaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiii a minha vida / Oh my life!*** É assim esta diálise / That’s how it is, the dialysis**** Entre o deve e o haver / between owing and having Sei que para o patrão custa / I know it’s hard for my boss Enfrentar este dever / to face this duty O dinheiro para mim não conta / Money doesn’t count for me Eu trabalho por prazer / I work for pleasure Mas o dia que eu mais gosto / But the day I like the best É o dia de S. Receber / Is the day of São Receber
* You won’t find boínha in the dictionary. It’s just a diminutive though: Na boa + inha = na boínha. Ciberdúvidas says it shouldn’t have an accent but this is how I found it on the lyrics page so I’m leaving it in.
**Ai is an exclamation like “Oh!”, not to be confuised with “Aí” which means “There”. If you look at the video, it’s the same word he’s shouting at the beginning and in the middle as “AAAAAAAAIIIIII”
*** In the video, when he gets to the middle of the song at the second round of “AAAAAAAIIIIIII” etc, he adds a couple of extras in: first, a nursery rhyme called “Atirei o pau ao gato” (“I threw the stick at the cat”) which has been criticised for cruelty to animals (I wrote a blog post about this ages ago but it’s pretty much what you’d expect from people who have nothing better to do than to closely analyse nursery rhymes). Secondly, there’s a bit of swearing: “A puta da minha vida” – “My bitch of a life”, which seems to be quite a common expression. For a start, it’s used in the title of this very good collection of essays by Miguel Esteves Cardoso, which I read a few years ago when I was at B1 level and even then found very easy to read and very funny.
**** Weird word choice, this. According to Priberam it really does only have that medical meaning. I wondered if it was a misprint – maybe some other word meaning “dichotomy” or “dualism” or something but it’s right there in the video, so I asked Mrs L about it and she says yeah, it does just seem to be that idea some idea that there’s a medical procedure required to separate out the money owed and the money you have.
Here’s a corrected text from a couple of days ago with some additional notes. The theme is this weird new Mad-Libs policy about refugees that the British government came up with just before Easter and then were shocked… shocked! – when every vicar in the land used their easter sermons to say it wasn’t what Jesus would have done.
Pensei em escrever sobre a nova política do partido conservador face à imigração de refugiados mas é tão ridículo que, contado, ninguém acredita. A questão da imigração e dos refugiados (não são iguais mas são semelhantes até certo ponto) é complicado e cada país tem de pensar bem antes de fazer uma política que passa a prova de justiça e de compaixão, mas o nosso governo não se importa.
Amazingly this text didn’t need any corrections (it’s not often that happens!) but Dani told me more about the phrase “Contado Ninguém Acredita”. I only know it from the Deolinda song
… But it’s also the Portuguese translation of the name of the American movie “Stranger than Fiction”.
It’s usually said as part of a larger expression “Isto só visto porque contado ninguém acredita” which basically means “You have to see it to believe it. There used to be a TV series in the nineties called Isto Só Vídeo which was a sort of Portuguese equivalent of those cheap shows where people send in their home videos of terrible disasters – falling off bikes or getting whacked in the face by a swing or whatever – and you wonder how long they had to spend on A&E to bring the nation 30 seconds of amusement. I’m thinking of Jeremy Beadle because my cultural references are very out of date but I’m pretty sure they are still a thing now and of course YouTube is full of them. Anyway here’s what it looks like.
How’s that? I’ve gone from the refugee crisis to Jeremy Beadle in 5 paragraphs. Not bad eh?
Launching an occasional series tentatively entitled Ambassador Update. This week: there is a new Portuguese ambassador in London, and the British ambassador in Lisbon fell of his bike and tweeted (in Portuguese, natch) about how well he was treated by everyone involved. Thanks to Dani Morgenstern for the help. I wrote this a while ago and delayed till I had the corrections for it, so maybe by the time you read this the world will have moved on but I’m betting you are not the sort of person who needs their ambassador news to be bang up to the minute so I hope you’ll bear with me.
Aqui em Londres, há um novo embaixador português. Sua excelência Manuel Lobo Antunes aposentou-se e voltou para Portugal. No seu lugar, Nuno Brito apresentou as suas credenciais a Sua majestade na quinta feira da semana passada.
Entretanto no parque de Monsanto, nos arredores de Lisboa, no sábado da mesma semana, o seu homólogo, Chris Sainty, o embaixador do Reino Unido, caiu da sua bicicleta e partiu um ombro. Escreveu um tweet no qual elogiou a gentileza dos transeuntes que vieram em* sua ajuda, e o profissionalismo dos médicos e enfermeiros que cuidaram dele no Hospital São Francisco Xavier.
Hoje caí da bicicleta no Parque de Monsanto. Muitas pessoas gentis pararam para me ajudar. Uma delas telefonou para os serviços de emergência e outra ficou comigo à beira da estrada até a ambulância chegar. Fui levado para o Hospital São Francisco Xavier. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/rHZuTFZGJI
Luso 