I finished making my notebook about politics in portugal. It’s super-basic, just covering what the main parties there are, who’s in them, who the cabinet is, and a few bits and pieces like that, mostly to help me to understand the news broadcasts I’m listening to and hopefully not feel quite as lost. I exported it to a PDF which I’ll upload here in case anyone else is interested.
Obviously, bear in mind that it’s made in MS Onenote which doesn’t have portuguese spellcheck so it might have some spelling mistakes. The facts might not be spot on either but I don’t think I’m far out. See what you think.
Delighted by portuguese people mocking news organisations who use Google Translate for their headlines and end up translating names literally as if they were words. This is about Carlos Moedas becoming Mayor of Lisboa, which plays into people’s criticisms of him as being too business-friendly.
My only complaint about the replies is that someone has translated Pedro Passos Coelho as “Peter Steps Rabbit”. I prefer to think of him as Peter Bunny-Hops.
I keep seeing this word on Twitter. Priberam says:
Um Chalupa a Fazer Chalupices, Ontem
cha·lu·pa (francês chaloupe)
nome feminino
1. [Náutica] Embarcação de um só mastro para cabotagem.
2. [Náutica] Barco de vela e remos.
3. [Jogos] Conjunto das cartas de maior valor no jogo do voltarete.
4. [Informal] [Vestuário] Bota grosseira. (Mais usado no plural.)
adjectivo de dois géneros e nome de dois géneros
5. [Portugal, Informal, Depreciativo] Que ou quem perdeu a razão ou tem distúrbios mentais (ex.: o velho já estava chalupa; estes chalupas só dizem disparates). = ADOIDADO, AMALUCADO, LOUCO, MALUCO
"chalupa", in Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa [em linha], 2008-2021 [consultado em 29-09-2021]
I think the fifth definition is the key one: basically, it’s a nutcase, a crank, a wingnut. It’s been used a lot in relation to people who think the vaccine is going to turn them into a gay frog, or whatever. I don’t really understand how it came to mean that though, given that the standard meanings all seem completely unrelated. Hi ho. It’s definitely worth putting in the word-hoard though, if you are planning to be on social media.
I’m enjoying working through the C1 exercise book. It’s really hard! Here are a few idiomatic expressions I hadn’t come across before.
Atirar o barro à parede (“throw the clay at the wall”) = Try something new to see what reaction it gets
Dar um tiro no pé =Shoot yourself in the foot
Ir num pé e vir/voltar no outro =go and come back straight away
Andar aos caídos (“go to the fallen ones”) = live at someone else’s expense
Andar sem eira nem beira (“go without a place for drying grains(!) or a fringe”) =be very poor
Ir para a maneta (“go to the devil”) =be destroyed, die. (Devil is only a secondary translation of maneta. The main definition in Priberam is a person who has lost a hand or an arm, but I think “go to the devil” makes more sense than “go to the amputee” as a translation for an expression meaning die)
Gato escaldado se água fria tem medo (a scalded cat is afraid of cold water) =once bitten, twice shy
De noite todos os gatos são pardos (All cats are blackish in the dark) =it’s hard to tell things apart in the dark. (pardo doesn’t really have a clear definition – when applied to cats it just means they have some ill-defined colour, usually dark, maybe grey, brown or black)
Quem não tem cão caça com gato (“Who doesn’t have a dog hunts with a cat”) =people improvise when they can’t do things the way they would prefer
Comprar gato por lebre (“Buy cat instead of hate”) =get deceived
Gato escondido com rabo de fora (“hidden cat with its tail showing”) =said when someone is trying to hide but failing
The gato comeu-te a língua =the cat got your tongue
Engolir sapos (“swallow frogs”) =be forced to accept something that goes against your principles
If there’s one thing Portugal is not, it’s Texas. Portugal is Portugal, Texas is Texas. How many times must I repeat this, people?
While Texas prides itself on everything being bigger there, european portuguese uses a lot of diminutive endings “inho” and “inha”, at least in conversational use. This doesn’t usually mean the thing they’re talking about is actually small (although it might be), it’s just a way of speaking, and it makes the sentence sound more natural and polished. The opposite phenomenon, augmentative endings, are rarer and the way they are formed is more variable than the diminutive, so they need a little more work to remember. So… let’s Texanise our Portuguese for a bit and look at this list “(from “A Actualidade em Português”)
Where the word is highlighted in red, the augmented form has changed gender from feminine to masculine, and blue highlighting indicates the opposite. Predictably, the former is more common than the latter.
Standard
Translation
Augmented
Translation
Casa
House
Casarão
Big house
Rocha
Rock
Rochedo
Big rock
Barulho
Noise
Barulhão
Big noise*
Voz
Voice
Vozeirão
(Someone who has a) loud voice
Porta
Door
Portão
Big door, main door of a building
Sala
Room
Salão
Big room especially in a commercial space – eg, dance hall or showroom
Faca
Knife
Facalhão/Facão**
Big knife, machete
Camisola
Jumper
Camisolão
Big jumper
Homem
Man
Homenzarrão
Large man
Mulher
Woman
Mulherona
Large woman
Boca
Mouth
Boqueirão
Large mouth (has several geographical uses – eg a river mouth, hole in the ground, gap between mountains)
Prato
Plate
Pratalhão
Big plate, dish
Chuva
Rain
Chuvada
Downpour
Cadeira
Chair
Cadeirão
Big chair
Copo
Drinking glass
Copão
Big drinking glass
Peito
Chest
Peitaça/Peitaço***
Big/strong chest
Sábio
Wise person
Sabichão****
Great, wise one
Pata
Paw, hoof, animal foot
Patorra
Big paw, big foot
Cão
Dog
Cãozarrão
Big dog
Rapaz
Boy
Rapagão/Rapazão
Chonky Boi, absolute unit
*=This one is in the book but not in Priberam so I guess not standard.
**=Faca has two forms, one of which stays feminine and the other switches to masculine. The first is the one given in the book, but the second is definitely used and is given in priberam
***=Peito has two forms, one feminine and one masculine. Despite what you might think, that’s not because one is used for a woman’s chest and one for a man’s; they’re synonyms. Peitaça is more common and can be used for a man’s swole pecs without implying he has a nice rack, and that makes it interesting because it’s the only example where the supersizing results in a word going from masculine to feminine. Neither of them seems particularly common though, and in fact if you google it you’ll mostly find brazilian websites with ornate breastplates, which isn’t a meaning given in Priberam so I guess it must be specific to the Brazilian variant
Ainda indeciso em quem votar? Não te preocupes! 32 analistas políticos desenvolveram um gráfico que te vai deixar sem dúvidas!! ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/oEvbWsCIbq
Homework time: expressions beginning with ficar. Ficar is a weird and contradictory verb since it can mean something very permanent (eg “a casa fica em Londres” means the house is staying there and not moving) but it can also indicate something changing or becoming (so for example “fico com vontade de ler este livro” means you’re getting a sudden desire to read it) so context is everything. Most of these are sudden onsets but not all.
Ficar à sombra da bananeira =to do nothing and have no worries
Ficar a ver navios =to do without something you want. This one isn’t very intuitive so I looked it up. The answer is on this page (it’s part 2 of the question)
Ficar para tia =to remain single. I asked my wife about this one because it seemed like the sort of thing that could cause embarrassment of misused. It’s definitely not a temporary state. It’s saying the person won’t be a mother and will “remain an aunt”. In other words, it’s got pejorative, dismissive, vaguely sexist overtones.
Ficar a dizer “Ó tio! Ó tio!” =to get confused and need help
Ficar nas nuvens =to be very, very happy
Ficar espantado =to be surprised
Ficar a olhar com olhos de carneiro mal morto =to have a look of disappointment
Ficar a olhar como um boi para um palácio =to fail to understand the situation
It’s really, really hard to make jokes in another language. Here’s an attempt that I think would have been OK in English but I tweeted it out in Portuguese, knowing I was on thin ice.
Todos os anos a mesma coisa acontece: logo que acaba o Dia 21 De Setembro, as lojas ficam cheias de cartas do Dia de Acordar Aquele Gajo de Green Day https://t.co/0YBbiQSVxY
Every year it’s the same thing: as soon as the 21st of September is over the shops fill up with Day-to-Wake-that-guy-from-Green-Day cards.
Allow me to overexplain.
Green Earth, Green Wind and Green Fire
Obviously to understand it, you need to understand the cultural reference points: firstly that shops always start advertising Christmas merch as soon as Halloween is over (a pretty common trope in the UK) and secondly that there are running gags on twitter based around dates mentioned in songs: the twenty first night of September (because of Earth Wind and Fire’s song “September”) and the end of September (because of Green Day’s song “Wake Me Up When September Ends”). But I think even someone who knows all those things will find the magic broken if the grammar is off or the word order less than perfect. “Todos os anos a mesma coisa acontece” seems like a wordy, clunky way of saying “Every year it’s the same thing” and I’m sure it’ll come across as a bit off. And “ficam cheia de…” Does that sound like something a real Portuguese person would say? “as (prateleiras das) lojas enchem-se”? I dunno.
Well, I put it in the WritestreakPT forum and got a verdict from dani_morgenstern
Firstly, no the word structure is off. A better rendering would be
Todos os anos é a mesma coisa: assim que acaba o Dia 21 De Setembro às lojas ficam cheias de cartões do dia de Acordar Aquele Gajo dos Green Day
I chose to capitalise the whole of “Dia 21 De Setembro” as if it were a special day but setembro, like all months, is supposed to be in lower case.
As for cards, no, cards aren’t really a thing. I should have known that. I was so fixated on the timing that I didn’t stop to think about the more fundamental problem. D’oh!
The rest…. Well, you either know the songs or you don’t but I suspect a lot of people were pretty non-plussed. I was reminded that we should just let Billy Joe Armstrong rest because that Green Day song is about the death of his father but I never let respect for the dead stand in the way of a joke even if that joke is a grammatical and cultural train wreck.
Anyway, all in all, not a successful joke but a good learning experience, and that’s the whole idea, after all!
By the way, the tweet it’s quoting is in Brazilian Portuguese. “O carinha” looks weird but they use “cara” (“face”) to mean “guy” so carinha is just “the little guy”
This tweet is now the main research source of my political project thus week
Portugueses a explicar a estrangeiros que o Partido Social Democrata é de direita ali entre o liberal e o conservador e o Partido Socialista é Social-Liberal pic.twitter.com/UwVr6nqd0m
There’s a politician in Portugal called André Ventura who’s the leader of a “party” called CHEGA. The fact that CHEGA sounds a lot like MAGA is probably not a coincidence since he’s a populist: someone who builds a following by telling one section of society that they are the real, the deserving people, that everyone poorer than them is a dirty sponger, everyone richer than them is corrupt and anyone who has read a book is an elitist. Oh and he talks a lot of shit on Twitter too, like old whatsisname.
I’ve come across a few twitter accounts sending him up, like this one above. It appeals to me because I like puns. André Ventura = Aldrabé Ventrulha.
I think the pun in the first name is based on Aldrabão which is a sort of crooked person or con artist
1. [Informal] Que ou quem diz ou faz coisas com intuito de enganar. = BURLÃO, IMPOSTOR, INTRUJÃO, TRAPACEIRO
2. [Informal] Que ou quem fala de modo confuso.
3. [Informal] Que ou quem não é limpo ou perfeito no que faz.
"Aldrabão", in Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa [em linha], 2008-2021, https://dicionario.priberam.org/Aldrab%C3%A3o [consultado em 22-09-2021].
And in the second, it seems to be Entulha – 3rd person singular of Entulhar, meaning basically throw it in the junk pile or dispose of it in some way. It seems mostly to be used for either olive pits or builder’s rubble. Why do those two things go together? I’ve no idea.
en·tu·lhar - Conjugar (en- + tulha + -ar) verbo transitivo 1. Meter ou dispor em tulha.
2. Encher de entulho.
"entulha", in Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa [em linha], 2008-2021, https://dicionario.priberam.org/entulha [consultado em 22-09-2021].
Anyway, I think the general idea seems to be that he’s a crook who needs to be on the scrapheap.
I’m not sure how seriously to take Ventura. He somehow got eleven percent in January’s presidential elections and came third, so he can’t be written off entirely. But that still leaves forty percent of a country to convince and I think they’d take some convincing. Pictures I’ve seen from the campaign trail in the local council elections show some pretty underwhelming gatherings, not Trump style rallies. He doesn’t seem well-enough organised to be a serious threat. More of an Iberian Tommy Robinson than a new Salazar – but maybe that’s just my perception from my distance. He does seem to be a racist douchebag, and he’s been fined for saying some things that were out of line. I’ve also heard that he did time, maybe for fraud, but I can’t find a source for that so maybe it’s just a rumour.
There have even been calls to ban CHEGA itself as a racist organisation. As a general rule of thumb, I’m not in favour of banning organisations unless they are actively advocating or engaging in violence, not just talking shit. It only makes them look like martyrs and the authorities look like repressive, censorious dictators. Why give them that martyr status? Even the “oh isn’t he awful” hand-wringing stance with which the BBC treated Nigel Farage – another clueless, sloppy populist with racist leanings – fanned the flame of his appeal to the point at which he was able to knock us out of the EU. So it’s best not to build these idiots up too much, even by showing disapproval. Better to give them the same arms-length treatment as other fringe parties like the Greens and Plaid Cymru and let them make their own case under their own steam until they burn themselves out. It’s too late for us with Farage now. I hope Portugal don’t make the same mistake with Ventura.
Anyway, all of the above is just my uninformed wittering. I’ll be finding out more over the next week or two, but in the meantime if anyone wants to correct any misconceptions in any of it, drop me a note in the comments 👇
Luso 