I was sent this video by my Brazilian language partner and its a pretty good illustration of the language barrier between the two sides of the atlantic. Note that the Portuguese guy (Caesar Mourão, one of the comedians on the line-up of the comedy festival I mentioned yesterday) understands the tourists because the Portuguese are so used to listening to Brazilian “Novelas” but they have no idea what he’s on about.
Category: English
Chuckles Call to Chuckles Everywhere
I’ve found myself getting a bit more feminist lately. I have tended to be a bit dismissive of some claims of 21st-century feminism, to the point of wondering whether the word had outlived its usefulness, but have been energised lately by… well, it’s a long story. Suffice to say that having a daughter makes you want to punch more misogynists in the balls. I am all about the punching. I’m a regular Jean-Claude Van Dad.
Anyway, representation in comedy is not one of my main avenues of interest, but I was struck by this tweet earlier today, by Safaa Dib, who I know nothing about but seems to be a publisher and a candidate in a sort of left-green party called Partido Livre. She posted about the Festival de Humor, FamousFest 18. You can see why she was annoyed from the picture below. Literally not one single woman in the line-up. I know 6 of the names and 2 of those are not even comedians. Miquel Esteves Cardoso is a columnist and writer, and Filipe Melo is a producer and a graphic novelist. She doesn’t seem wildly impressed with some of the others either, judging by the comments.
If you click through to the thread, Guilherme Duarte, a comedian who uses the name Por Falar Noutra Coisa chips in and says a couple of women were invited but declined. Hm… well, fair enough up to a point… but then goes on to say (and this is less fair enough) that he didn’t want to have a quota system at the expense of quality (gasp… but wait, it gets worse…) that work was needed in the background to encourage women to try and be funny instead of making makeup tutorials. He salvages this mess of a tweet to some extent but not much. I was left with the impression that the scene is even more of a boy’s club than here.
Update 25/9/18 https://capitalmag.pt/2018/09/24/festival-menina-nao-bebe-whisky/
Apenas Tolos e Cavalos.
I came across a new phrase the other day “Chico Espertice”, which is the quality attributed to a Chico-Esperto. What’s that? Well, a Chico-Esperto is apparently an unscrupulous, opportunistic chancer who takes the piss at any opportunity. There’s an article about Chico-Espertice here in Visão, in the context of last year’s disastrous wildfires. A few people have been caught jumping the queue, submitting bogus forms and claiming compensation for outbuildings and holiday homes ahead of those who lost their main residence.
It seems like there’s a tendency to tut and turn a blind eye to this sort of sharp practice, seeing it as an unavoidable, and even endearing trait (if this seems weird, just remember some of our best-known sitcoms, notably “Only Fools and Horses” revolve around the british equivalent of the Chico-Esperto), but in this particular instance, it’s a harmful form of fraud and – she hints in the last paragraph – may involve the people who were meant to be acting as stewards for the funds, in which case it arguably goes beyond mere piss-taking and into actual corruption.
Of Mais And Menos
I usually write “more […] than” as “mais […] do que” but I occasionally see it written as “mais de” or “mais que” so to straighten it out in my head here is a distillation of the relevant Ciberdúvidas pages. The same seems to apply for other comparatives – melhor, menor, pior etc.
Mais do que and Mais que are correct and interchangeable in the following scenarios
- When there is an adjective between the “mais” and the rest of the expression
- Este livro é mais grande do que “O Senhor Dos Anéis”
- Este livro é mais grande que “O Senhor Dos Anéis”
- When there is nothing between the parts and it goes straight on to a pronoun
- Eu escrevo mais do que ele
- Eu escrevo mais que ele
- When the expression is followed by a relative oration
- Ela escreve mais do que aquilo que julga
- Ela escreve mais que aquilo que julga
That third one is a bit hard to grasp. “I write more than (whatever amount) you think”, so it’s pointing back to a noun, where the noun is some amount…? This makes it different from the next example where it’s comparing two verbs: “I read more than I write”
Mais do que is the preferred option when
- The expression is immediately followed by a verb
- Eu leio mais do que escrevo
Mais que is the preferred option when
- The expression is immediately followed by another adjective – ie, when you are making comparisons between two adjectives
- Sou mais bonito que inteligente (“I am more good-looking than intelligent”)
Mais de is the preferred option when
- The expression is comparing to a straightforward number – which usually means it’s followed by an actual number rather than a reference to some other thing
- Mais de 17 milhões de pessoas votaram pelo Brexit
- Comprei mais de uma dezena de livros na livraria
- Naquele supermercado trabalham mais de 100 pessoas
Conclusion:
- Use “mais de” if you are saying it’s more than a specific number
- Use “mais que” when you are comparing two characteristics of the same person/thing (which I guess will be a rare occurrence!)
- Use “mais do que” as the go-to option when neither of the above applies, or when in doubt since it seems to be the most common.
References
And some extra wisdom about when to use “mais que” was extracted from an actual papery book called “Portuguese, An Essential Grammar” by Amélia P Hutchinson and Janet Lloyd
Lyrics Training
I heard about a site called Lyrics Training from a Brazilian guy I’ve been doing language exchanges with for a while now. It seems opretty useful. The idea is to improve your listening skills by filling in random missing words from a song that plays in a video window. You can select different levels of difficulty and if you can’t get it fast enough it pauses and rewinds to give you a little more time. There are ots of different languages, including both brazilian and portuguese portuguese, but the two are clearly marked with a flag in the corner of each video thumbnail.
A Pimenta
I asked about this on iTalki but didn’t get any useful answers. The hotel we stayed at earlier this summer had pepper grinders on the table, but instead of having normal black peppercorns in them, they had allspice (aka Jamaican pepper). I wondered if this was common in Portugal or if someone had just got confused in the hotel kitchen.
I still don’t know, but if anyone else does, I’d be interested to hear about it.
It’s All Too Much
More jottings from Ciberdúvidas, this time about different ways of saying too many/much. There does seem to be an overlap between the uses, so I’ll just spread them out and see what’s what.
Demais
Can be:
- An adverb meaning “a heck of a lot”. Ele fuma demais seems to be “he’s a heavy smoker” and not “he smokes too much”
- An intensifier where it does the same job as the adverb but it underscores other adverbs or adjectives – A jarra é frágil demais; vai partir-se
- A kind of indefinite nouny-pronouny thing along the lines of “the surplus” or “the others”: Daquelas senhoras, uma comeu peixe, as demais comeram carne
- A way of saying “além disso”: Esse trabalho é muito difícil; demais, é mal pago [also spelled “ademais” in this case]
De Mais
Ciberdúvidas says it’s an adverb but it’s behaving like an adjective, expressing that the amount is excessive. It’s equivalent to “a mais”. It’s always referring to quantity, not degree. Comprei livros de mais
Demasiado
Can be
- An adjective and fulfills the same function as de mais. Note that, like other adjectives, the ending changes. It’s more commonly used in Portugal than in Brazil. Goes before the word it’s qualifying. Passam demasiados carros.
- An adverb, where it fulfills the same function as demais. Comi demasiado.
Don’t Even Think About It, Se Não Way
More jottings from Ciberdúvidas, this time relating to the difference between “se não” and “senão”.
Senão (just one word) can be:
- A noun meaning “drawback” or “defect” – the example given in the article, “Não há bela sem senão” menas “there’s no beauty without a drawback” or if you’re feeling poetic, “every rose has it’s thorn”
- As a linking element meaning one of several things in english, which all have the common theme of expressing an alternative case:
-
- “or else” – Fala mais alto senão não te oiço means “Speak up, or else I won’t hear you”
- “but (on the contrary)” – Não dá quem tem, senão quem quer bem means “It isn’t those who have that give but to those who really want to”
- “if not” – O que é a vida senão uma luta? means “What is life if not a struggle? [NB – it only means “if not” in this kind of context though – where it’s essentially doing the same job as “except” – contrast with the meaning of “se não” below]
- “except” Ninguém falou senão o meu irmão means “Nobody spoke except my brother
-
- Paired with another “nao”, this alternative case can morph into “only” or “nothing but”. For example Ele não tinha senão uma atitude a tomar: proteger a mãe.” means “He has nothing but this one attitude: to protect his mother”
- Paired with “Quando” it means “suddenly”. Eu estava quase na escola senão quando um carro atropelou um aluno means “I was almost at school when suddenly a car knocked over a student
Se Não (two words) is a lot less awkward. It means what it looks like it means: “If not” in most contexts we would normally use them. For example the Primo Levi book called “If Not Now, When” in english is called “Se Não Agora, Quando?” in Portuguese.
Some more examples:
- Se não fosse um homem, gostaria de ser um sapo” – If I weren’t a man, I’d like to be a frog”
- “Tenho cem livros de PG Wodehouse se não mais.” I have a hundred books by PG Wodehouse, if not more
This second one is the sort of situation I would make a mistake in since it looks like one of the examples for senão, but it’s subtly different.
The article gives this helpful tip: Uma regra simples para se verificar esta situação: neste caso é possível introduzir a expressão “é que” entre o “se” e o “não”. So…
- Tenho sem livros de PG Wodehouse se é que não tinha mais.
According to the rule, that should break in cases where we would want to use senão:
- Fala mais alto se é que não [???] não te oiço
- Não dá quem tem, se é que não [dá] quem quer bem
- O que é a vida se é que não é uma luta?
Hm… I’m not sure. The first and second are definitely wrong, but the third means. “What is life if it is not a struggle”. Has that broken the sentence…? Not completely. It’s subtly different, but… Bit shady, that one.
“Se não” occasionally comes up in an even more separate way where you have a negative statement with a reflexive, passive or pronomial verb (cf this post)
- Quem se não sente de agravos, não é honrado.
Here the verb is “sentir-se” but the se has gone ahead of everything else. Seems like a tedious and annoying way of writing a sentence to me, but hi ho.
Menos At Work
I sometimes get confused between “pelo menos” and “ao menos” so here are some jottings about different expressions with preposition+menos. They can just occur randomly. For example “A simplificação traduzir-se-á, no entanto, por menos exigências administrativas” just means it’ll result in fewer administrative overheads, but this is about where they’re used together with more co-ordination. The bulk of it comes from Ciberdúvidas and from Gramática Aplicada Níveis B2, C1.
Pelo menos
Pelo menos means “at least” and can be used anywhere you’d use “at least” in english including seemingly idiomatic things like “At least tell me your name, even if you won’t tell me anything else”
Ao menos
Is essentially the same as pelo menios but with the important difference that you can’t use it for quantity – so if you’re saying “I need at least ten chickens” it’s “preciso de pelo menos dez frangos” and not “ao menos”.
A menos que
This means “unless” and since it introduces something that only might happen, it needs a subjunctive:
“Eu estarei lá a menos que chuva” (“I’ll be there unless it rains”)
Por menos …. que
There’s a set of phrases in Gramática Aplicada that correspond to english phrases like “No matter how much money you have, you can’t buy happines”. There aren’t any examples that use “menos” but on the same principle I assume you can do this sort of thing:
“Por menos roupas que eu use, estou sempre som suor” (“no matter how little I’m wearing, I’m always sweaty”)
Já & Ainda
Jottings from Ciberdvidas, with some side-notes pulled from other places:
General Meanings of Ainda
Most simply, it’s just “still” e.g. “Ainda estás a adormecer?”
It can mean “one day” as in the example “Tu ainda hás-de ser muito feliz” (“you’ll be happy one day”)
It can be a reinforcer – like mesmo – but applied to a specific time as in the example “Ainda ontem o vi” (“I saw him only yesterday”)
It can work like “além disso” as in the example “Fui jantar. Comi muito bem e ainda me diverti com a conversa de Miguel” (but cf the note to this text where I used the phrase “ainda por cima” which has more of a sense that the thing being added to the situation is making ot even worse, rather than even better!)
It can mean “at least “Ainda se ele marcasse um golo, o dinheiro era bem gasto, mas assim…”
Interesting that you can imagine english sentences that would meet all these cases and would all use “still”, because it’s one of those words that can be used in places where it doesn’t have a real meaning but subtly tweaks the existing meaning of the sentence.
General Meanings of Já
Under normal circs, it means “already”, but like the use of that word in jewish slang, it can also mean “right now”. “Vou-me já embora” means “I’m going right now”
Já in questions/answers
If a question contains the word “já” and you want toanswer affirmatively you’d normally use “já”. Otherwise,”Ainda nao”
“Já comeste?” / “Já sim”
“Já leste o artigo?” / “Ainda não”
Ainda in questions/answers
Likewise, if the question contains ainda then the answer would normally contain ainda in the positive and já in the negative
“Ainda estudas português?” / “Sim, ainda estudo”
“Ainda estuda japonês?”/ “já não”
With “que”
“Ainda que” is “Although” and it’s followed by a subjunctive
“Ainda que eu esteja de regime, às vezes como gelado”
Já que is “since ” and doesn’t
“Não tenho tempo para estudar já que comecei o meu novo projecto”
Other Locutions
Ainda bem = “It’s just as well”
Ainda assim = “Even so”
Ainda mais = “Even more”
Desde já = “As of this moment”
Luso 