Short text about Madeira. Thanks to Talures for the corrections.
Perdi o meu passaporte. Tem de estar em casa mas não o encontrei. Acho que o escondi subconscientemente, porque vamos de férias à Madeira daqui e a duas semanas, mas há uns dias ouvi um homem a descrever a aterragem, no aeroporto da ilha, do avião em que viajou… Valha-me Deus.
Actually I don’t even know why I said I heard someone say this. I read it in a book: Past Caring by Robert Goddard, which is… Perhaps not his best work but still pretty good. He knows how to spin a yarn. The action begins and ends in Madeira, which is why I fancied rereading it, but most of the meat of it is in Britain and the accents of the few portuguese characters who appear in the audio version have accents midway between Speedy González and Mario the Plumber.
(Regra geral, sempre reescrevo os meus textos quando corrigidos e agradeço os professores logo depois, mas estou tão fora da minha rotina que perdi a noção de quantos textos estão por corrigir. Muitos, acho eu. E há tantos que quase me sinto assustado pelo tamanho da tarefa…)
I’ve finished now though. I’m all caught up. Let’s hope I keep it that way.
Thanks to Dani for the corrections on this short post about Barretes de Vilão
Barrete de Super-Vilão
Acabo de falar com a minha cunhada que voltou ontem da Madeira onde esteve durante alguns dias enquanto renovava o passaporte. Durante a sua estadia, disse ela, comprou um “barrete de vilão”. Já tinha ouvido falar de um chapéu madeirense chamado carapuça, mas isto era uma nova informação*. Pesquisei o nome e encontrei algumas fotos de uma espécie de gorro cinzento de lã grossa com dois apêndices que cobrem as orelhas (por isso são também conhecidos por ‘barretes de orelhas’) e uma borla no topo. A minha esposa riu-se “Boa sorte em traduzir ‘vilão’!” Mas não é assim tão difícil. A palavra quer dizer um pobre do campo. É cognata com uma antiga palavra inglesa – “villein” que também se refere a um camponês. Ao longo dos séculos, villein passou a ser ‘villain’ e adquiriu um significado mais ignóbil, como um criminoso** e daí falamos de super-villains. Tanto quanto sei, o Thanos não possui um barrete de vilão com jóias do infinito, tricotadas na borda.
*I wrote “uma nova peça de informação” but this is redundant,
**Not “criminal”. I wrote that but that’s basically an adjective… OK, it can be a noun but it doesn’t mean what criminal means in English.
This video was published on Twitter on Thursday (O Dia Mundial Da Língua Portuguesa). The first speaker is Francisco Louçã, an MP (“Deputado”) from the Bloco Esquerda and he’s introducing a PSD colleague named Carlos Rodrigues, saying he will now address the chamber in his “Madeiran Dialect”. Rodrigues then replies in a way everyone thinks is hilarious…
I can’t understand what he’s saying so I cheated and looked at the parliamentary transcript which is here, and you can read the surrounding context about the dialect (it’s not a dialect really, it’s an accent – mainlanders can be a bit snobbish about it though). Anyway, after reading the transcript… I was none the wiser!
Louçã: – Sr. Presidente, para surpresa da minha bancada, acaba de ser-nos comunicado que um Sr. Deputado passará a dirigir-se ao Plenário no “dialecto” madeirense. (…)
Rodrigues: – Quanto a dialecto, só tenho uma coisa a dizer-lhe, Sr. Deputado Francisco Louçã – e agora, mesmo em jeito de brincadeira: “o grado azoigou e foi atupido na manta das tanarifas”!
Grado exists in Priberam but none of the meanings seem to fit. Azoigar is in there too (although the spelling is “azougar”, because it’s one of those words that can be written with an ou or an oi) and now we’re starting to see the pattern because the definition is
[Portugal: Madeira] Morrer (falando-se de animais).
Ah, if course – he’s replying using a madeiran expression, full of madeiran words. So, turning to a specialist madeiran page… We get the following
The dog (grado) died (azoigou) and was buried (atupido) on the pumpkin (tanarifa) terrace (manta).
Tanarifa is the sketchiest word there. The meaning is given as “boganga”, which, if you follow it, actually refers to a kind of squash/pumpkin. I’ve also seen people translating it as “alface” (lettuce) but most people seem to translate it as banana. So… I dunno… Conjure up whatever mental image you like on that one! I’ve translated manta (which normally means “shawl” or “blanket”) as terrace because in madeiran agriculture, a manta is a terrace on the side of a mountain where you can grow crops.
So… That’s all very well but what does it actually mean? Not sure. I thought maybe it was like “Os cães ladram e a caravana passa”. In other words, your yapping doesn’t really count for much. My wife, who is madeiran but hasn’t lived there for ages, didn’t recognise it either but thought it was more likely that the speaker is comparing his opponent’s argument to a dog in a race which he’s very proud of and thinks will win the race but it won’t because it’s dead and buried in the vegetable patch.
Luso 