Tag: meme
Hello World!
Cats vs Dogs
Spotted on twitter and laughed my head off.
I think it’s Brazilian, by the way. Not that different though. I think in european portuguese they would have dropped the “eu” in the first cat dialogue and used cão in place of cachorro. Obviously the punctuation is all over the place but that’s memes for you!
Emos, Emas and Emus: know the difference
I put this meme on twitter earlier, inspired by a random thought from a previous post.
Tumbleweeds.
It’s always a bit tricky when a joke in Portuguese dies on its arse. Is it because my grammar is incomprehensible, or is it just not funny. Reposted on Instagram and it got a few likes. OK, I’ll take that.
OVNI
Spotted on Twitter
What the troubled brain is saying is “And what if we’re living in a simulation or matrix and the OVNIs are the mouse pointers”
OVNI is “Objeto Voador Não Identificado” – A UFO in other words. I’ve heard Disco Voador (flying disc, flying saucer) too, but that was easier to decipher. This one needed a bit more legwork.
Pret a Mossar
I came across this picture on the tweeters and was trying to de cypher it. Mossar is a real word but it’s meaning is pretty obscure. If I’m reading Priberam right, it means to clean the spikes of a mace with a cloth.
Um… OK…
After staring at it for a while I realised the message is supposed to say “Fui Almoçar” (I’ve gone to have lunch). I asked online whether there was more to it than that does mossar have some double meaning perhaps? No, it’s just laughing at an “analfabeto” (illiterate person). It’s a really crusty old meme, apparently so they were quite amused that I’d dredged it up.
Online Language Apps
A Wild Portugeese Chase
In t-shirt news, I saw this t-shirt, referencing the current portuguese fuel crisis, on the Cão Azul website…
…and although I had no desire to own the thing, I did get a bit obsessed by what the joke was. I asked around and found someone who explained it was to do with the way the words are pronounced in regional accents/dialects in the north, where the sound of words is more influenced by Galician – so a V might become a B and the ão sound would be more like an “on” or “om” (so “televisão” becomes “telebisom”). She also mentioned an explanation of the gasoil/gasoleo thing that included the word “gozar” which unfortunately I misunderstood as her saying that gazoil would be pronounced “gozar”
So I started trying to put the mispronounced syllables into a sentence
Camion… Bidon… Gasoil… Jarrican
Cá meu m… something… gozar… já something
but I couldn’t make sense of it so I asked again and she explained that, no, it’s just about how the northerners talk funny. I find this a deeply disappointing piece of news and keep looking at it again trying to find a hidden meaning in there like it was some sort of crossword clue, and I don’t think I can rest easy until I find one.
If you’re reading this and you have a better answer for why this is funny (feel free to invent one – I’ll be as gullible as you like) then please, please, tell me.
Luso 