There’d nothing new under the sun.
I was reading this graphic novel, Vampiros, about a group of soldiers in Guiné during the war, and the saying seemed not to make sense. Amparo looks like it ought to be an adjective, but then why doesn’t it agree with Farinha?
I looked it up and amparo doesn’t have an adjective definition, so I tried the whole phrase and it finally hit me, I’d seen this before: it was used in A Crónica Dos Bons Malandros and I’ve written about it, so I should have known it.
It’s an old advertising slogan, and the idea is if you’ve got good, pure ingredients then you’ll get a reliably good products. In other words, don’t worry, we’re well prepared and everything will go smoothly.
Sigh. I really wish I remembered more of what I’ve written in here. My memory has always been pretty terrible and it’s not getting any better with age.
I can’t really think of any other idiomatic expressions in portuguese that come from adverts. I’m pretty sure I can think of a few in English that we used to use during the TV Age, but they didn’t tend to last very long, so I’m not sure if this one is current. Mario Zambujalvs novel, is set in the 80s, and the comic I’m reading now is older but it’s set in the early seventies.
Luso 