Tag: Video

Posted in English, Portuguese

Toy Story – Com Diogo Cabeça-de-Batata

Posted on by Colin Lusk

No texto de ontem falei do vídeo do Diogo Bataguas/Batuta/Batman/QualquerCoisa*. Mas não mencionei a maior estrela do vídeo, o Toy. Para ser sincero, nunca antes tinha ouvido falar desse senhor, mas andei à procura de vídeos das músicas dele. Parece que é boa música de festa mas não senti me uma grande pulsão* em comprar os seus álbuns.

Mas percebo o génio de contratar um cantor famoso daquele estilo de música para gravar o tema duma rubrica dum programa televisivo.

*=in the original version of yesterday’s text, I got Diogo Bataguas’s name wrong and called him Diogo Batuta.

**=not really the right word. I’m reading a book that has Sigmund Freud as one of its characters and he uses this word – it means an urge, in the psychological sense. It would have been better to say something like “não me senti compelido a comprar…”

Toy, who sings the theme tune to "A Casa da Senhora do Grafeno" on Diogo Bataguas's Web show
Toy: Bataguas not included

Thanks to Dani for the grammar corrections. She’s also given me some factual corrections which I’ll pass along so as not to give the wrong idea:

The video is a web series, not a TV show. Diogo Bataguas is “um moço singelo” (a simple, innocent lad) who asks for contributions from his fans in order to be able to pay his team – namely, Sandro, who is always hungry

Toy doesn’t just sing party songs as I’ve described here, he also does emotional ballads and TV soap opera theme songs but he’s also known for being an interesting personality. He gave away tickets to his wedding to random fans and he… Invented a style of driving with his knees…? Speaking as a cyclist, this doesn’t exactly endear me to the bloke, to be honest, but apart from that he seems OK. One fellow learner told me (s)he had met him in a seafood restaurant in Azeitão and he had spoken warmly and at great length of his love for Canadian audiences. Telling this story later, (s)he found out that virtually everyone who has ever been to any restaurant in Azeitão has had a similar experience because he is “um senhor bastante gregário”.

He wasn’t hired to do the song, (it’s at about 7:55 in the video I linked to yesterday) Bataguas just mentioned he’d like to get Toy to sing it and fan pressure did the rest.

Some examples of his work:

Party music

Ballad

Knee driving

Posted in Portuguese

Diogo Bataguas

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Tentei ver um vídeo de Diogo Bataguas há anos mas não entendi patavina. Hoje de manhã experimentei mais uma vez, com o link sugerido pela Dani.

Consegui entender muito mas continuo a não achar engraçado porque ele fala tão rapidamente que os meus ouvidos mal conseguem decifrar as palavras antes de ele começar a a próxima frase e daí a diante, ando atrás da piada à espera de perceber o humor. Mas temos um ditado em inglês “O segredo da grande comédia é…. Hm… Como se diz ‘timing’*? Tempo? (Hm… Piadas tem mais graça quando o sol está a brilhar?) Sincronização? Acho que não. ‘temporização’? ‘cronometragem’? Pois… O meu problema é que, ainda que entenda as palavras, chego ao entendimento um meio segundo depois, e o humor fica estragado pelo atraso.

Tenho o mesmo problema com outros comediantes: Joana Marques (que aparece inesperadamente no vídeo), Salvador Martinha (estrela do primeiro programa português do Netflix, antes do Glória!), Bruno Nogueira e Mariana Cabral, entre outros. É frustrante.

Mas tenho ganas (ah ah, ainda estou a utilizar as frases de anteontem!) de rir com a comédia portuguesa, por isso continuo a experimentar vídeos de vez em quando. Um dia, vou conseguir!

*=There’s a very boring answer to this: they say “timing”. A couple of people pointed me to this Gato Fedorento sketch where a “javardola” (disgusting slob) seems elegant when he uses French words, but part way through he slips into using English words instead and doesn’t realise it. Timing is one of the words he uses.

Posted in English

Come+A’s you are

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Closely related to the post about vir and chegar: what’s the difference between “vir a saber” and “vir saber”? Well, I’m glad you asked!

Vir a saber, as you’ll know if you read “The Spy Who Chegged Me” is a way of saying that you came to know something, perhaps in a slightly roundabout way, by chance, but the light dawned and then you knew.

Vir Saber is more like “I came to find out”.

This is good because I had been wondering how to interpret a line in one of the poems (it’s a song, actually: Flagrante by Antonio Zambujo) that I learned a week or two back. the people in the next room either “finally got to know about us” or “came to find out about us”. Well, now I know so here we go with a translation of the whole thing

PortugueseEnglish
Bem te avisei, meu amor
Que não podia dar certo
Que era coisa de evitar		I gave you fair warning, my love
That this wasn’t going to turn out well
And it was something best avoided
Como eu, devias supor
Que, com gente ali tão perto
Alguém fosse reparar		Like me, you have to suppose
That with people so nearby
Someone was going to notice
Mas não
Fizeste beicinho
E como numa promessa
Ficaste nua para mim		But no
You made a pouty face
And as if in a promise
Got naked for me
Pedaço de mau caminho
Onde é que eu tinha a cabeça
Quando te disse que sim		Bit of a wrong turn
Where was my head at
When I said yes to you
Embora tenhas jurado
Discreta permanecer
Já que não estávamos sós		Although you had sworn
To remain discreet
Since we weren’t alone
Ouvindo na sala ao lado
Teus gemidos de prazer
Vieram saber de nós		Hearing in the room next door
Your moans of pleasure
They came to find out about us
Nem dei pelo que aconteceu
Mas mais veloz e mais esperta
Só te viram de raspão		I didn’t even know what had happened
But being faster and smarter
They only caught a brief glimpse of you
A vergonha passei-a eu
Diante da porta aberta
Estava de calças na mão		I went through the shame
In front of the open door
With my trousers in my hand

It’s great isn’t it! Lots of really good stuff in there. The one line that I really had trouble understanding was the first line of the last stanza “A vergonha passei-a eu” which seems like he’s saying “I passed her the shame” as if he were trying to blame it all on the girl, but that doesn’t make sense for all sorts of reasons. The “-a” on the end of passei is actually referring to “a vergonha”. So it’s like “The shame, I passed through it”. Normally in conversation you’d say “passei pela vergonha” but poetic license applies. Here’s the full thing. I’ve probably posted it on here before but I just love it so much it’s worth repeating.

Posted in English, Portuguese

Os Conselhos Que Te Deixo

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I’ve been trying to tune my ears in to this series of videos. The character is called Bruno Aleixo and he has appeared in a few different shows. It’s sort of surreal humor. I would really like to be able to follow it but even with my wife’s translation there are big chunks I can’t make out. It’s got a really strong regional accent – you can hear the would “ouvir” has an extra syllable and sounds like ouviree, for example, and a lot of the words are run together so it’s hard to disentangle them.

There are two parts. I’ll put what she says it means and what I think I actually hear. Before she clued me in to what it meant I could only make out about a third of it, now I’m at about 80% but can’t quite make my ears hear the rest.

FIRST BIT If you have a brother, show him these tips (se tivesse algum irmão, mostra-lhe estes conselhos) / if you have a sister, don’t show her because they aren’t for girls (se something irmã não mostre something coisas something ouvir) / if your grandmother hears it she’ll hit me (se tua avó apanhe isto something-me)

SECOND BIT If you catch your uncle Horatio drunk, take the chance to steal his money (se apanhasse (? Tense?) o teu tio Horácio bêbedo aproveita para (re)tirar dinheiro) But careful, if he catches you he’ll hit you hard (Mas cautela, se ele te apanhe (? Tense) dá something… Oh wait, its cabeçadas isn’t it! com força) and the money is from France so you’ll have to exchange it at the bank (e a dinheiro é da França, tens something trocar ao banco – actually sounds like à banco but that can’t be right)

Oof!

Posted in English

Proparoxítono

Posted on by Colin Lusk

This 👇

Is exactly the sort of thing I love. The writer is Ricardo Araújo Pereira, comedian, columnist and all round good guy (well, as far as I know) Anyway, in the passage above, he’s describing a song by Chico Buarque and saying that if a foreigner were to hear it, although they would rightly spot that it sounds lovely, they probably wouldn’t understand it and certainly wouldn’t notice that the last word of every line is “proparoxítona”* and nor would they understand that the word “proparoxítono” itself is proparoxítona**. And he’s right: it is a lovely song and when I read this in bed last night I had no clue what Proparoxítono meant but I knew I had to find out as soon as I woke up.

First of all, let’s hear the song

Oh my god, that is the good stuff alright. I know it’s Brazilian Portuguese, not Portuguese Portuguese but Jesus Christ it’s good. Inject it directly into my veins! There is something slightly strange about the rhythm of the verse though isn’t there? And I never would have spotted what it was.

Before I get I to it, let’s lay a bit of groundwork by thinking about where the stress falls in a Portuguese word.

The vast majority of words in Portuguese put the stress on either the final syllable (if the last letter is r, l, z, u or i ) or the penultimate one (basically, all other letters). Any exceptions to the rule need an accent to be added as a hint to the reader. So for example there are a lot of words that end in – ável or – ível that are pronounced with the stress on the a and the i respectively. If the accent wasn’t there you’d have to say incrivEL and confortavEL. But it’s pretty easy and you get used to it, and before you know it, you’re just used to the rhythm of Portuguese speech without even being conscious of it.

Proparoxítono means that the stress falls on the antepenultimate (last-but-two) syllable. These always have to have an accent because they break the normal rules, like bêbado (BÊ-ba-do) and mágico (MÁ-gi-co) and sábado (SÁ-ba-do) and última and único and tímido and… Well, and every other word he finishes a line with in the song, which is why you get this effect that’s really unusual in a Portuguese song, where the last two syllables of every line are unstressed.

Oh my god, that’s so satisfying. I love it! It’s the most value I’ve ever got out of a single paragraph, I think: a new word, a new song and a new way of noticing the rhythm of Portuguese music.

Anyway, if you want to know more, this video has some good analysis. It’s in Brazilian Portuguese too, so be warned if you’re trying to avoid the dialect. It’s worth making an exception for though.

*it has an a in the end here, unlike in the title, because its an adjective and palavra is feminine

**Now I know what you’re thinking: “Isn’t that the stuff Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying think should be used to cure Covid?” Close, but no, it’s not that either.

Posted in English, Portuguese

The New New Normal

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Since “The New Normal” has been a theme today, here’s Sergio Godinho with a song of that name, written in August last year and containing obvious references to the long nightmare from which we hope we will soon awake (although I’m writing this the day after “Freedom Day” and I am regning in my optimism…)

Dadas as circunstâncias Given the circumstances
Mantenha as distâncias Keep your distance
Respeite os espaços Respect the spaces
Controle essas ânsias Control your urges
De beijos e abraços for kisses and hugs
Refreie as audácias e as inobservâncias Refrain from risks and non-observances

Posted in English

Poetry

Posted on by Colin Lusk

One of the things I’ve been doing in my non-portuguese life is trying to learn poems. I had some idea that it would be nice to have more poetry in amongst the clutter of my brain, and also good mental exercise now that I’m well into middle age and finding myself forgetting stuff all the time. In the last couple of weeks I have memorised two. I can now recite Weathers by Thomas Hardy or The Subaltern’s Love Song by John Betjeman by heart. I like the Betjeman best; the rhythm of it is amazing, and it really conveys the sense of being giddy and excited and in love.

Anyway, I was thinking of doing “Mar Português” by Fernando Pessoa next. It’s shorter but I’m expecting it to be harder in anotgher language. So I was really excited to see this video drop into my Youtube recommendations today. Mar Português is the fifth of the five poems she reads. I have been subscribed to the channel for a while but not really following it closely but I can see I am going to have to keep a closer eye on it from now on, because I like this a lot!

Posted in English

The Best Lidl Workout in Tejo

Posted on by Colin Lusk

For no real reason, I decided to look for a portuguese workout channel to use instead of my normal Joe Wicks routine for a change. What I found was that the market seems to be dominated by Lidl, the supermarket chain. It’s quite a canny way to build a relationship with your customers, I suppose, during lockdown. There are dozens of videos on there. Here’s a basic playlist for example, but there are loads more, each with a long list of workout videos from little shorties like this guy doing power curtsies with his very patient dog…

…through yoga and pilates

…to half hour circuit sessions

They even have a few hosted by this guy Jorge Fonseca who is an actual world Judo champion who… what? Runs the deli counter at the weekend for a bit of extra cash? I dunno.

If you prefer your workouts without any unexpected items in the bagging area, the only other channel I know is “Dicas do Salgueiro”. He has the same beard/long hair combination as Joe but he’s got a slightly different style – he does crossfit videos rather than mucking about at home with his kids in the shot, dressed as Scooby Doo. I was having a laugh at how seriously he seemed to be taking himself in this video but then the last few seconds of it when he goes to put the sword away made me warm to him.

So I think I might see if I can go through one of his (hour long!) videos from the Treino em Casa Quarantena playlist one day when I’m feeling energetic.

Posted in English

Cushiongate

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I’ve just written about O Superman, the satire on the career of António Ramalho Eanes. One of the things the book mentions is his visit to London where he does a typically Portuguese (?) thing: rearranging the cushion before sitting next to the Queen. I didn’t think much of this but you can actually see it happen in this video of the state visit.

Of course, the Queen is not scandalised by this and it doesn’t seem to be much of an issue. I don’t know why the satirist thinks it’s such a big deal but I guess it’s all grist to his mill, showing how uncultured and yokelish the president is that he’s never taken a ride in a royal carriage before!

The video is interesting (to me, anyway), since the announcer conveys the palace’s statement, putting forward Britain’s official stance towards the nascent democracy, which in a few short years had veered from fascism to a vanguardist, near communist junta, via a counter-revolution to a broadly left-wing government, ruling under a democratic constitution. So I’m glad to see they are recognising that process and trying to help it along.

I’m not sure, but I think we british play a larger role in the book. Early on, Cropcon, Superman’s home planet, is destroyed by a rival planet, which the author calls Brybton. Well, I don’t know what Brybton is meant to represent, but it sounds like “Britain” and “Bribe” might be contributing ingredients – in other words, the author reckons the military junta that acted as midwife to the democracy was unable to withstand the corrupting effect of international capital, as represented by England! I might be reading too much into that but it’s a fun historical factoid so I’ll enjoy it at least until someone tells me it’s wrong!