Monthly Archives: May 2010

Telling Someone They Smell

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Sometimes there are words that aren’t necessarily in the dictionary but they form part of the culture, so it’s good to know them too…even if they stink! Below, you’ll see quite a few words that you can use to speak of someone’s (bad) smell, with a few extras added in for good measure. Remember that you should use estar (com) with these words to express temporary situations.

Tá fedendo/podre – You stink!
Chulé – Smelly feet (which you might remember from this)
Bafo (or Mau hálito) – Bad breath
Ce-cê (from CC or cheiro de corpo) – Body odor* (aka, BO)

* – You can also say axila, catinga, fedor de suor or even sovaco. Also, the English equivelent of telling someone they have ‘dog breath’ is expressed in Portuguese as ‘bafo de onça‘ (jaguar breath).

A few others as extras so that I don’t have to do another post on this sort of subject! lol

Arrotar – To burp
Peidar – To ‘pass gas’/fart
Remela – Crusties or Eye boogers
Muco – Phlegm
Meleca – Booger

Eletrodoméstica – Short Film

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An inventive portrait of middle class life in Recife, Brazil in the 90s, set at 220 volts. Eletrodoméstica is a short-film by Kleber Mendonça from 2005 which won several int’l awards.

Best Short Film, Huesca Festival, Spain
Jury Special Award, Hamburg Festival, Germany
Best Short Film Critics Award, Recife Film Festival Cine PE, Brazil.

Song by Cecília Meireles

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Song
by Cecília Meireles
translation by me

I placed my dream on a boat
and the boat on the sea;
- afterwards, I opened the sea with my hands,
so that my dream would sink

My hands are still wet
from the blue of the dissonant waves
and the color that flows from my fingers
colors the deserted sands.

The wind comes from afar,
the night buckles from the cold;
under the water it is dying
my dream, inside the boat…

I will cry as much as is needed
to make my sea become bigger,
and my boat sink to the bottom
and my dream disappear.

After, all will be perfect;
a smooth beach, ordered waters,
my dry eyes like stones
and my two hands broken.

Canção
Por Cecília Meireles

Pus o meu sonho num navio
e o navio em cima do mar;
- depois, abri o mar com as mãos,
para o meu sonho naufragar

Minhas mãos ainda estão molhadas
do azul das ondas entreabertas,
e a cor que escorre de meus dedos
colore as areias desertas.

O vento vem vindo de longe,
a noite se curva de frio;
debaixo da água vai morrendo
meu sonho, dentro de um navio…

Chorarei quanto for preciso,
para fazer com que o mar cresça,
e o meu navio chegue ao fundo
e o meu sonho desapareça.

Depois, tudo estará perfeito;
praia lisa, águas ordenadas,
meus olhos secos como pedras
e as minhas duas mãos quebradas.

One can see by reading the poem that the poet is expressing the need for calmness in a world where desire causes the commotion of the waters. She is essentially preferring to give up on her dream, to sink her boat either because she doesn’t like to dream or perhaps she does but she is not capable of living with them (while still unattained). She gives up because dreams mean hard work and dedication as well as pain. One can also see the difference between a dream that may not work out for one reason or another and a dream that is purposefully killed by the dreamer, which is what she does.

Brand-Name Substitutions – Curiosities

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While writing the post on punctuation, I thought about how not knowing the right word sometimes can be really frustrating. One time I was trying to explain to a friend that I needed a razor (lâmina) to shave with and I had never needed that word before in Portuguese so I thought of ‘knife’ and ‘something that cuts’ and to make matters worse, I didn’t know the phrase for ‘beard’ or ‘shave’. What ended up happening was I made the motion of shaving my face and my friend said “ah, quer dizer Gillette?!” and I was thinking, “Right, of course it had to be a brand thing.”

Most of the list below will also be the same brand-name substitutions we use in English…and in the case I can’t think of any other word in English, I’ll just leave the item without their English translation. Last but not least, I’ll provide the pronunciation in Portuguese, which often makes the product unrecognizable to the foreign ear.

Band-Aid (band-aidjee)
Razor – Gillette (jeel-letch)
Copy – Xerox (shayrocks)
Aspirin – Aspirina (aspeerina)
Red Bull (hedjee buw)*

* – Thanks Jan for the comment on this brand. You’re so right!

If you can think of any others, let me know and I will add them! I realize that one could say that the list is potentionally exhaustive but I’ll try to keep it to those words which have lost their connection to the actual brand and therefore have fallen into popular usage. Also, the words that sound different than their English pronunciation will be highlighted.

Portuguese Punctuation

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Here is some basic punctuation in Portuguese, together with the names in English and the symbol that goes with them. There are always times when you need to express one of these and you have to find a round-about way of doing so.

Ampersand – E commercial (&)
Apostrophe – Apóstrofo ( ‘ ) ( ’ )
At Sign – Arroba (@)
Brackets – Colchetes ( [ ] )
Braces/Curly Brackets – Chaves ( { } )
Colon – Dois pontos ( : )
Comma – Vírgula ( , )
Dash – Travessão ( — )
Ellipsis – Reticências ( … )
Exclamation mark – Ponto de exclamação (!)
Hyphen – Hífen ( ‐ )
Parenthesis – Parênteses ( ( ) )
Period – Ponto final*
Question mark – Ponto de interrogação (?)
Quotation marks – Aspas (“   “)
Semi-colon – Ponto-e-vírgula ( ; )
Slash – Barra ( / )
Underline – Traço inferior (_)

* – not to be confused with ‘período‘, which refers to time.

Cajuína – The famous little drink from Piauí

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Cajuína is a non-alcoholic, non-carbonated beverage made of blended cashew apples. It is traditional in the northeast region of Brazil, where it is made by hand, especially in the state of Piauí. When processed, it has yellow-amber color resulting from the carmelization of the natural sugars of the juice. Cajuína is a cultural symbol of the capital of Piauí state, Teresina.

On average, 200 ml of cajuína has 62 calories. The production of cajuína is done via the following process:

- Extraction of the cashew juice;
- Filtration;
- Addition of gelatin (to extract the substance that gives the closing feeling in the throat);
- Separation of the tannins;
- Clarification.

The singer and songwriter Caetano Veloso composed a song called “Cajuína“, in which he sings about the drink. In a very charming report (in PT) on the beauty of Piauí done by Record TV, one can see how the famous drink is made (although I highly recommend seeing the entire report by starting here).

By the way, the contagiously happy reporter is Renata Alves from Sergipe who does random reports on Northeastern culture for the shows Câmara Record and Domingo Espetacular.

The Tale of Two Countries – Observations

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When it comes down to it (and if my poor math skills are correct), I’ve spent about 1/29th of my life in Brazil, which equals a number of months just shy of one year. That’s not a lot of time but let’s say it’s ‘just shy of one year’ more than most people. While that’s great and all, what it boils down to is a concept, my own personal concept of how I piece together everything I’ve learned in the decade nine months I’ve been learning it lived there.

A wise guy once said (and I’m paraphrasing), “First you like it, then you don’t, then you make your peace”. Ok, so he didn’t say “you make your peace” but he did say “you find a way to balance it all”. Now, I’m not sure if he put that phrase in my head and therefore made me conceptualize my experiences into this mode of thinking or if it was just a real honest look at a foreigner’s take on (living in) Brazil, but either way it stays on my mind. In fact, his idea is the reason for my title, which can be simply seen as my country and Brazil or if you choose, the two Brazils.

It’s a balancing act that keeps my feet on the ground because when I like it, I’m reminded that I shouldn’t be so touristically naive and when I don’t like it, something eventually shows me why I should like it again. If I had to guess, this is the third plane. After typing “third plane” right now, I decided to look it up and found the following true/false statement “Two planes may intersect a third plane without intersecting each other” and the answer is true, but only if they are parallel to each other. This pretty much explains what I was getting at, that the third plane is me and everyone else who has experienced Brazil from a non-tourist viewpoint.

On if there will ever be an answer, a peace found within my pieces, I just don’t know, but I do hold out hope for balance.

Being Alone (a depressing post)

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Só - Alone, By Itself, Only or But

The word só can be expressed in a few ways. As an adjective, it can take on the meaning of ‘solitary, without company or social circle’ as well as ‘isolated, unique’ and even ‘without a partner, single’. As an adverb, it turns into an adverb of exclusion. I will give examples of each in the order I mentioned them. As an added mention, I will give an example of the usage of ‘but’, which is usually followed by the word ‘que‘.

Ex. Foi ficando um homem só entre os colegas.
Ex. There was only one man among the colleagues.

Ex. Era uma casa só naquele monte.
Ex. There was one house by itself on that mountain.

Ex. Uma mulher só é sempre mais livre.
Ex. A single woman is always more free.

Ex. Contava só com ele.
Ex. He was the only one to be counted on.

Ex. Eu quero, só que não posso.
Ex. I want to, but I can’t.

Sozinho - Alone, Unaccompanied, Abandoned or Without Anyone’s Help

Note the diminutive form (-zinho) of só, which actually acts as an augmentation of aloneness.

Ex. Ele foi sozinho.
Ex. He went alone/by himself.

Ex. Ela conseguiu, sozinho, acabar a tarefa.
Ex. She managed, alone, to finish the task.

Sós – Plural of só

With sós, the possibility exists to place an ‘a’ before the adjective (a sós), which gives it the meaning of sozinho (alone), yet still in its plural sense.

Sós
Ex. Estamos sós agora.
Ex. We are alone now or We are by ourselves now.

A sós
Ex. Estamos a sós agora.
Ex. We are alone now.

Expression

With the expression below, it is important to note that the English version employs “alone” while the Portuguese version (lit. ‘leave me in peace’) does not.

Me deixe em paz!
Leave me alone!

The Brazilian Hour Radio Show

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Somehow something nice that is Brazil-related got past my sensors and that is The Brazilian Hour run by host Sergio Mielniczenko out of Los Angeles and backed by the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Brazilian Consulate in L.A. Get this, it has been on the air since the 70′s! Hit the link on their site and there you’ll find a button for accessing the radio show featuring Brazilian music.