Just some general info on Portuguese as well as knowing how to say ‘Portuguese’ in other languages.
(Portuguese in Numbers)
(Portuguese in Other Languages, click to enlarge)
Stats n’ Stuff
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Monthly Archives: July 2010
Rock in Rio Returns
“Rock in Rio will return to Carioca soil after 10 years away from the place where it was born. In a meeting between Rio’s mayor, Eduardo Paes, and the event’s creator, Roberto Medina, the fourth edition of the Brazilian festival of pop music was agreed upon and will happen in September of 2011, in Jacarepaguá. The area, that is being readied, will also house the Athlete’s Park for the Olympics of 2016, also in Rio.
- The Athlete’s Park will be inaugurated together with Rock in Rio, which will happen next year. The area, between Riocentro and the Jacarepaguá Autodrome, is already being prepared for the event. The idea is that the place can receive other concerts, since another concert venue has been deemed a need of the city – said Eduardo Paes.
The last Carioca edition of the biggest music festival of the country happened in 2001, near Riocentro, in an area called Cidade do Rock. Since then, the land was abandoned. Rock in Rio already had other editions, only they took place (for some reason) in Lisbon and Madrid. On the 9th of August, Paes and Medina will meet again to divulge details of the event’s return.” – Oglobo (translation)
Falamansa – Confidência
Thought I’d brighten things up around here (via the music, not the video)
Brazil changes divorce laws
“Brazil has eliminated a lengthy separation procedure for couples that lasts for up to two years and will start the process for rapid divorce. An amendment to the constitution eliminates the two sets of procedures used up to now to dissolve marriages on a consensual basis, one of which required the couple to show they had lived apart for two years. The other procedure asked the couple to wait for 365 days after presenting the divorce petition to a judge.
‘The procedure for the dissolution of marriage was simplified, thus reducing the interference of the state in people’s lives without altering the greater principle of protecting the family,’ Senator Jose Sarney, a former Brazilian president, said.
The promoters of the reform said the simplification of divorce will lighten the load on the courts and save money. Senator Demostenes Torres said expenditures on divorce lawyers would drop by about half, the official Agencia Brasil news service said. The measure would also ‘automatically’ benefit all couples who have initiated the separation process.
In largely Catholic Brasil, 64,869 couples have begun separation procedures on a consensual basis in courts and another 14,623 couples began the process before a notary in 2008, according to the most recent official figures. Brazil first legalised divorce in 1977.” – Via Paraiba Paradise
Cujo/a – Vocabulary/Grammar
(Cujo by Stephen King)
The pronoun cujo/cuja means ‘whose’ and precedes a noun without an article, but is employed as an adjective pronoun.
Ex : Qual será o animal cujo nome a autora não quis escrever?
Ex. Which would be the animal whose name the author did not wish to write?
[whose name = the name of which]
Ex: Gosto muito desse compositor cujas músicas sei de cor.
Ex. I really like that composer whose songs I know by heart.
[whose songs=songs of who]
As one can observe, cujo/cuja has a possessive value that agrees in gender and number with the object possessed. Keep in mind that it isn’t used in everyday speech but it may be found in literature.
Oficina Brennand – Recife
I was looking at a tourism magazine from Recife called Recife Te Quer, from January of 2008 that a good friend sent me via mail a few years back and I found a really cool building with suggestive sculptures called Oficina Brennand. What follows is a bit on the location and the Pernambucan artist behind it, which I borrowed and translated from the official site. First, a few words on the artist Francisco Brennard, by acclaimed novelist Jorge Amado.
“Today he is unique – him and only him – a Brazilian artist with an assured place in the club of the principal (artists) of contemporary art. Of such importance, that alone he proclaims the universality of Brazilian art.”
Oficina Brennand
The Oficina Brennand came about in 1971 in the ruins of the ceramic factory dating back to the beginning of the 20th century, as a materialization of recalcitrant project of the artist Francisco Brennard. An old brick and roofing factory inherited by his father, installed on a piece of property called Santos Cosme and Damião, it lies in the historic neighborhood of Várzea, surrounded by what remains of the Atlantic Forest and on the waters of the Capibaribe river. The ceramics of São João (the former sugar plantation where the current property lies) became the inspiring source and depository of the story of the Pernambucan artist.
A unique place in the world, the Oficina Brennand can be found in a monumental architectural conjunct of originality, in a constant process of mutation, where the works associate themselves with the architecture to give form to subterranean, dark, sexual, religious, wild and abyssal universe.
The presence of the artist in his continuous work of creation gives the Oficina a daring character, identifying it as an intrinsically alive institution and with a dynamic that leaves the future of the project a mystery, even to the one who is creating it.
Visitation hours are from 8AM to 5PM, from Monday to Thursday and 8AM to 4PM on Friday. The admission fee is R$4.
Produto Interno Bruto – Vocabulary
Today, I learned a new phrase which I’ll put under vocab. cause that’s where it belongs. You know how we, when speaking of the economy, might say GDP (gross domestic product)? Well, Portuguese-speakers have their own three letters for that which is PIB, or produto interno bruto (literally, internal brute product).
That’s about it!
The South Overtakes the Southeast
“From 1995 to 2008, poverty fell proportionately more in the southern region, despite registering the least average growth per capita of GDP during this period, it took the place of the Southeast as the Brazilian region with the lowest percentage of poor people. The conclusions are the result of a study by the IPEA (Institute of Applied Research), taken from data released by the National Research Through Home Samples, a part of the IBGE (Brazil’s Institute of Statistics).
In the South, the total number of poor (with an income of up to half a minimum salary per capita) corresponds to 34% of the population in 1995. The percentage fell to 18% in 2008 while in the Southeast, it went from 29.9% to 19.5%.
Curiously, the southern region had the least average growth of GDP per capita from 1995 to 2008: 2.3%, below 3.1% which is the national average. “The economic growth is necessary, although it isn’t sufficient”, said Marcio Pochmann, president of the IPEA.
According to him, the South has a strong industrial structure, that radiates its growth to the service sector –which fails to occur, for example, in the Central-West, where the largest expansion per capita of GDP occurred (5.3%).
In the Central-West, poverty lowered from 42.4% to 37%. There, it is said, the effect of agribusiness, that assured the growth, didn’t spread itself with much force to other sectors. In the country’s media, the proportion of poor people was at 28.8% in 2008, down from 43.4% in 1995.
According to the IPEA, the states with the lowest rate of poverty were Santa Catarina, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. The highest were registered with Piaui, Maranhao and Alagoas.” – Folha
Dar Um Branco – To Go Blank – Phrases
I was just about to write about the phrase “dar um branco” in Portuguese, but I seem to have forgot what I was going to write… ;)
Kidding. It means to go blank, to temporarily forget something.
Ex. Eu ia fazer alguma coisa agora mas deu um branco.
Ex. I was just about to do something but I (my mind) just went blank.
Realty Prices in Rio Increase by 76%
“The valuation of realty in Rio seems to test its own limits on a daily basis. In just six months, the average price for an four-bedroom apartment in Ipanema increased nothing less than 76%, to R$2.5 million. Smaller apartments and those in other neighborhoods also saw significant highs. A two-bedroom place in Flamengo had its average price increase by 44.8% between December of 2009 and this past June, to R$477 thousand, according to the Habitation Syndicate of Rio.
…..
Factors such as a hike in income, the expansion of housing credit, the growth of Rio itself, the larger sensation of safety under the Pacifying Police Units (UPPs) and the drying up of land plots in the Zona Sul explain the extremely heated scenario. A little extra help came from the choice as Rio for the Olympics in 2016, announced in October, without forgetting the World Cup of 2014.
- The expansion is occuring across the whole country, but perhaps a little more in Rio. I never saw so many connections from positive factors at the same time – affirms the president of the construction company Concal, José Conde Caldas.” – Source (more here, in PT)
