So I learned a new word while watching As Cariocas, for research purposes, of course. The sentence was something like “…de paz para um sururu” and as I enjoy words of Tupi origin, I looked it up and to my surprise, it means “mussels”. Not trusting the regular dictionary, I checked it on Dicionário Informal and found it means ‘disorder’, as in “foi o maior sururu!” (it was total chaos!)…so, yeah…never throw a bucket of mussels on someone’s head.
Most of us who are sufficiently versed in Portuguese know that the phrase “vem cá” means “come here” (though, technically, I suppose it should be as a command, ie “venha cá” ). There’s a second meaning which can be loosely translated into English as “hold on”, “wait just a second”, “listen up” or even “pay attention”, all of them serving as a way to call attention to something you wish to say.
Ex. “Vem cá, o que está acontecendo aqui?”
Ex. “Hold on a sec., what’s going on here?”
So how do you tell the difference between someone wanting you to come closer or wanting you to listen up? Aside from understanding the context, the informal usage has a slightly different intonation than the literal one.
In Portuguese, a substitute for “vem cá”, in the informal sense, is the phrase “olha só”. Some people might have an aversion to this secondary usage and may respond by saying “Vem cá pra onde? Eu não estou aqui já!?” (Come where? Am I not already here?).
This famous Brazilian Portuguese phrase refers to any difficult situation, one that is hard to resolve. Another variation of the same thing, but in the near future, is ‘o bicho vai pegar’. If someone asks me how I am and I have three exams tomorrow plus a fulltime job, I might answer by saying ‘Vixi, o bicho tá pegando, viu?’. Some rough English translations might be ‘it’s time to pay the piper’, ‘the jig is up’ or ‘there’s hell to pay’, basically it’s when someone has to bear the consequences of one’s actions.
I just learned a new phrase for saying a woman is a plain Jane. I haven’t confirmed if this is applied to men as well but I wouldn’t see why not. It seems to go like this, since salt is seasoning and seasoning generally makes food more appealing or interesting, then to say someone is without salt, means they’re boring.
Ex. Ela é muito sem sal e não sei o que ele vê nela.
Ex. She is such a plain Jane and I don’t know what he sees in her.
You may also see “sem sal, nem açúcar” which is basically the same, meaning without salt, nor sugar.
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
One of my favorite tags in Italian is “dai” which the blog Dolce Vita explains in the following excerpt,
“Dai” said with an irritated tone can mean “enough” or “stop it”. It can also mean “come on” in all its many forms – impatience, encouragement and the gritted teeth of effort or tension if you’re following you favourite football team in that moment and it’s about time they scored a goal.“Ma dai” can indicate mild suprise, incredulity or even suspicion that your interlocutor is pulling your leg. It can be a kind of “as if” or “stop having me on”. “Dai” said with a lowered tone and widened eyes will often be found in gossip and can mean “tell me more”!
In Portuguese, ‘vai’ can be used as an informal tag on the end of a statement such as when someone says “me leva, vai!” (c’mon, take me!). Just a hypothesis based on the huge influx of Italians to Brazil during the time prior to and just after the turn of the last century.
In 2007, I was in São Paulo for a month on vacation and it was right about the same time that the Museu da Língua Portuguesa (Portuguese Language Museum) opened at the Estação da Luz train station near the Sá neighborhood of São Paulo. On the second floor, which usually holds interactive exhibits, there was a timeline of the Portuguese language and it ended with a sort of Portuguese shorthand that kids use on the Internet.
However, Internet shorthand isn’t the worst of it, now there’s miguxês (and neo-miguxês), as it’s been deemed. The term comes from the miguxês-ation of the word “amigo”, which in miguxês becomes “migu”. Below, you’ll find all three levels of it, each one worse than the last. Feel free to try out the MiGuXeiToR translation tool.
Miguxês Arcaico (ICQ)
Ex. Isso eh o miguxês!
Miguxês Moderno (MSN)
Ex. Issu eh u miguxês!!
Neo-Miguxês (Orkut, Fotolog)
Ex. IXXu EH u MIGUxXxeIxXx!!!!!
I was perusing the site Proz, which I mentioned in the last post, when I came across these words/phrases as a way to say “all easy street”, or as I would rather put it, easy as pie (or even ‘piece of cake’). One of the words, you should already know! ; )
moleza (weakening) / sopa no mel (soup in the honey*) / mamão com açúcar (papaya with sugar)
(click to enlarge)
In the quadrinho (comic strip) Grump by Orlandeli, last year’s acordo ortográfico (spelling reform) was used as the subject matter of a series he did in January of 2009. Little by little, I will be going over the spelling reform here on Eyes on Portuguese because most sites teaching Portuguese haven’t adjusted their lessons to the new reform. Below, I will translate each quadro (square) of the comic.
Primeiro quadro“I had an idea. I am going to ask for help from my nephew to understand the agreement. For these kids, it’s a cinch. They are learning now. They don’t have our bad habits because we have been using the old rules for a long time now.”
Segundo quadro
“Hello, nephew. Everything good? By chance, are you in the know about the rules of the spelling reform?”
Terceiro quadro
“Wazzzzuppp Tuimmmm! What’s crackin? Ain’t no thang, yo. Why don’t u roll on thru cuz we can learn dat ish togetha! looool”
“It’s probably best I come up with another idea.”
In the first square of the comic, the words molecada and moleza are used, both of which are slang. Moleque (often misspelled ‘muleque‘) is how you would call a bratty kid in English a “little punk”. It is also used in a general sense to speak of someone who is immature or not yet acting like a man. Since in Portuguese the suffix -ada can be used to speak of a group or of an action (see the end of this post I just linked), molecada means a group of moleques. The second term, moleza, is equivalent to saying something is easy, a cinch, nothing complicated.
For the third square, I improvised in the translation to best represent what it might sound like if an American teenager (influenced by hip-hop culture) would have said it. In Portuguese, the sad state of the nephew’s writing is called miguxês or neo-miguxês, something which I will address in the next post. The second line of the third square is what I would consider the equivalent in English to what was written in the comic.
Thanks to Street Smart Brazil for emailing this comic a while back.
