Our favorite Portuguese word? It's "blender."
Language bits and other pieces
Living every day in a place where things are often different from what we knew opens up countless possibilities for fun and embarrassment from both a linguistic and everyday living perspective.
It's not only the language that trips you up. Doors here often open the opposite way. Amy’s in a waiting room and keeps trying the bathroom. Finally, she goes and asks where a bathroom is. They point to the one near her, she says fechado (closed). So they come out to see …
And open it because she’d been trying to open it the wrong way.
Relatedly, the word in Portuguese for “pull” is written puxe. It’s from the verb puxar. So, when someone tells us how to open an door, they say POOSH-eh. Meaning pull. Which is not at all confusing.
Scott loves words. Some are appealing for the way they sound (“susurration,” “zephyr”), others for the way they look on the page (“bookkeeper,” “murmur”). So it’s only natural that as his Portuguese vocabulary expands, some palavras will jump out at him.
One such word is liquidificador.
What an amazing word! It was love at first sight - and sound. The meaning is clear at a glance: something that liquefies things. A blender. The pronunciation is both wildly unexpected and incredibly fun:
It’s a little bit of a tongue twister but once you get it down, it’s a blast to say:
It’s such a wonderful word that, really, the only proper response is
Uau
Another great word. It means … Wow. As in, A book festival in Belém? Wow! Or Wow. as the understated ad says.
And some fun sentences have come to light as well. For the sheer joy of the sound of it, nothing has risen past the one we wrote about nearly a year ago.
But Não, não são1 sure looks great on the page.
While waiting for the Metro, we often read the ads posted in the station. Frequently we are able to translate them word for word, but are still left in the dark. When we pop the entirety of the phrase into our DeepL translation app, the meaning comes out. Sometimes this is interesting and fun. Other times this is paralyzing: how can we begin to learn this language if what the words don’t mean what they are saying?
There’s an admirable elegance to the Portuguese language (and probably the other romance languages as well). There are often multiple ways to say the same thing, which allows for a level of nuance that’s not always possible in English. One obvious example of this is the concept of “I’m sorry.”
In English, the way to distinguish between, “Oops, I didn’t mean to graze your shopping cart” and “I feel your pain at the loss of your entire family in a tragic car accident” is to essentially add garbage words like “very,” “so,” and “really” to the base two-word concept of “I’m sorry.” Sure, there are phrases like “my condolences” and “our sympathy” but those have often felt inadequate to us in difficult circumstances. Perhaps we’re just not eloquent enough.
In Portuguese, there are at least three main ways to say “I’m sorry”:
Desculpe/a2 - which comes from the Latin culpa (“fault”). As that suggests, the term is best used when the speaker has done something they’re asking for forgiveness for. “Sorry I flushed your glasses down the toilet.” It’s the most commonly used “sorry” and it works in most everyday cases. It’s not sufficient for higher-level situations, however.
Sinto muito - translates word-for-word to “I feel much” and is used when empathy is part of the equation. “I’m sorry to hear you’re going through a difficult time.”
Lamento - shares the Latin root of lamentation and is often used to express condolences. “I’m sorry for the loss of your family member.”
There are everyday uses for each of the above depending on the relationships of the people involved, the nature of the person or entity speaking, the level of either offense or tragedy involved, etc. While it sounds complicated, it’s relatively simple to remember “fault,” “feel,” and “lament” and use that as a guide to which phrase to use when you need to trot out an “I’m sorry.”
Another fascinating example of the elegance of Portuguese appears when we consider, for example, the concept of “I understand you.” In English, this is a fairly versatile phrase. You can use it in a business meeting or a classroom (“I understand the concept you’re explaining”) or with a friend (“I understand what you’re saying”). Formally or informally, with one person, a group of people, it means basically the same thing. And, regardless of the scenario, it’s a fairly bland phrase.
In Portuguese, there are multiple verbs to choose from. And while they’re largely interchangeable, each of them can lend a particular subtext to the phrase; there’s also a reflexive option which opens up new depths of meaning.
Entendo - translates to “I understand” and is probably the most basic of the options, it can work in nearly any scenario without being super specific.
Compreendo - “I comprehend.” Used more when trying to convey a deeper level of understanding.
Percebo - “I perceive.” This is often used in a context of becoming aware of something, noticing something.
While all of these words are certainly used in English, it’s not common to say, “I comprehend every aspect of this problem.” In Portuguese, any of these verbs can come along at nearly any time. The teacher of Scott’s Portuguese class uses Não percebo when she can’t quite figure out what one of the students is trying to say (which, sadly, is fairly frequently …).
Using a reflexive form of these verbs takes the concept a step further and adds another layer to the conversation. Saying Eu entendo (“I understand”) will get your point across just fine in 99% of the cases. But if you want to emphasize and empathize with a friend, using the reflexive can be a powerful way to do so: Eu entendo-te means I understand you. Not merely the words you’re saying, but the intent behind those words. This is not something you would say in a business meeting or when talking to a car mechanic, but it’s elegant and simple and when used appropriately it can be quite effective at conveying a deeper meaning.
The more we learn about the Portuguese language, the more we appreciate it. We’ve a loooooong way to go but the journey has been fun and enlightening so far.
That’s all for now.
Love from Lisbon,
Amy & Scott
Translation: No, they are not.
DesculpE is more formal. DesculpA would be used between friends and people who know each other well.
My favorite words in Portuguese are all those which I call “arcaicisms”, old-words that have been left to the dust in Italian but are perfectly functional in modern Portuguese. Above all my favorite is “comboio”: in ancient Italian it would be “convoglio” and means train. It makes me think of old -time travels. The Fitzgeralds on the French Riviera kind of time.
Portuguese is the hardest of all Latin languages, because of its “matizes”, nuances. I’d say that if you can speak a reasonably good (C1 level) Spanish in a couple of years, reaching a C2 of Portuguese will almost be unattainable in a lifetime, so complex and complicated this language is.
Of course youngsters do not speak a very good Portuguese, but I have learned the language mainly by reading Eça de Queiroz (he never uses a synonym in the hefty books he writes) and his Portuguese is rather delicious for the ears and the heart.
I also enjoy reading the ads I see on the Metro. One McDonald’s ad for a new egg sandwich had the tagline, “Nunca Ovo Um Recital Assim” which translates literally as “Never Egg a Recital Like This.” But it’s a play on the verb ouvir, so it means “You Have Never Heard a Recital Like This” (“Nunca Ouviu Um Recital Assim.”) Clever. But it had me scratching my head.