Peeling Pineapples and Wearing Watermelons
I didn’t enjoy languages at school – in fact (to my later regret) I dropped French at the earliest opportunity. Since then I have come to realise that although I’m not particularly gifted in the learning department, I actually find language fascinating.
During my pre-Brazil travels around South America, I routinely met other travellers from around the world and I was delighted to discover that seemingly every nation has a different word for the noise a rooster makes in the morning. While British birds say “cock-a-doodle-DOO!”, their Brazilian counterparts say “Cocoricó”. I had a whole international list of rooster noises in my head at one point but I can’t remember them anymore (isn’t it annoying how you always forget the really important stuff?).
The linguistic fun continued when I got to Brazil and discovered that Brazilians have some hilarious turns of phrase. Someone who thinks they’re always right is the ‘owner of the truth’ (dona da verdade). Those glass fronted chicken rotisseries are known as Dog TV (Televisão de Cachorro – thanks Aki!).
Dog TV – not only for dogs…
Just recently I’ve stumbled across a few new phrases and seeing as they’re all fruit-related I thought they’d fit nicely into a post.
Peel a Pineapple
The Portuguese word for pineapple is Abacaxí (sounds like abba-cash-EE). Back in olden day Europe, pineapples symbolised luxury and wealth, but here in Brazil they symbolise a problem. “Hmm, we’ve got a bit of a pineapple here” someone might say when a particularly difficult issue arises.
And when you have a problem, what do you need? A problem solver, a troubleshooter, a pineapple peeler! To peel the pineapple is to solve the problem. Pineapple Peeler in Portuguese is Descascador de abacaxi.
I was looking for something pineappley to put here and found this amazing Pineapple House in Scotland, built in 1770. Apart from the pineapple it has nothing much to do with this post, but it’s such an awesome building I couldn’t resist putting it in.
Price of bananas
Bananas are cheap here in Brazil. To me they seem ridiculously cheap, though I heard somewhere that banana prices are actually quite high at the moment by Brazilian standards. But traditionally they have always been very cheap and this had led to the phrase a preço de banana to mean cheap or a bargain.
Bananas are often associated with sales and bargains. This poster is advertising a pre-carnival clothes sale, saying everything is at the price of bananas.
Jabuticaba
The Jabuticaba (sounds like zha-bootchy-CA-ba) is the fruit of the Jabuticabeira, a tree native to Brazil. They’re nice looking trees (I have a small jabuticaba growing up on the roof) that look utterly weird when they have fruit growing on them as the fruits grow directly out of the trunk:
Straight out of the trunk! Jabuticaba is not only weird looking, but also really yummy. Makes a great caipirinha and can also be used to make jelly.
They say that Jabuticaba is unique to Brazil and because of this, anything else that is unique to Brazil may also be described as a jabuticaba. This can be positive, e.g. “Forró (a Brazilian dance) is a jabuticaba”, or it can be negative, used to complain about something in the sense of “no one else in the world does it this way or has to put up with this thing, only us Brazilians!”.
Hang a watermelon round your neck
I kept my favourite until last! In England, when someone is clearly trying to draw attention to themselves (maybe they’re wearing something outrageous or doing something crazy) we would probably just say “Urgh! What a show-off!”. But here in Brazil they say “Se quiser chamar atenção coloca uma melancia no pescoço” – If you want to call attention to yourself, wear a watermelon round your neck!
Who came up with that? I love it! What a great image! And if you want to take up the suggestion without getting a sore neck, here are a couple of ways you can do it:
I suspect you’d spend a lot of time explaining this t-shirt if you didn’t live in Brazil.
The watermelon neck pillow – perfect for drawing attention to yourself on those long-haul flights…
HA, these are awesome!
I’ve never heard of the last two…I have to admit I tried Jabouticaba one time (I stole it from a tree in an indoor botanical garden nearby) and it was gross. But maybe that’s because it’s not growing in optimal conditions. But they are sooo cool! I’ve never seen another tree with the fruit growing directly out of the trunk..very interesting!
Ha ha, that reminds me of a story I heard from my dad where he and his sister were the only kids who knew about lychees and would sneakily pick them from the local botanic garden back in the 60s. :D I’ve had jabuticaba raw a couple of times and it was a bit sour. But crush it up with sugar, ice and cachaça and you’ve got a killer drink on your hands!
On the fruit-growing-straight-out-of-tree-trunk issue, you should also check out cacau when you get here – they do the same thing, though in a less wear-a-melon-round-your-neck kind of way…
I like “pode tirar o cavalo da chuva”: go ahead and remove the horse from under the rain – meaning you will not have your expectations met concerning something you want, so don’t even bother hoping for it.
I also love the following Texan phrase, “don’t piss on my boots and tell me its raining”. It is used to tell someone to stop harming you, and not to pretend that they’re not aware of the anguish their behavior is inflicting.
I like the Texan one. The horse in the rain one seems a bit weird – what would you be hoping for by putting a horse out in the rain? I may try using this phrase at work tomorrow and see what reaction I get… Could be interesting! ;)
Below an explanation for our wet horse conundrum.
http://guiadoestudante.abril.com.br/estudar/historia/origem-expressao-tirar-cavalo-chuva-435289.shtml
An example of usage:
Baiano….. ” Eu vou para casa, já estou aqui faz 3 horas”.
Turista….. ” Pode tirar o cavalo da chuva, eu ainda nem comecei a falar sobre a segunda etapa do herb garden e ainda tenho fotos”.
Baiano…. ” Oh meu deus, dontchi pissi ouni mai bootchis andji sei itchis heining”.
Interesting example text! I don’t know what you could mean by that… ;)
Tom,
There is a great book that was published about 20 years ago here in Brazil called “A Vaca foi pro brejo”, “The cow went to the swamp”. It gives a literal translation in English with some hilarious accompanying illustrations. Not much good in letting you know what the idiomatic phrase actually means, but a fun book all the same. I think it is still in print, you might want to look for it in Livraria Travessia.
Hi Corinne – I am definitely going to look for that book! I love this stuff! :)
I’ve never heard “jabuticaba” used as an expression like that. Maybe it’s a Carioca thing. BTW, the tree is actually called “jabuticabeira” (like laranjeira, mangueira, or cerejeira).
Some other food related expressions you might like are “enxugar gelo” (to perform a pointless task), “procurar pelo em ovo” (seeing a problem that doesn’t exist) and my favorite “catar coquinho na ladeira” (find something useful to do).
Andrew – of course you are right and I should know better about fruit trees being named like that! I just spent the best part of two weeks wandering past coqueiros in Bahia!
So many funny phrases!