Language Archives - eatrio.net

Thanks for nothing

30/01/2015/13 Comments/in Language

A sneak peek at the new Eat Rio site! Coming ~~soon~~ soonish…

Afternoon all! Well, the new website is coming along nicely, but I’ve pretty much given up on the idea that it could be ready in time for carnival. In the meantime we’ll all just have to make do with the current, somewhat ‘busy’, layout.

Normally at this time of year I have just one thing on my mind: Carnival. The official start of carnival is just 2 weeks away, but there are already plenty of pre-carnival events going on such as technical rehearsals at the Sambodrome on weekends and various blocos dotted around town. With carnival come turistas, most of them estrangeiros and as most of these foreign tourists don’t speak Portuguese, they have a bit of a challenge on their hands.

Interruptions and Interjections

12/12/2014/2 Comments/in Language

When I first arrived in Rio, I naively thought that once I had a good grasp of Portuguese my communication woes would be over. What I went on to discover is that the actual language is just part of the challenge. The rules of conversation here are quite different.

While a certain amount of interruption is common in English, I found that Cariocas take the art of interruption to new heights. These interruptions were pretty annoying at first – I would be trying to describe some event or experience but the person I was talking to wouldn’t let me finish a sentence! And even when the person I was talking to was listening attentively, someone else would come along and barge in with their own topic with little regard for the fact that we were already speaking about something else!

I later found that Cariocas (this may or may not apply to Brazilians in general) have a suite of verbal tricks to counteract the constant interruptions:

Brazilian Body Slang

14/11/2014/9 Comments/in Language

Homem Camarão

People can be cruel can’t they? They can also be pretty hilarious and at times the line between the two can be oh so slender. Just the other day I was absentmindedly listening in on a conversation between Mrs Eat Rio and one of her friends (let’s call her Maria) when I heard something strange. The conversation was focussing on one of Maria’s ex-boyfriends who, according to the conversation, had been rather dull and a complete gym-freak. What Maria said next caught my attention – she described the guy as a camarão.

“A camarão?” I thought to myself, “He was a shrimp?”. What could that possibly mean? Was his skin a strange shade of orangey-pink? Or perhaps he was kind of stinky? Wrong! It turns out that this is a way of referring to someone who has a tasty body but an ugly face. So, so cruel…(but also made me chuckle).

This set me off wondering what other funny phrases there are to describe people’s body parts. Turns out there are quite a few:

I pooed and walked…

08/11/2013/16 Comments/in Language

If I were feeling particularly ~~pretentious~~ creative, I might choose to describe learning Portuguese as being like an epic journey with no end. At the start there is the excitement of heading off into the unknown, when every step is accompanied by some new and exciting discovery (think Bilbo as he sets off from the Shire).

I’m off on an adventure! A language adventure!

Later on you realise how far you have to go, you hit frustrating obstacles and exhausting uphill sections. Staying with the metaphor (apologies), there are also those great moments when you can look back and enjoy the view, realising how far you’ve come and how much you’ve achieved.

And (still with the metaphor) then there are the times you stumble across something truly odd, half-hidden on the side of the track. You pick it up and turn it over in your hand. ‘What is this?’ you ask your befuddled self. Well I discovered one such linguistic oddity just a few weeks ago.

Ah Moleque!

19/07/2013/15 Comments/in Food and drink, Language

In my ongoing quest to learn Portuguese, there have been certain words and phrases that have proven difficult to pick up and use with confidence. A commonly cited ‘tricky’ Portuguese word is “saudade“, that profound feeling of wistful longing; sadness offset with a wan smile. But in my experience, although saudade is a tricky word to explain (see previous sentence), it’s an easy word to feel, to understand and therefore to use.

The words I find most tricky are the ones that have multiple meanings depending on context. Gírias (slang words) and Palavrões (swear words) are probably the main culprits.

One such word that I still find a little bamboozling is moleque (sounds like “mul-ECK-y”). The dictionary on my phone lists the following translations: (nouns) urchin, scoundrel, young person; (adjectives) mischievous, funny. Google Translate gives me 2 nouns: kid and imp.

Dis iz da street-spelling innit…

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