Nhac-Donald's

Nhac Nhac!

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Some time ago I installed a Portuguese-English dictionary on my phone. It’s really useful as it doesn’t need an internet connection and it has the handy feature of keeping a list of all the words you look up – a ready-made revision list for when you’re feeling studious. It’s not 100% perfect though – there are rare occasions when it doesn’t list a word I’m looking for. This happened last weekend when we were in Cachoeira Paulista.

The word I was looking for begins with “Nh” which still strikes me as a strange combination of letters to start a word with. As far as I can tell (disclaimer: I know even less about Spanish than I do about Portuguese) “Nh” in Portuguese is the equivalent of the Spanish “Ñ” – it makes that “nya” sound that you hear in words like “new” and “lasagna” (jeez, now I’m straying into Italian! Turn back!).

When I checked my phone dictionary for words beginning with “Nh”, I found just 2 entries:

Nhoque

This is how Portuguese speakers spell Gnocchi, those little dumplings you find at the cheap end of the menu in Italian restaurants. It’s actually a great word to illustrate how the Portuguese language takes a word from abroad and adapts the spelling to fit the rules of Portuguese. As far as I know (disclaimer number 2), a word beginning with “Gn” would be pronounced “Ge-ne” (with a hard g), so they replaced that with the “Nh”. To make a hard “Ke” sound they needed to use “que”, so you end up with an identical sounding word that is spelt completely differently!

Gnocchi

Gnocchi, Nhoque, Ñoqui (Italian, Portuguese, Spanish). Source

 

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taxista-carioca

Good Morning, Good Afternoon and Goodnight!

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Good morning everyone! Hmm, a time-of-day specific salutation like ‘good morning’ doesn’t make much sense on a blog page that can be read in any time-zone and at any time of day after it’s been published does it? Here in Brazil, time-of-day-specific salutations come in 3 flavours:

Bom dia (sounds like ‘bown JEE-ya’) – Good morning

Boa tarde (sounds like ‘boa TAHR-je’) – Good afternoon

Boa noite (sounds like ‘boa NOY-tche’) – Good night

 

And already I’ve run into trouble. “Bom dia” literally means ‘good day’, but it is used in the way that English speakers say ‘good morning’ (i.e. not used after midday). Also, I’ve translated “boa noite” as ‘good night’, but it is also used in the way that English speakers would say ‘good evening’. Everyone still with me?

Back in England I know instinctively when to switch from ‘good afternoon’ to ‘good evening’ – around 5.30pm – but here in Brazil, I am far less sure about when to make the switch from ‘Boa tarde’ to ‘Boa noite’.

For some reason it always seems to be taxi drivers who correct me when I get it wrong (and they appear to take great pleasure in doing so I might add!). However, seeing as several taxi drivers have wished me ‘bom dia’ at just a few minutes past midnight, I’m not sure I’m going to take too many lessons from them!

 

Taxista-carioca

The Carioca taxi driver. The caption that goes with this image says “he drives with his elbow out the window, pretends the air conditioning has broken down [TL: they always do this!] and definitely doesn’t believe that a straight line is the shortest path between two points!”. See the original post (in Portuguese) here it’s pretty funny!

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tom-jobim

Brazilian Portuguese Tom

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He tossed the coin up and I called “Heads!” – he looked down and the expression that appeared on his face told me I’d lost. My friend and I were 18, travelling round New Zealand and had just decided which of us was going to make a rather awkward phone call.

One of us had to call up the bus company and arrange a spot on the bus that was coming through town the next day. The problem was that we were staying in a town called Whakapapa.

whakapapa-tongariro

Whakapapa is in Tongariro National Park, New Zealand. Like much of New Zealand, it is spectacular.

 

“Er… so what? Just call up and tell them you’re in Whakapapa!” I expect you’re thinking. Well we had just read in our guide book that the Maori pronunciation of the letters “Wha” should sound like “Fu”. Seriously? One of us had to phone up a stranger and say all bright and breezy: “Hi there! Can I book two seats on the bus from Fuckapapa tomorrow?”.

Looking back I can’t think why we were so reluctant to make the call, but as slightly timid 18 year olds I guess neither of us felt very confident about this whole “Fuckapapa” thing (was that really the proper way to say it?). For the record, I made the call, I pronounced it “Fuckapapa” and the woman on the phone didn’t bat an eyelid!

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When you’re not familiar with a language, it can be tricky to get the pronunciation right. In Portuguese, my name (Tom) means ‘tone’ which seems quite appropriate because although it is spelt the same, it sounds very different to its English equivalent. I discovered this the hard way when I first got to Brazil.

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Portuguese Idioms: Armless John and the fat chicken next door

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Portuguese Idioms are a constant source of confusion and amusement for me. A few months ago, one of my Brazilian colleagues and I were discussing a technical issue at work (I won’t bore you with the details – if you knew the details, you’d thank me for not boring you with them). Things were going well until he said that he thought we might be “Procurando pêlo em ovo”.

[pause…]

“You think we’re…searching for a hair in an egg?” I asked, clearly baffled. I thought about it some more. “Is that like looking for a needle in a haystack?”. Now it was his turn to look confused! However, his confusion didn’t last long as he cleverly countered with “You know, like procurando chifre na cabeça de cavalo.”

Touché! I scrambled for my dictionary to find the meaning of ‘chifre’ (it means ‘horn’). The full phrase translates to “Searching for horns on a horse’s head.” Both Portuguese phrases mean to look for something that isn’t there. The English phrase (to search for a needle in a haystack) has a slightly different meaning: to search for something which is there, but which is effectively impossible to find because it is hidden in such a huge space or amongst a huge number of other items.

portuguese-idioms-haystack

A haystack (Portuguese: palheiro) – the perfect place to hide a needle!

 

These things make sense once you have someone explain them to you, but they can stop you in your tracks if you’ve never heard them before. Since that day I’ve been collecting these interesting Portuguese idioms and today I thought I’d share a few more.

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Portuguese Shorthand

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Despite my tendency to be a little grumpy at times, I have somehow managed to make some friends and acquaintances during my time in Brazil. This means that around 50% of the text on my Facebook time-line is in Portuguese.

This has proved to be rather a good learning aid. If I want to know why Maurício’s status update got 18 likes, I’m going to have to work out what he actually said! But deciphering text posted on Facebook, Twitter, emails and text messages is not just a matter of looking up words in a dictionary.

 

 

Winston-Churchill

OMG Churchill! Didn’t you know that gesture is rude in Britain? Rofl lol…

Portuguese Text Speak

Text Speak has been around for longer than you might think. Winston Churchill received a letter containing an “OMG” way back in 1917!

But this character- and time-saving communication form really proliferated with the introduction of text messaging and the internet. I’m sure most of you are familiar with the common English examples such as lol, rofl, etc (that last one is Latin!), but how well do you know Portuguese shorthand?

Below is a list of the abbreviations I’ve come across – have I missed any out?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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