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Just like watching Brazil

06/08/2012/11 Comments/in Language, Musings

During a recent Portuguese lesson (yes, I’ve restarted lessons!) a word came up that was unfamiliar to me – goleou. The context was the description of a football match and went something like “Last Saturday night Barcelona goleou AC Milan”. I asked my teacher about this word and she said “It’s when one team beats another team by many goals. You know, like a chocolate” (pronounced in the Portuguese manner: shocko-LATCH). Well, that left me even more confused/intrigued. I’d never heard of a chocolate in football. I decided some research was in order.

It turns out that the national obsession of Brazil has given rise to a rich and diverse set of words, phrases and sayings. I expect that today’s post will be just the tip of the football iceberg so if there any football experts out there then I’d love to hear about the ones I’ve missed out.

Goleada

As my teacher told me, a goleada is a what English commentators might call a drubbing. A win with a large margin of victory. Goleada is the noun, goleou is the 3rd person past tense conjugation of the verb golear (to win by many goals). There is some discussion over exactly what constitutes a goleada, some saying that the margin of victory must be at least 3, others saying it must be 4.

This cartoon, entitled Blue Chocolate, celebrates the goleada of Brazilian side Cruzeiro over Venezuelan size Caracas back in 2008. Final score 3-0. The fox (?) of Cruzeiro is saying “Give Hugo Chavez a hug from me if you can”.

British Time and the English Side

05/08/2012/12 Comments/in Musings

Ah, there’s nothing like the Olympics to stir up a bit of national pride is there? The last few days have seen Great Britain winning medals all over the place, including a record fourth gold from my old classmate Ben Ainslie in the sailing today. GB are now third in the medal table! OK, enough gloating…

There is something about living away from your home country that brings out a kind of fondness for ‘home’ that maybe didn’t exist when you actually lived there! Whenever I hear some mention of Britain or England, my ears prick up and want to hear what people are saying.

One phrase that gives me a little warm feeling is Horário Britânico, (British Time) which is used to mean ‘on time’. If someone says “I’ll pick you up at 9am, Horário Britânico.”, it means “I intend to actually arrive at 9am, so you had better be ready.” – without that stipulation, 9am often means something more like 9:30!

Now see if you can spot the oddity here:

Photos of Rio

03/08/2012/3 Comments/in Art and culture

For those of you not on Facebook (how do you live?!), I thought I’d include a few of my photos that I’ve recently posted on the Eat Rio Facebook page. You can see why they named it Cidade Maravilhosa!

Cristo Redentor at sunset, seen from Botafogo.

Brazil: apathy-free zone?

02/08/2012/11 Comments/in Musings

During my time in Brazil I’ve noticed that young Brazilians seem to lack the apathy that is common in many of their British contemporaries. It is quite normal to see Brazilian teenagers and 20-somethings wearing t-shirts bearing environmental messages: “Save Water!”, “Protect Mother Earth!”. Their British counterparts wouldn’t be seen dead in a t-shirt which was this earnest! They would snort derisively and read out the slogan in a mocking voice. “Oh yeah, ‘Save the Planet’ man.”

Take a look at this:

I spotted this as I was walking in Santa Teresa recently and it occurred to me that simple, positive messages like this are quite rare back in Britain.

London Olympics come to Rio

28/07/2012/4 Comments/in Musings

Wow – the Olympics are finally here! Maybe it’s because I’m so far from home, but I have to say there were times during the opening ceremony where I found myself getting a little choked up. Sometimes you need some distance from your country to fully appreciate its good points (…and forget the bad stuff!).

It has been interesting watching the build-up to the Olympics here in Rio. In the same way that London watched Beijing especially keenly, so Rio has been watching London and wondering how they will cope with the same challenges. And with the Football World Cup coming here in 2014, the phrase imagina isso na copa (imagine this during the World Cup) has become the common response to traffic jams, bad weather or a myriad of other problems.

One of the most prominent aspects to the Olympic build-up here in Rio has been an advertising campaign from the main Sports station here, SporTV. SporTV, part of the Globo empire, have four channels that are being fully dedicated to the Olympic coverage. Their advertising campaign has been built around bringing London to Rio. And what says London more than the iconic red double-decker bus?

Is that a Metro train or a double-decker London bus?