October 12, 2007
A gerund goes into a bar, and the bartender says, “What are you, drinking?”
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The governor of the Federal District of Brazil, José Roberto Arruda, has ordered regional public employees to abolish the use of gerunds, a measure that he defines as a "nice" message against inefficiency.
Upon defending the decision, Arruda said that he has lost patience with some members of his own government who are always "doing", "getting", "studying", "sending" or "preparing" but never finish their work or establish ways to finish it.
Local government calls the use of gerunds "a plague", which only serves to make excuses for unsolved problems.
via vivirlatino
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July 05, 2007
Fascinating how someone writing a straightforward, one paragraph long biography managed to squeeze in such a huge value judgement.
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June 30, 2007
Advanced Creative Portuguese - Lesson #1
Bijoquinzinhos - multiple kisses like the popping sounds of small fish in a frying pan.
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January 13, 2006
Lexicophile
The reading of the adventures of Dr. Johnson remembered me of my grandfather. He was not an educated man but he was somehow obsessed with the meaning of words. After he retired he would spend hours filling in notebooks and the odd piece of paper with words and meanings he'd copy out of the dictionary.
I'm writing this and I'm looking at his thick dictionary with orange covers sitting on my shelf (along with the other emotionally indispensable books). My precious inheritance :-)
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January 07, 2006
Melancholy
1. A disease supposed to proceed from a redundance of black bile; but it is better known to arise from too heavy and too viscid a blood; its cure is in evacuation, nervous medicines, and powerful stimuli.
--John Quincy
2. A kind of madness, in which the mind is always fixed on one object;
3. A gloomy, pensive, discontented temper
This melancholy flatters, but unmans you;
What is else but penury of soul,
A lazy frost, a numbness of the mind?
--John Dryden
(found on "Defining the World - The Extraordinary Story of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary" by Henry Hitchings)
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Edward Hopper, Morning Sun
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November 02, 2005
It sounds just perfect
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."
--Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
There. I'm feeling nepheloid. Figure that out.
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October 28, 2005
A prophylactic post
It struck me the other day that there are awkward names for condom brands (yes, weird topic on which to waste my time but I am addicted to language in general).
It's funny how we get so used to or familiar with some brand names that most times we won't think about the real meaning of the word or what does it evoke.
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My own free association: Trojan ----> Trojan Horse.
Trojan horse: a way to gain malicious access; (from the wooden horse where the greeks hid to conquer Troy to the computer programs that perform undesired functions)
Hmm. It sounds like it's hiding an unpleasant surprise. Not the least appealing.
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I personally associate it with the latin phrase "Dura lex, sed lex" - "The law is tough but it's the law". But the company says that "The Durex brand name was derived from the three principal attributes of the product – Durability, Reliability and Excellence." Durability? In most cases it really doesn't need to be THAT durable and it's not like it will be reused or anything ;-)))
I don't know, it just seems to be the appropriate condom brand for lawyers :-)
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Control: to adjust to a requirement; regulate; to hold in restraint; check.
I understand the rationale behind that one. But shouldn't sex be about losing control? You go to the chemist and ask "I need control"??? How repressed does that sound?
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But then again Durex does have some fun ads that make me forget how judicial it sounds:
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September 19, 2005
The Semantics of Emotions
"Saudade is a Portuguese word generally considered one of the hardest words to translate.
In his book In Portugal of 1912, A.F.G Bell writes: The famous saudade of the Portuguese is a vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist, for something other than the present, a turning towards the past or towards the future; not an active discontent or poignant sadness but an indolent dreaming wistfulness."
Fado and Saudade are two key and intertwined ideas in Portuguese culture, "Fado" meaning "Fate" or "Destiny". It is, in part, the recognition of this unassailable determinism which compels the resigned yearning of Saudade, a bittersweet, existential yearning and hopefulness towards something over which one has no control."
From Wikipedia which has a great article for Saudade.
Saudade Street near the Castle, Lisboa
I've always been fascinated by the interface between language and reality. How can one be sure that translating a word that conveys a feeling into a foreign language will actually express something we believe to be an abstract universal concept? Are emotions really universal or culturally formed?
“Anyone who has attempted to define a word precisely knows that this is an extremely difficult matter, involving intricate and complex properties. Ordinary dictionary definitions do not come close to characterising the meaning of words.” - Chomsky
"Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said at all can be said clearly. But not everything that can be thought can be said." - Wittgenstein
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Having said that, I already feel excused for the translation of this poem by lobalpha which will be the crappiest one on this blog to this date. And I'm not translating the word Saudade...just because I don't know how.
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Fado da Saudade
Quero falar-te da Saudade | Fado da Saudade
I want to tell you about Saudade |
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Listen to contemporary Fado here and here.
The classic Fado: Amalia.
"Fado is a traditional song styling from Portugal, rising out of Lisbon's lower classes in much the same way that rembetica (urban Greece) and jazz (urban America) did. The genre's name has usually been translated as "fate" but the real meaning is as untranslatable as "saudade", the phrase frequently used to describe fado's emotional core, a mournful, fatalistic sound often crafted around lyrics radiating a resigned despair." - conscious choice
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September 16, 2005
Language X is essentially language Y under conditions Z
English is essentially Norse as spoken by a gang of French thugs.
English is what you get from Normans trying to pick up Saxon girls.
American English is essentially a tool to keep a person from ever being able to speak another language.
American English is essentially British English without the redundancies, including the monarchy.
Norwegian is essentially Danish spoken with a Swedish accent.
Danish is essentially Norwegian spoken with a sore throat.
German is essentially a language developed by a group of Teutons who gathered in the forest one day to come up with a language that their enemies would have no chance of grasping.
Germann ist eßentially Dutsch and Englisch with a few Tschanges.
Spanish is essentially Italian spoken by Arabs.
Mexican is essentially Castilian Spanish as spoken while excreting hot peppers, therefore without the superiority complex.
Italian is essentially bad Latin.
French is essentially the language that Americans don't learn before travelling abroad.
Portuguese is essentially bad Spanish, mumbled.
Portuguese is essentially Brazilian without vowels.
Catalan is essentially Spanish and French spoken at the same time.
Romanian is essentially a Romance language trying really hard to blend in with the Slavic languages around it.
Irish is essentially an Indo-European language cunningly disguised as gibberish to perplex the English.
Hungarian is essentially all counterintuitive consonant pairings.
taken from here and compiled by John Cowan.
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