** Rashak Mani ** wrote…
Uhhh, guess its time to dredge up the Ask the American ExPat who lives in Brazil thread.
Then lets plan a SoAm Dope fest, all 5 of us.
BTW our Secretary ‘Ceda didn’t see her neighbor the cop this weekend so no more answers, but I think most of the areas I was wrong about have been addressed, so I’ll let it go at that, unless you have more – I fear this thread may end up getting moved and we may miss more good answers.
Nice thread you had running there Janx… you were pretty balanced and correct in your answers. Thou Sao Paulo is usually more violent being an urban “environment”. Rio is less violent in Copacabana if you stay to the main roads and the beach… Brazil is always like that… its about not going to the wrong area.
An aspect of racism that you might notice is that the poor and blacks are seen as having to "keep to their castes". We feel more threatened only when lower classes openly defy the system or speak disrespectfully. In the US I feel many whites aren't used to being around blacks... and that they feel uncomfortable with blacks, specially unknown blacks. In Brazil during the colonial period it was normal to have 20 to 1 ratios of blacks to whites. Blacks were everywhere in the house and cities. So being around blacks or mixed isnt an issue. Maids and servants help this too... in the US you have tendency to separate neighborhoods. So we do have racism... but its very different from the USA. We openly speak words like negro or black with no problem too.hehe… as for Mexican food. It stinks and it stings ! Your better off with rice and beans 
Hope your wife is enjoying living in Brazil again. Brazilians get homesick so easily… its pathetic. For a country with so many emigrants its incredible. I missed guarana more than anything myself… your right… Coca Cola should tremble with the prospect of Guarana gaining a foothold in the States.
May be I can help with some of your questions.
“Tá pensando que birimbau é gaita?”
“Are you making fun of me?”
There are other variants with the same maning, for instance:
“Tá pensando que nariz de porco é tomada?”
Literally: “Do you think a pig’s nose is an electric outlet?”
“Traçado”
Some 40 or 50 years ago this meant a drink made of cachaça or cheap brandy mixed with vermouth. I don’t know if the recipe has changed, but it is probably anything as nasty.
“corujado” past participle of “corujar”.
As was said, coruja is owl. Everybody knows that owls have large eyes, seeming to watch intently.
Corujar is slang for watch.
“Tinha calos nas mãos para mostrar quando abordado.”
When the cops arrest someone, the arrested always claims to be a honest worker. If the guy has soft hands he can’t be beleived. That’s why this one had colouses to show the cops.
My first language is Spanish… Portuguese is not that hard for me (French is harder for me). I wanted to learn another language, and they offered an accelerated intro to Portuguese course. I took it, I became hooked.
Ah. I just encountered this phrase yesterday in my readings.
It seems that our nice friend Inferninho had just liquidated an informer. His assessment of the situation:
“Mandei o alcagüete pra casa do caralho” = “I sent the squealer to hell”
Thanks for all of the great answers, folks!
Thanks for the “camel” info, Rashak Mani. In the same paragraph, the fellow pedalled his camel, so I had a pretty good idea, and it is now confirmed.
Sérgio, I think your answer for the gaita question fits the context perfectly (but I’m sure you knew that already).
I hadn’t actually planned on salt and peppering my Portuguese with these fine specimens :). I figure that at best, I’d sound like some bozo saying things like “Far out!” and calling the police “the fuzz.”
Even if I got it right, I would probably look as silly using this slang as I would talking about “bustin’ a cap in someone’s ass”
I have a few other words to question; I’ll post them later on.
** ** wrote…
I am glad to not have to caution you against this temptation.
Nothing looks more quaint/ridiculous/tourista then a gringo trying to be hip and using local slang. I pass a good bit of time at the local watering hole, and most of my friends are from the north east. Believe me, I hear a lot of slang, but unless I know * exactly * what it means, and in what context to use it, I don’t even try. Once, thinking I was going to get a lesson in cool new words, my friend says to me in broken English: “O, João – how you call elevador em inglês?” I say “elevator.” He says, “Hmmm, in Brasil we just use the button!” HA! HA! HA! Fun with linguistics.
Funny friend you got there… funny…
I haven’t been posting more slang questions recently because as I have been reading, I realized that the questioned terms were mounting up at a furious rate – far to many to ask about here.
I’m up to page 200, and I have one of those bound laboratory notebooks with more than 27 pages filled top-to-bottom with my handwriiten Portuguese-English translations.
I finally did narrow down the timeframe of the storyline – there is lots of foreshadowing and such, so there wasn’t a solid hint until over 150 pages into the book: It starts in 1966 and goes through the early seventies (perhaps later … after all, I’m only half-way through). This means that the slang is definitely dated.
KarlGrenze asked if it is a good book. I would recommend it, but it is very depressing. My wife cannot read this book because it would reduce her to a teary-eyed state of depression after only a few pages. She asks me to not even mention portions of it, and rightfully so: In the first half, dozens of people have been killed, often for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. One fellow made a pact with the devil that he would kill a random stranger every Monday . . . and he did.
That said, I would definitely recommend it since it has opened my eyes to an environment and a world where I would never go. A book like this gives a bit of background for understanding why the Brazilian police and the drug dealers are constantly having gunfights, why they killed street children in the 80’s, why every Brazilian I asked agreed with one man’s statement that they trust the criminals more than the police.
Here’s a little excerpt to test your Portuguese – I found this section particularly intractable, and so did my wife. She said that it is all slang and code specific to the practice of macumba (Brazilian voodoo).
Hopefully it isn’t too long a quote to put here, after all, the book is 400 pages.
Do feel free to ask more stuff… actually having fun reading this oversland language.
The film is sure worthwhile thou… since it lightens the story with humourous passages…
Boy, if you are reading that with any comprehension, then your Portuguese skills are far beyond mine. And I live here! It started to give me a headache. I guess it would be like trying to read a book that was written in some super mush mouth Creole. My hat is off to you, I think I’ll rent the movie this weekend – just so I can spoil the ending of the book for you!
After watching the movie all my friends and I were blabbing various lines from the film that were hilarious. Well worth it.
During my trip to Peru I met some Canadians and an american who had seen the film and loved it.
It is understandable why your wife could not help you with this text. Very few brasilians could.
I am not an expert in Afro-Brazilian cults, but I have made a little search and I found some explanations:
demanda is the exigence of a deity. quebrar demanda is probably not to fulfill what the deity demands.
filhos da terra are the faithful.
ponto is a religious song. firmar o ponto is probably to initiate the song.
marafo is the cachaça used in the ritual. The ceremonialist drinks the marafo and spills some of it in the ground for the orixás.
cambone is the second of the terreiro (the ritual grounds). It is his responsibility to put the gifts in the crossroads and buy cachaça and candles for the ritual**(gira)** and for the killing (matança) of the animals (generally black chicken).
cruzou peito (crossed chest). The chief of the terreiro, the embando hurts the chests of the faithfuls with his chest as a compliment.
tranca-rua is an orixá (deity) belonging to Ogun 's negative line.
cavalo is the medium that receives the orixá. Generally he/she stands in his/her fours like a horse.
proteção de balador de atirador protection against the bullets of a shooter. The orixá can turn the person invulnerable (fechar o corpo) .
butina preta literally black boots. The cops.
terno de madeira literally wood suit. A coffin.
Muito obrigado, Sérgio – estou impressionado!
We were able to figure out a few of these (e.g. terno de madeira gave us a laugh, and marafo is in the dictionary), but all this talk about horses and such made it pretty much opaque.
If that isn’t enough, the totally twisted forms of simple words such as “você” (rendered as “suncê” – so my wife says), makes this bit of prose all the more baffling.
Janx: Fortunately, the whole book isn’t like that. Most of it is just ghetto slang, and once you have gone past fifty pages or so, you get used to it. This page was the most outstanding example of totally unintelligable slang that I encountered, so I posted it.
I imagine that Huckleberry Finn would present similar challenges for non-native speakers of English.
In reality, both “suncê” and “você” are corruptions of “Vossa Mercê” a treatment form reserved for people that were “better” than you.
" Vossa Mercê" turned into “Vossemecê”, then “Vosmecê” and finally “você”.
The african slaves pronounced it “Vossuncê” that turned into “suncê”.
Congratulations for your understanding of Portuguese!