Ouro Preto

Ouro Preto
Originally uploaded by Lucas Folk

Cidade linda...

MASP

Masp
Originally uploaded by mardruck

This is MASP the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (São Paulo Art Museum). It's known for having the largest unsupported span under a building at the time it was built. In Portuguese the word span is "vão."

There's an interesting article explaining how Christopher Columbus went from being Cristofõm originally to Christopher in English and Cristóvão in Portuguese. This relates to the meaning of the word "vão." Good nerd reading.

Placa - Pode um negócio desse?

Placa - Pode um negócio desse?
Originally uploaded by mcouto

"Encher o saco" -- there's a great idiom. Literally "fill the sack" it generally means to bother someone. This warning sign says "Don't bug the drinkers."

Forró

A few weeks ago we heard Luiz Gonzaga in our music segment performing O Fole Roncou, an example of forró. I found a great picture (on Wikipedia) taken in Caruaru, in the state of Pernambuco, capturing the three essential elements of Forró.

Aqui é o trio típico de forró pé-de-serra:.

Instrumento (Portuguese)	Instrument (English)
Zabumba	Drum
Sanfona	Accordion
Triângulo	Triangle

The accordion is known as a gaita in the southern part of the country. Other names for it are concertina, harmônia, harmônica, fole (ou gaita-de-foles) and realejo (as explained in this article).

Mais frutas

Beyond the lists Jerry provided below, some more unusual fruits can be found on Flickr.

One traveler shows a Brazilian juice stand displaying maracujá, abacate, melão, mamão, and more. See which ones you can identify.

Two of these three more exotic fruits don't really have a good English translation (at least that I'm aware of).

Aves

Ave is Portuguese for bird. You might also hear pássaro or passarinho for a smaller song bird.

A recent conversation with Jerry got me thinking about the words for different birds in Portuguese.

I found a great webpage listing the Portuguese names for very specific species of birds. That's great if you're a birder, but if you talk about birds more casually, you probably don't need to be quite so specific.

In that vein, I've gone through and picked out the birds that I've actually heard Brazilians refer to. Well, I threw in a few others that I couldn't resist. The Portuguese for "puffin" was too cute to pass up.

First, just because you have to see it, I bring to your attention the mutum pinima,

a Brazilian bird which is nearly extinct.

So here we go with the less exotic birds.

English	Portuguese
Blackbird	Graúna
Booby	Atobá
Chicken	Galinha
Crane	Grou
Duck	Pato, Marreco
Eagle	Águia
Falcon	Falcão
Goose	Ganso
Gull	Gaivota
Heron	Garça
Hummingbird	Beija-flor
Owl	Coruja
Parrot	Papagaio
Penguin	Pinguim
Pigeon	Pombo
Puffin	Papagaio do mar
Stork	Cegonha
Stork (black brazilian variety)	Jabiru
Toucan	Tucano
Turkey	Peru
Vulture	Urubú
Woodpecker	Pica-pau

O orelhão escangalhado

"Orelhão" is Portuguese for "big ear," but it has a more common everyday meaning. It's the word for the strangely (to an American's eye) shaped public telephone seen throughout Brazil. They're treated creatively all over the country. I've seen examples of them in the shapes of exotic animals at phones in the zoo, shaped like a coconut on the beach, and some just painted in festive colors.

My favorite song from the Seu Jorge show was aquela Pretinha (São Gançalo). It has a great repeated line "o orelhão da minha rua estava escangalhado o meu cartão tava zerado mas você creia se quiser." I didn't recognize the word "escangalhado." I would normally think to use "quebrada" for something that wasn't working.

I found a funny blog entry trying to explain the difference.

Quebrar é quando não tem mais conserto e escangalhar é quando dá pra consertar.

Quebrar is when it can't be fixed and escangalhar is when repair is possible.

That's probably not quite right, but it seems to be used for things that are out of order.

Snug as a bug in a rug = aconchegado

From our lesson about hostels (albergues) this past week, we were unable to figure out one of the adjectives used to distinguish hostels from hotels. The phrase went something like

Albergues são mais simples e aconchegados aconchegantes que hotéis

After some searching on Google, I think I've come up with a reasonable translation for "aconchegar" and its derivitives "aconchegante" and "aconchegado".

Common phrases including this word are "no teu seio aconchegado" and "no teu colo aconchegado". It's also used to describe the best kind of sleep you can get. The word also appears in geographic descriptions such as "é nessa praia qeu o mar se aconchega" in verb form.

The closest I can get is that it means "snug" and the verb aconchegar means "snuggle." I would agree that the combination of a tighter space and homier feel makes a hostel snugger than a hotel.

In fact, upon making sure I spelled "homier" correctly, I ran into Answer.com's Portuguese definition of "homey" as "aconchegante."