You can’t come to Brazil – Portuguese

Fabio at English This Way reminded me of a common problem that non-native Portuguese speakers run into while in Brazil. In terms of the verbs ‘ir’ (to go) and ‘vir’ (to come), Americans see them as interchangable while Brazilians don’t.

Example

In English – “I’m coming to your house right now” (Right)
In Portuguese (but translated back, it means) – “I’m going to your house right now”

Inglês – “Eu estou vindo para sua casa agora” (Wrong)
Português – “Eu estou indo para sua casa agora” (Right)

In Brazil, you can’t go to a place by coming there, you can only go there by going. Likewise, someone can only come to you, you can’t come to them. Questions?

Fast-talking popsicle seller

Just don’t ask for the “de quê” flavor…

Secrets, Guarded and Shared

Recently, I read on a tech site that a Facebook group called Secret London got so big, it had to start thinking bigger, meaning it had to become its own site. Secret London is a group of Londoners who share secret spots with each other in an effort to get to know the London that can’t be found through official channels. This London is about who you know because it’s the ‘whos’ that are the ones that know the ‘whats’ and the ‘wheres’. Anyways, a bit of a discussion is going on as to whether taste is best shared or guarded (best to read ‘guarded’ first).

In the same vein as Secret London, you can bet there exists a Secret Brazil, just not in any official capacity. Practically everyone in Rio, for example, has a secret spot or a favorite place to go to think, to see the sunset, to visit on certain days because they know there’s free admission that day, etc.

The interesting thing about taste is that it’s pretty personal. Socially-speaking, it could be said that taste is non-existent as long as others don’t share the same taste. Saying someone has good taste is also saying that you have enough taste to know such a thing. In terms of the masses and in the same sense as the concept of cool, the labeling of something as tasteful also slowly kills it off. In other words, it gets played-out, over-consumed or in the case of a place, over-crowded, etc. Perhaps it can even lead to a broken window.

So here I am, thinking that I’m giving away all my secrets about Brazil by having this blog/site where I am selective about its content. Upon second thought, I then realize that my purpose here is to show the world that Brazil isn’t just made up of the 4 things I virtually never mention here (Carnival, ‘naked women’, soccer and violence). There’s a Brazil that is little talked about and I’ve made it my job to ’spill the beans’ (or rather the oranges) about the things and places that should be shared.

Where does Laranjeiras, a neighborhood of Rio, fit in? To make a short story long, I have several friends who call the neighborhood ‘home’ and they all say nothing but great things about it. Those who don’t live there but are from the city of Rio, haven’t ever mentioned the neighborhood to me, as if they never gave it any thought. I’ve only been there once so I don’t have much first-hand experience…but when speaking to my friends, I get the feeling Laranjeiras is a bit of a hidden gem, laid-back, upkept, not too crowded…just right.

Here’s a little background.

“Laranjeiras (Portuguese for orange trees) is an upper-middle-class neighborhood located in the Zona Sul area of Rio de Janeiro. Primarily residential, It is one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods, having been founded in the 17th century, with the construction of country houses in the valley located around the Carioca River, which bordered Corcovado Mountain. Because of this, the neighborhood was previously called “Vale do Carioca”, or Carioca Valley.

While primarily residential, several important governmental, cultural, and sports institutions and schools make this a bustling neighborhood. Well known landmarks in Laranjeiras include the Palácio Guanabara (seat of the state government of Rio de Janeiro), the Palácio Laranjeiras (official residence of the state’s governor), and the Parque Guinle (Guinle Park), as well as the headquarters and Laranjeiras Stadium of Fluminense Football Club, and Rio’s branch of the Hebraica Social and Sports Club, and several others.

Well-known people that live, or have lived in Laranjeiras include:

• Cartola, singer, composer and poet
• Cássia Eller, singer
• Cândido Portinari, pintor
• Oscar Niemeyer, arquiteto
• Machado de Assis, writer.”

- Wikipedia

A lot of history happened in and nearby the ‘Vale do Carioca’, as the region encompassing modern-day Glória, Catete and Laranjeiras once was called. The Vale’s claim to fame comes from the fact that the land used to build the first Portuguese house on Brazilian soil (the ‘house of whites’ where the term ‘carioca’ comes from) was built there where a little later, the failed French colony called the ‘French Antartica’ (lasting from 1555 to 1567) was founded. If the French and their indian counterparts (the Tamoios, with whom they traded and joined in an effort to fight off the Portuguese) had secured Guanabara Bay, today Rio, and all of Brazil for that matter, might be full of French descendents. Think that is far-fetched? A half of a century later, the French had control over the northern state of Maranhão, where its capital São Luis is named after King Louis IX. During the time of the two South American French colonies, France was after its fair share of the Americas (especially after taking Quebec in Canada), an effort they aptly called ‘Nouvelle France’.

As for the name Laranjeiras, it was said to have been bestowed upon the neighborhood by the visiting English author Maria Graham in 1821. She stated there were many orange trees in the area although today there is more evidence to the contrary, that there were many more coffee plants than orange trees back then. Besides, Laranjeiras was the name of a beach, albeit absent of orange trees, near Parati. The theory is that somewhere in the neighborhood of Laranjeiras in Lisbon (which had a garden orchard) lies the origins of its carioca cousin.

I’ll leave you with some photos.

Read ‘Journal of a Voyage to Brazil’ – 1824

While meandering around the net, I came across the written account of a well-connected English woman named Maria Graham who published a book in London in 1824 called “Journal of a voyage to Brazil, and residence there, during part of the years 1821, 1822, 1823″ which is 335 pages and can be found online in its entirety here. If you enjoy 19th century literature and if you are curious about how Brazil was in the later years of the Portuguese colony, this book is for you. Of course, you’d have to read it online although no need for squinting as there are options for enlarging each page.

(Laranjeiras in Rio, 1821 – by Maria Graham)

Maria Graham

Maria Graham (later to be known as Maria Calcott) was an accomplished author of travel narratives and children’s books as well as an illustrator. Having grown up in a military family, she traveled through India with her father and later through Italy with her husband, also a military man. With her husband, she continued on to Chile, and later as a widow, to Brazil where she tutored the Princess Donna Maria of the newly independent Brazil. For each of her travels, she wrote a book and each one details for the first time in the English language (in most cases) the rise of the nations through which she traveled.

No reason for the News – Observations

While browsing one of the largest (online) newspapers in Brazil this morning, I noticed one thing…it’s the same thing I always notice, there’s no reason for the (Brazilian) News. While I have no vendetta out for news as a way to introduce a subject to the people, I do have an issue with trash posing as news. One could use the “don’t shoot the messenger” line here but I’m not buying it. Owners have certain preferences which will always make it into their papers and when the populace is kept between left and right politics (aka the Hegelian Dialectic of problem-reaction-solution), it gives organizations such as newspapers the right to say “we’re just reporting what the people want”. Rarely does one take into account the fact that the populace is conditioned by the media and the gov’t, both of which are eternally in bed together…but that’s another story to which I’ll only be devoting the following paragraph.

One can go back all the way to 1808, when the first ever Brazilian newspaper called the ‘Correio Brazilienze‘ began to be circulated in London as well as within Brazil, albeit secretly. The Brazilian owner, Hipólito da Costa, was a well-to-do mason and Brazilian diplomat who once in London, created the ‘Correio’ as a means to disseminate liberal ideas on the emancipation of Brazil from the Portuguese court. Seeing as how the Portuguese royals didn’t take too kindly to such a thing, they funded the creation of a rival newspaper in London called O Investigador Portuguez em Inglaterra. Come 1812 and the Royal Family had had enough of the Correio so they made a secret deal with Hipólito to tone down his criticism of the monarchy in exchange for a the handsome payment of 1,000 silver sterlings (equal to about 500 subscriptions) per year. Meanwhile, his readers were none-the-wiser all the way up until the newspaper ceased circulation in 1822.

Returning to modern reporting, here’s what I found while tallying up the types of articles in the paper today in Brazil.

16 stories on death and violence
7 stories on trivia (entertainment, aka bread and circuses)
9 stories on politics, etc (the kind that are of interest only to select readers)

That’s right. There was nothing to give pause, to require thought or to inspire further pursuit in the news today. Sure, they say some days are ’slow news days’ but I’m not buying that either because I see this day-in, day-out in Brazilian newspapers. I’m not saying the news in other countries is any better as globalization has made us all ‘beat our drum to the same tune’, but it’s sad nonetheless. And for those who are more visually stimulated, there’s always Brazilian TV news, but don’t waste your time, it’s just more of the same.

As with anything else in this world, if you want to be informed, do research, read from multiple sources and multiple viewpoints and find others to discuss those issue with. Proceed with caution though, as it’s important too to not fall into the trap of Plato’s Cave, where we look to our neighbor to confirm our understanding of reality, a ‘reality’ which the media and gov’t hand out on a daily basis.

Why being oneself in Brazil isn’t a breeze

In my time abroad, mostly in Colombia and Brazil, I’ve noticed something significant. No matter how much I study the culture or how good my language skills are, it’s hard to be myself. What do I mean by that? This post by Leo at The Lions Den is self-explainitory, but I’ll repost the part that struck me.

“We hit the Rio Vermelho district and sat outside drinking beer late into the morning. Pretty common occurrence by our standards, but what set this particular outing apart was the subtle cultural interaction that happened between her students and myself. To my glee, I have reached a point in my Portuguese that allows me to be my safado, jokester, no public shame kind of self, and it is indeed most liberating. The process of learning a language has been somewhat difficult for me, as I have had to survive being the quiet awkward observant one for too long. I hate this. Truly hate it.”

I know the pain you’ve endured, Leo. Even with my knowledge of Portuguese being tested at 96%, give or take, that still doesn’t mean I can be myself in Brazil. This has to do with a single factor which has two sides, one is knowing that your spoken Portuguese is fluent and versatile, the other side is being confident enough that you won’t mess up (or that you’ll be okay with sounding like an idiot in the case you do). It’s the former that bothers me.

My spoken Portuguese in a normal conversation with a stranger borders on quite good but not great and this is noticable when you are a native-speaker/stranger talking to me. Luckily, I’ve reached the point where they assume I’m Brazilian but they just can’t place me (although when they do, it’s as a gaúcho while in the North or a Paulista/Carioca otherwise). Nobody likes sounding like an idiot so this makes you think twice about how you say what you say and also about how much to say. For day-to-day operations, I go for ’short and sweet’ but when out to have fun or even to learn, this method doesn’t cut it.

Personally, I like to see how long I can go with others thinking I’m Brazilian but it doesn’t bother me in most cases when they know I’m not. At this point though when they find out I’m not, I’ll get one of two treatments. Either they will pretend I’m a complete moron linguistically or they will treat me normally. Being an American interested in South America has its advantages here. For one, I’ve grown up in a culture where no one really talks to each other so in the case I’m seen as the linguistic moron, it’s a good way to not talk to people I otherwise wouldn’t talk to. A personal interest in Brazil though gives me another option, I can talk to those who treat me normally and that is a chance to learn more about their (regional) culture.

One may come across certain situations which come down to taste, preference and environment rather than language skills. One such example is when you find yourself in a noisy bar and you are with a group of around 5-6 people, perhaps more. Let’s assume, as is the case most of the time, that the conversations going on at the table are in Portuguese. Let’s also assume you can’t understand 85% of what is being said and therefore you have trouble following along. This has zero to do with study-time and everything to do with how you are in your home country. In the U.S., I like bars but I don’t like crowds and by extension that means I don’t like noisy bars. Why? Because you can’t hear a thing, meaning you can’t concentrate, meaning you can’t join in on the conversation and enjoy yourself without going hoarse. In Brazil though (or any other country), not participating makes you seem like you are either a quiet foreigner or a stuck-up foreigner…no one seems to consider the fact that it’s just not your thing to be in a noisy place (if you go to Brazil, get used to it, it’s a noisy place all-together).

Getting back to the main point; being yourself. The things I’ve discussed can definitely make it hard to relax and ’shoot the breeze’ or even to get into a conversation that is on the more intellectual/philisophical side. The solution to being able to be yourself is to either give in 100% to your efforts…meaning study spoken, informal Portuguese like your life depended on it without fear for error and with a mind open to corrections OR to find people who are bilingual, especially if you consider yourself to be bilingual too. In the case of the latter, you can make jokes in both languages and discuss the finer points of an issue in either language, etc., etc. In my experience though, with a long-time conversation partner (be it a friend or what-have-you), you’ll fall into using one language most of the time with the occasional code-switching for words you both understand have a more loaded meaning in one language or the other. Over the years, I swear I did not try to meet and become friends with English-speaking Brazilians but most of my good Brazilian friends are fluent in English. It’s refreshing then to be able to be oneself for a change, to not be the quiet and possibly-frustrated foreigner but to just be the same person you’ve always been, whatever that means to you.

This post goes out to my good friends (you know who you are) whose own interest in my native tongue have allowed for a fuller experience of friendship than I could have had with anyone who is monolingual. After all, my Brazilianist inclinations almost require that a good friend be bilingual so we can be free to share ourselves and our interests in the language we see fit.

Le Café (with English and Portuguese subs)

A French animation on the dangers of having too much caffine and since Brazil is a coffee-drinking nation….(for English subs, check the link below the video)

“A song of the French band Oldelaf and Mr D. from their LP L’album de la maturité. The movie clip has been directed by Stephanie Marguerite and Emilie Tarascou.”

Le Café (in English)

Eu não sei, não quero saber – Informal Portuguese

The phrase is “Eu não sei, eu não quero saber e eu tenho raiva de quem sabe!” (I don’t know, I don’t want to know and I’m angry at who does know!). I’d say it kind of shares the same meaning as the phrase “I just don’t really want to hear about it” in English. Correct me if you have a better translation! ; )

700 Posts on Eyes On Brazil!

Not much to say aside from the title. I’m averaging 32 posts per month and if Eyes On Colombia is counted, that jumps to 39. Getting closer to the answer of the question “now who is going to pay me for this?” I’m just saying, I wouldn’t complain if someone wanted to pay me for doing something similar but for a different subject.

Who owns U.S. debt? Brazil does (kind of)!

Over at Global Shift, there’s an article called “Who owns the U.S. debt?” which talks about and lists those countries and institutions that hold U.S. debt and why that is important. Check out who is number 12 on the list!

“it’s important to know just who owns our debt, not just for domestic reasons, but because it deeply affects foreign policy and international relations. Who does the U.S. have to compromise itself for? Without further ado, here’s the 15 biggest holders of U.S. debt:

15. Russia – 128.1 billion

14. Depository Institutions – 145.4 billion

13. Hong Kong – 146.2 billion

12. Brazil – 157.1 billion”