Brazzil
Language
June/July 2002
In the early 20th century, Lusophones (speakers of Portuguese) boasted that theirs was the only European language having Christian week name days: segunda-feira, terça-feira, quarta-feira, quinta-feira, sexta-feira, then sábado and domingo. It was an empty claim because the names actually meant "second market day," "third market day" and so on. Not much Christian.
Thererefore, only sábado, from the Hebrew shabbath, day of rest, and domingo, from the Latin dominicalis, "of the Lord" had a religious origin. All the others were merely trade names, business names. With the aggravation that even the Day of the Lord was a business day, as it may be inferred from primeira-feira, the first market day. In that calendar, every day was a business day, bar none. By inheriting Portuguese, the Brazilians adopted the entire nomenclature.
Their only concession was to organize the calendar with Sunday as the first day of the week, contrasting with other calendars—like usually the English—which have the week beginning on a segunda-feira, Monday. In reality, what the Portuguese meant was that all other languages had "heathen or pagan names", as they mentioned deities like the moon, Mars, Mercury, etc. Mostly Roman gods and goddesses. But English, as a Germanic language, followed different gods.
Monday, of course, is the "day of the moon" just like in French lundi, Italian lunedi, and Spanish lunes—all "heathen names". But Tuesday is not the day of the Roman god Mars. It's the day of Tiu, the Germanic god of war and the heavens, although it is mardi in French, martedi in Italian and martes in Spanish.
Wednesday is the "day of Odin or Wotan," the Germanic equivalent of Mercury (French mercredi, Italian mercoledì, Spanish miércoles). However, for quarta feira the Germans now use a "practical" name—Mittwoch, the middle of the week.
For quinta-feira the ancient Anglophones (speakers of English), forsook the Roman god Jupiter and replaced him with another Wagnerian character, Thor, god of thunder and lightning. So they got Thursday. The French, Italian, and Spanish names are jeudi, giovedì, jueves.
For the next day, Friday, they scanned Scandinavian mythology and picked the goddess Frigg or Frigga, Odin's wife and patron goddess of married life and of the home, letting go of the Roman Venus, who was simply goddess of love, all kinds of love. Venus gave her name to the French vendredi, Italian venerdì, and Spanish viernes. She also gave her shirt to Brazilians in the shape of a condom—camisa de Vênus, camisinha.
To complete the week, English strangely paid homage to a Roman god, Saturn, in its Germanic translation. So they got Saturday. The Romance equivalents are samedi, sabato, and sábado. And, of course, the sun sponsored Sunday—a direct translation of the Latin Solis dies, the day of the sun. Outside the calendar, another Hebrew term, Amen was adopted by all European Christians. It means verily, certainly, truly.
For other items, the Portuguese adopted a number of Arabic terms, when Spanish, for instance, kept Vulgar Latin. Alfaiate, tailor, sastre in Spanish, is one of them. Tâmara for date (fruit of a palm tree) is another. But then there is tamarindo, English tamarind. This is an Arabic term, comes from tamar ul Hind—tâmara da Índia or date from India.
Incidentally, the tamarind is the largest legume. Legumes are plants that produce seeds in pods, favas or bainhas. It was the French who started calling all table vegetables legumes, a crass error, as lettuce alface, tomato tomate, carrot cenoura are NOT legumes. All sorts of beans, navy beans, white beans, red beans, and also feijão mulatinho, feijão branco, feijão preto are legumes the same as all favas or vagens.
An interesting case is that of the vanilla, a legitimate legume, used in culinary arts. It comes from the Spanish vainilla, little vaina which they got from the Latin vagina. The Portuguese softened the V into B and today call it baunilha. Perhaps now everybody understands why the French were, and still are, wrong.
You all know how Spanish has penetrated American English, specially with Mexican words in the West and Cuban and Central American words in the East. I am not talking only of food terms, tacos, tortillas, chalupas, chimichangas, pupusas. Spanish is all over the place. It has even displaced old English words such as coriander, Spanish cilantro, Portuguese coentro.
We have in the past mentioned chocolate and cacauhetes. What would you say of alligator being a Spanish word, you know, jacaré in Portuguese? The Spaniards called this saurian El lagarto. Soon it became ellagarto and, by simple vowel metastasis, it became ellagator, then elligator and finally alligator. Curiously, the Portuguese word lagarto, a first cousin of the Spanish term, is often pronounced "largato"—with a different kind of vowel metastasis—specially by natives of Rio de Janeiro to the North. This tongue slip communicated to another animal, very common in warm lands, the miniature lagartixa (diminutive lizard) which apparently emigrated from Africa with the slaves. It inhabits gardens of flowers and vegetables and eat bugs by the thousands. Cariocas tend to call it largatixa.
Buffeted by a very rich language like English, living and working with Spanish-speaking people, whose language is at the same time so similar and so different, the poor Brazucas seem to be losing the race. Then they meet the computer and fell under the dictatorship of the geeks who know lhufas (nothing, zilch) about Portuguese and most other languages. But the geniuses of Silicon Valley have the power and abuse it.
If you are using an American computer to write Portuguese, you soon discover that you cannot "jogar nada for a", I mean the 4-letter word that means out. The computer corrects it for you, inserting a space between for and a. This is pretty stupid and plain buttinski. The Latin plural of "forum" is "fora" but you have to know a couple of tricks to escape the eagle-eyed computer. I write forsssssa then go back and carefully delete the esses. It usually works. Try it. Ou jogue o computador fora (Or throw your computer away.)
This time I had no space to answer letters and consultations. But my policy is to keep the door open to those who have e-mail. All others, please write c/o Brazzil. Vewilson@3oaks.com
©2002 Wilson Velloso