Book Review: Haraldo Maranhão – Dicionário de Futebol

If you’re a fan of football you’ll love this book. And, let’s face it, even if you’re not but you want to find out a bit about what makes Brazilians tick then a dictionary of football terms is a good place to start.

Haraldo Maranhão – a jourmalist and writer who has worked for various prestigious Brazilian newspapers and co-authored several titles about Brazilian football and the World Cup – has set about putting in one place all those little words, phrases, expressions and idioms that make talking football seem like talking a new language altogether. At 274 pages long he’s not skimped on his duties. If you’ve read football reports and been confused by the expression “holding the lantern”  then this is going to help a lot. (Holding the lantern = the team in last place in the table). The definitions are clearly written and often contain examples from newspapers and real uses of the words or phrases in question.

I genuinely think non-football fans would find it interesting as it has a lot to say about how flexible Portuguese is and how slang is generated from other more common words . For example, “Comer a Bola” = to eat the ball is “to jogar excepionalmente bem” = to play very well. Similarly, as football is so fundamental to the makeup of Brazilian identity football slang is often also the slang of everyday life. For instance, “pontapé inícial” = kick-off (=lit, I guess, the first contact of the foot!) is used throughout life as an idiom to mean the start of anything. Lastly, if you’re intersted in etymology you’ll see a lot of words that have been incorporated from English or other languages and been “Portugesised” along the way. So, words such as “baque” and “alfe” are distortions of the English words “back” and “half” respectively and are occasionally used in Brazilian Portuguese football terminology.

To conclude, this book may not be the most useful reference book you’ll ever buy and I wouldn’t recommend reading it from cover to cover. I also have no idea how possible it is to get hold of outside Brazil but it’s certainly a lot of fun and would make a great Christmas present for a serious Portuguese-speaking fan of football or the Brazilian Portuguese language.

Click here for more information about the book.

Informal online dictionary of Brazilian Portuguese

www.dictionarioinformal.com.br. Just found this excellent site (which I’ll put as a link in the reference links in the side column) which is a dictionary of informal Portuguese. It has photos / pictures accompanying the entries to help make it easier and has entries for many abbreviations, idioms, phrases and expressions which a standard translator or dictionary would miss. Warning: some of the content on this site is, let’s say, fairly adult in nature!

Book Review: Jack Scholes – Quebrar o galho / Break the branch

Jack Scholes is a language practitioner and a man with a great wealth of experience teaching English and learning and speaking Portuguese in Brazil. He recently spoke at a conference I attended and this was one of his most recent titles. A colleague of mine bought this book so I had a chance to read it and I thought I’d recommend it on here because it’s quite helpful for learners of Portuguese.

The book lists alphabetically various Brazilian Portuguese phrases and idioms or unusual words and usages and provides explanations in context for an English-speaking audience. The title of the book - Quebrar o galho (Break the Branch) is one such Brazilian idiom meaning to improvise, to do something any-old-way. It’s a great little reference book and quite a fun read – what I would call a great “toilet” book, something to leave by the loo (UK)/ jon (USA) and flick through when you’re doing your business.

Having said that, the book is possibly a bit too concise as I think there are multiple meanings and nuances to some of the phrases involved. For example, dor-de-cotovelo (pain in the elbow) is an idiom which, according to Jack Scholes, just means “jealousy”. My wife, a nordestino Brazilian, claims that the expression really refers to jealousy between lovers – in other words, it’s quite an adult phrase and used in only specific situations. Equally, at one point, Jack Scholes lists a variety of uses for the word “mal”, (which he says means “not well”) but neglects to mention that the word can also be used to stand for wicked or evil.

I’m not sure how easy it is to get a hold of this in the UK or the USA as the version I have is published in Brazil, but for intermediate learners of Brazilian Portuguese it would make a handy addition to your textbooks. In any case, I’ll list it in the Links & Resources page. Click here for more information on the title.