In Finnish we have “kissanristiäiset” (literally means a cat’s christening), which means some trivial and meaningless celebration/event.
In Finnish we have “kissanristiäiset” (literally means a cat’s christening), which means some trivial and meaningless celebration/event.
There’s a bunch of weird ones in Portuguese.
“While you’re bringing corn, I already ate the polenta” is brutal
Small note, this is Brazilian Portuguese 🇧🇷 (PT-BR), not European Portuguese 🇵🇹 (PT-PT). I never heard most of these. We do have the “farinha do mesmo saco” and “comer o pão que o diabo amassou” though.
One important detail is that those country-based labels are at most abstractions or geographical terms. “Brazilian Portuguese” and “European Portuguese” aren’t actual, well-defined dialects; what people actually speak is local, in both sides. (e.g. “Paulistano Portuguese”, “Alentejano Portuguese”, “Estremenho Portuguese”, you get the idea.)
This is relevant here because I wouldn’t be surprised if plenty Brazilians never heard some of those. For example, “um polaco de cada colônia” only makes sense in Paraná, Polish immigration here was large enough to make some people call other immigrants “Poles”, even Germans and Italians. So the “Poles from each colony” are usually people/things that you might think that are related, but have zero to do with each other.
Haven’t seen some of these before. Ones I particularly like are:
Wash your hands of [something] is also in American English, although I think more typically used when you were already involved in something then removed yourself from the situation
Another Bible reference; this one refers to Roman governor Pontius Pilate washing his hands to indicate being done with the issue of Jesus’s execution.
Only a few of these - “comer o pão que o diabo amassou”, “vai ver se estou na esquina” - are used in Portugal, so they’re mostly used in Brasil.
The language hasn’t drifted all that much in between both countries during the last couple of hundred years but expressions seem to tend to be the first to drift away.
It also seems to me that expressions drift away faster than other aspects of the language. Perhaps due to their casual nature, or due to context. And they’re often extremely local, too - for example, I’ve heard nordestinos using “sacrifício de mundo” (lit. world sacrifice) to refer to difficult things, while folks here in Paraná practically never do it. While saying that something is “uma vaca no milharal” (a cow in the corn farm - wrecking everything with no regards or reason) usually outs the person as from a rural background.
For speakers from Portugal there’s an additional weird expression: pila is used here in Paraná as a completely innocent word for money, e.g. “dois pila” two bucks. (In PT I believe that it’s used as a slang for dick.)
You are correct on the pila thing, though it’s old fashioned and kinda children’s language.
Funilly enough and if I remember it correctly, a pila is a kind of throwable spear from the Roman times.
You might be into something here. The spear is pilum, and Portuguese reborrowed it as pilo. However Portuguese used to repurpose the gender change for specific types of something, specially for Latin neuter words: see ovo/ova, casco/casca, jarro/jarra, barco/barca. It’s possible that the slang appeared this way, with people referring to their dicks as a type of spear. (It’s kind of childish but fairly common; c.f. caralho from caraculum “small mast”)
There’s also another Latin pila meaning mortar, but it got inherited by Portuguese as pia “sink”.
(IIRC pila-as-money is from a politician, Raul Pilla.)
Alternative for “vai ver se estou na esquina” is “vai catar coquinho” (go gather little coconuts), I guess because it’s a silly, futile task?
I always said it as while you’re bringing the wheat I already ate the bread. But in my family we exaggerated it for effect: while you’re buying the wheat seed, I already shat the bread 😂
Like, “enquanto você tá comprando o trigo, já caguei o pão”? That’s hilarious!
Isso, e era competição entre meus irmãos pra exagerar ao máximo : tipo, enquanto você estava a caminho da loja pra comprar o trigo, eu já comi o pão, caguei, fiz composto com a merda e plantei mais trigo, etc, etc