The night was adolescent and my girlfriend and I were strolling the streets of London.
As we’re walking along, she takes a look up to the sky.
“Do you know if the moon is getting bigger or smaller this evening?”
“Not really, dear, no…”
“It’s funny. We have a saying in Portuguese to know that immediately.”
“Is it one of those ones that will make me sound like I’m choking on a fur ball?”
“Probably.”
“Eh, who am I kidding, they all do. Go on then.”
She curls a little smile in the corner of her face.
“A lua é mentirosa.”
Translated in English…
The moon is a liar.
“Yeah, you’ll need to explain that one a bit further…”
In Portuguese, they have the verb ‘crescer’ which means to grow or get bigger. They also have the verb ‘descrescer’, the antonym, which means to shrink or get smaller.
Now, when you next look at the moon, try this.
The light of the moon will curve on the left side or the right side, forming something that resembles either the letter C or D.
Grow = Crescer
Shrink = Descrescer
Except there’s a small problem — they signify the opposite.
When the moon is growing, it forms a D shape.
When the moon is shrinking, it forms a C shape.
The opposite of the first letter of each verb.
So the saying is formed — The moon is a liar.
When I first heard this, I was bowled over by the beauty of that statement. From a linguistic perspective, it’s a case of personification - giving the moon human-like qualities. But it wasn’t just that.
It connected a way of seeing the world I’d never experienced before. Thinking of the moon as a liar ignited all kinds of imagery into my mind. All because of a phrase only possible to conceive in the Portuguese language.
This is one of the things I love about all languages.
They offer unique insights, not just into culture, but into how we literally view the world.
As a writer, this excites me beyond belief.
I’ve been learning Portuguese properly for about 4 years now, and some of their beautiful ways of constructing language have continued to fascinate me.
Why should we be shackled by the chains of our native language? Heck, it should be our duty as writers to explore linguistic frontiers — pioneers of the written word.
Portuguese has unearthed many gems for me, and I’ll share a few more instances with you now.
The first one is a word that can’t be translated perfectly into English:
Saudade.
The closest we can get to this in English is a state of intense nostalgia and longing for someone or something.
‘I miss you’ doesn’t come close to the passion this word conveys.
The word itself aims to encapsulate that feeling you get in the pit of your stomach. But what gets even more fascinating is when you study the grammatical structures around the word in use.
In English, we would use a Subject + Verb + Object structure
‘I miss you.’
But in Portuguese, they treat this state as a noun.
‘Eu tenho saudades para ti.’
I have ‘saudades’ for you.
What a fascinating way of treating emotions as not just something we express through action in the form of verbs, but as something tangible and concrete in the form of a noun.
Another example interestingly showcases the opposite.
‘He’s been sad recently.’
In Portuguese, they would typically say:
‘Ele anda triste.’
Translated literally…
‘He walks sad.’
I always smile at this, as if the Portuguese knew about the oh-so-cliché advice of Show, Don’t Tell and cooked it into their language.
Expressing sadness like it inhabits you and expels itself through your body; using that verbal structure to depict something we view as a descriptive emotion in English. They’re not just these random conjurations in our mind, but the driver behind the wheel.
One final example comes from a song by one of my favourite Portuguese musicians - Jorge Palma - a soulsman who deals in the finest figures of speech.
I could analyse any of his songs, but I’ll give you a couple of lines from one that touched my heart.
The song is called ‘Encosta-te a mim’ or ‘Lean On Me’.
In one of the verses, he sings the hauntingly beautiful lines:
Everything I saw
I'm sharing with you, and what I didn't live
I'll invent with you one day
Our brains grow to love patterns, and we typically associate the word ‘invent’ with machinery or technology or advancement.
But his use of it here objectifies the future. It turns it into something that could take on other actions. Why couldn’t the future burn or laugh or run away or tease? We suddenly begin to interact with the noun in a way that’s fresh and different — and our brains are imagery addicts who love a fresh fix.
These are just a few examples in Portuguese that have sparked my curiosity.
If I’d never started learning the language, I wouldn’t have discovered many ideas that influence my writing style today. But the benefits don’t just stop with writing…
They alter your fundamental character and brain chemistry, too.
One study at Northwestern University showed that bilingual individuals could better pick out a speaker's voice amidst distracting noises.
Another 2012 study performed by Behzad Ghonsooly and Sara Showqi concluded that learning a second language enhances our abilities in planning, cognitive flexibility and working memory, or in other words — the 3 pillars on which creativity operates.
Another showed that bilingual speakers have a signicantly higher amount of grey matter present in their brains. This is the tissue that processes and sends information to different parts of the body.
Learning a second language will literally make you experience the world more.
On top of all this comes the benefit of being able to immerse yourself in different cultures, learn about foreign history, understand the roots of native art and so much more.
I can’t advocate learning a second language enough. For me as a writer, it’s opened up a whole new den of ideas for me to dive deeper into. The more I go down this rabbit hole, the more fascinated I become, and the more I feel my writing evolve into something unique.
Your words will change lives when you change how you see the world.
How beautiful! Subtle.
My second language is German (halting German albeit) which holds the distinction of housing many long words as it is an "agglutinative" language. ie new words are formed by jamming smaller words together: e.g., "Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitaenswitwe", meaning "widow of a Danube steamboat company captain". Not much artistry or finesse but no room for misinterpretation either!.
I wonder if this says anything about the German character? (I am half German on my father's side I should add!)