Re: language-thinking-speech

Ilda Carreiro King (kingil who-is-at bc.edu)
Sun, 28 Mar 1999 18:30:44 -0500

The closest I can come to translating "saudade" into English is "longing =
to
see you" but not quite that intensity. Somewhat of a nostalgic pang of
wishing you could see someone. There is no one word I can think of that
captures it.

Ilda

Ricardo Ottoni wrote:

> Throwing some more wood over fire:
>
> "SAUDADE" for example,
> is a concept simbolyzed in a portuguese language word that we cannot
> translate correctly by the word "MISS" in english.
>
> I understand that To say "I MISS YOU" is not the same as to say in
> portuguese "EU TENHO/SINTO SAUDADE DE VOC=CA". The concept of "SAUDADE"=
is
> social or scientifc as LURIA clears up in his 'Social and cultural basi=
s
> of cognitive development". So it's an abstraction or something that is
> rooted in the historical/social development of portuguese culture, like
> " TO MISS" is in fact to english/american culture.
>
> For a brazilian country woman/man from northwest part of Brazil, to fee=
l
> "SAUDADE" of someone means something very different from this feeling t=
o
> a brazilian south country woman/man. By the way, in 'Central
> Station'(movie picture of Walter Salles) it's easy to understand that
> the way poor and non literacyted people feel "SAUDADE" is very strange
> and unknown to middle class people who live in big cities and that were
> literacyted (although Walter Salles had pictured it since his high
> middle class perspective and using hollywood convention of making
> pictures - very different from Eisenstein/Glauber/Godard and other
> movie makers/directors).
>
> Beyond this fact,
> that language/speech rebuilts thinking inside a given culture (differen=
t
> social class speech/urban tribes etc)
> I believe language/speech rebuilts thinkink in different ways since a
> transcultural perspective.