There’s this word in Portuguese, “saudade”. It means roughly “nostalgic yearning” in English. It’s kind of a sad feeling. But I have no interest in talking about the feeling. Well I do. But not now. Right now my bone to pick is with the word.
You see, lusophones (that’s people who speak Portuguese, The More You Know™) claim that “saudade” cannot be translated into English. They propose that there is no word in English that can effectively capture all the subtle nuances of saudade.
This is complete bullshit for two reasons.
On one hand, the linguistic hand, every word is translatable precisely because no word is precisely translatable. Even when two people are speaking the same language their interpretations of the words are going to be different (exactly what makes a particular fire a “blaze”, what makes a person “wretched”) but people are generally perceptive enough to fill in the blanks. This gap-closing sense is what makes “nostalgic yearning” seem to do the job pretty well as far as “saudade” is concerned. There is a magical ability called connotation or, in some circles, thought, that makes the subtle nuances just happen to occur to the person hearing the word. It is the very reason poetry can exist at all.
On the other hand, the asshole hand, the lusophones are making this claim out of a sense of cultural superiority. Only the Portuguese, with their highly-evolved hearts, could feel and thus ascribe a word to an intense emotion like saudade. Just another member of their incredibly versatile language. These are the sort of underhanded ego-stroking techniques that make people with ethnic pride so annoying.
I have a Swedish-speaking friend who prefers writing in English to Swedish because he feels that when he says something in Swedish, he’s saying it the only way it can possibly be said. Food for thought. Two-faced pro-English hypocritical food for thought, but still.
I guess you can consider this last line here a disclaimer that I don’t have anything against the Portuguese or any other culture but I give it begrudgingly because it dignifies any dumbass who thinks I do.
