MP3 Audio (Lesson) | MP3 Audio (Dialog)
Careful! One of life’s most challenging questions, “Honey, do I look fat in this dress?” Of course the answer is ‘no.’ And in today’s lesson we learn how to subtly handle this task in Portuguese.
| A: | Querido, estou gorda nesse vestido? Honey, do I look fat in this dress? | |
| B: | Não vem com essa, claro que eu não vou responder essa pergunta! Don’t come with that, of course I’m not going to answer that question! | |
| A: | Quer dizer que sim, estou gorda. That means yes, I do look fat. | |
| B: | Eu não disse isto, você está linda. I never said that, you look great. |
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Thank you very much for these podcasts. I’m having a blast with them.
A question about 2nd line: the husband says “Don’t start with that”, which was “não vem com essa” in Portuguese. It looks to me that since essa is feminine there is some word after essa which was implied but not spoken. Could it be coisa? Also, would isso be wrong?
Exactly, with “não vem com essa” essa could be for coisa. Notice that one could just as easily say, “não vem com esse” where esse might be related to “negócio.”
Obrigado! This made me look up “negócio”. Such a versatile word in Portuguese.
Indeed! You start adding “negócio” and you will add tons of new statements. BTW, in the original Latin, ocio = pleasure, and neg is the negation, so negócio (business) was the negation of pleasure!
Could it be that the “essa” in “Não vem com essa” refers to something like “bobagem”?
Nice question. OK, the grammar explanation is that pronouns replace a noun, and stand in for that noun. Some times this is specific and sometimes it is more abstract. If I say the “Isso é interessante.” notice that “isso” stands for some abstract idea, “That is interesting.” If however, I say “Essa é interessante” there is something in my brain that goes from the abstract “isso” to a specific feminine noun “essa.” Maybe, for example I was thinking in my brain that “essa” represented “essa ideia” because “ideia” is a feminine noun. Or maybe I say, “esse é interessante” because my brain is thinking of some specific masculine noun, like perhaps “esse problema.” Truth told, our translation for isso é interessante, essa é interessante, or esse é interessante are all the same, “That is interesting.” And all are correct, it is simply if my brain is thinking of some abstract idea or some specific noun. So, in the case of “não vem com essa” the word “essa” shows that the speaker was thinking of some specific feminine noun, and “bobabem” could easily be such a word. Long answer, but hopefully that helps.