News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Twinge of Saudade: Biographies of Abba by kaycebasques on Saturday January 04, 2025 @12:31PM (#42596175)
Interesting, is "saudade" popular enough now that people are using it without explanation? I searched for the term in the article and it doesn't seem to be defined. Extra unexpected because there does not seem to be any connection to a Portuguese-speaking country in the article. Has it reached "hygge" status?

Brazilians (my wife included) describe saudade as a sort of deep longing to be back with a loved one in person. Not sure if it's used in all Portuguese-speaking places or just Brazil (or where the term originated for that matter). The translation honestly seems straightforward enough but often when you ask someone to translate, they get that "on the tip of the tongue" look on their face and say English doesn't really have the right words for it.

Re:Twinge of Saudade: Biographies of Abba by n4r9 on Saturday January 04, 2025 @01:40PM (#42596692)
The Portuguese entry into the Eurovision song contest in 2022 was a beautiful song called "Saudade" by Maro. It rightly won the contest, and that's how my wife and I know the term (we still sing the chorus around the house sometimes). So it's unexpectedly popular in various European countries.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=eQul-rkcGPQ

Re:Twinge of Saudade: Biographies of Abba by croisillon on Saturday January 04, 2025 @03:41PM (#42597534)
how do you mean "it won the contest"?
Re:Twinge of Saudade: Biographies of Abba by ngcazz on Saturday January 04, 2025 @04:24PM (#42597786)
It was the Portuguese entry in the Eurovision song contest, so it won the Portuguese contest.
Re:Twinge of Saudade: Biographies of Abba by n4r9 on Sunday January 05, 2025 @04:54AM (#42600768)
Ah I was wrong! I thought it won Eurovision but it actually came ninth. Of course, that was the year Ukraine won from the public vote due to solidarity after Russia's invasion.
Re:Twinge of Saudade: Biographies of Abba by croisillon on Sunday January 05, 2025 @07:17AM (#42601302)
thanks for your answer, in retrospect i always tend to believe my favorite song won ;)

i really liked Moldova in 2022! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGNT5Uh-WKw

Re:Twinge of Saudade: Biographies of Abba by n4r9 on Sunday January 05, 2025 @11:18AM (#42602773)
Yes, I even remember wondering whether they got under-voted because of links with Russia :/
Re:Twinge of Saudade: Biographies of Abba by leonelc on Saturday January 04, 2025 @01:15PM (#42596546)
It's quite big in European Portuguese and has always been, it's not a Brazilian thing.

Deep longing is close, but it's more nuanced, and it doesn't have to be longing for someone, it can be someplace or activity, it also involves a kind of active recollection where you try to relive stuff in your memory, and there's an element of hope that you will experience whatever it is you miss again.

Re:Twinge of Saudade: Biographies of Abba by tgv on Saturday January 04, 2025 @01:11PM (#42596512)
I think you're right that it's 'hygge'-like. Saudade is a common Portuguese word, and (as far as I know) not limited to loving people, but also open to wider nostalgia. It apparently stems from solitatem (solitude). That it would apply to ABBA's music seems to me the result of the artistic-intellectual tendency to re-interpret everything in the opposite direction.
Re:Twinge of Saudade: Biographies of Abba by nolito on Saturday January 04, 2025 @01:53PM (#42596784)
"Hygge" - portuguese living in Denmark - is not related to "saudade". "Saudade" is as stated by others deep longing with a touch of depression and enjoying that. "Hygge" is something you do to have a good time - with yourself or others.
Re:Twinge of Saudade: Biographies of Abba by kaycebasques on Saturday January 04, 2025 @03:23PM (#42597423)
When I mentioned "hygge" I did not mean to imply that they have the same meaning. I was referring to the fact that "hygge" has entered mainstream English culture, to the point where a lot of English speakers know what it means. I was wondering whether "saudade" now has a similar level of mainstream awareness.
Re:Twinge of Saudade: Biographies of Abba by linfocito on Saturday January 04, 2025 @01:19PM (#42596571)
Brazilian here. I honestly don’t get the idea of the pretense uniqueness of the term “saudade”. Sure there is not an equivalent noun in English, but, to me, the verb “to miss” someone or some place conveys precisely the same feeling.
Re:Twinge of Saudade: Biographies of Abba by hausen on Saturday January 04, 2025 @03:17PM (#42597384)
Another Brazilian here: I'm pretty sure "yearning" is that equivalent noun.
Re:Twinge of Saudade: Biographies of Abba by lucasoshiro on Saturday January 04, 2025 @05:46PM (#42598236)
> the verb “to miss” someone or some place conveys precisely the same feeling

It's not a perfect translation, as you can "miss a call", "miss a good opportunity", etc and it doesn't mean that you are feeling saudade of it. But this case would be almost ok, just like we don't have a single word, for example, for the verb "to handle", which is a word that has almost the same idea in several contexts but we need a different word for each one ("lidar", "manipular", "mexer", "operar", "cuidar", "tratar", ...)

However, "to miss" is a verb and would be a translation for "sentir saudade". There's still no precise word for the noun "saudade", the feeling itself. Perhaps the closest one is "nostalgia", but it's still not exactly the same as nostalgia has this sense of something that happened in a distant past, and it is more related to the past itself than a person, a thing, etc. Even in Portuguese we have the word "nostalgia", but no one says "estou sentido nostalgia de você", we say "estou sentindo saudade de você". And we can feel saudade of something that happened yesterday, but not nostalgia.

Re:Twinge of Saudade: Biographies of Abba by dalmo3 on Saturday January 04, 2025 @07:36PM (#42598736)
How often do you use the standalone noun out of context though?

Every real world usage of the term I can think of has it in the verbal form: "sentir saudade", "estar com saudade", "dar saudade", "a saudade é grande". Even in the sentence "Saudade" the verb is implied.

In all those cases it can be accurately translated as "to miss".

Re:Twinge of Saudade: Biographies of Abba by lucasoshiro on Monday January 06, 2025 @08:34AM (#42610432)
> How often do you use the standalone noun out of context though?

The same frequency as any other noun of feeling, like happiness, sadness, hate, etc. Saying "to miss" may imply that one is feeling that emotion but doesn't have a name to it, like having the emotion but not having the word that describes it.

Even though there are some ways to describe that idea it needs an extra effort, so it's not well defined as in Portuguese. Imagine not having a word for "responsibility", "power", "partnership" or other abstract concept: you can define them through subordinate clauses but it will not define that concepts (that's why have words).

And just for fun: if Inside Out was made in Brazil I can see clearly that Saudade would be a character (and a major one, the saudade of home is what leads to the climax), but it can't exist because it wouldn't have a word for that. In the second movie we have Nostalgia, but it's a minor character which wouldn't do what happened in the first movie (thus, we can see the difference)

Re:Twinge of Saudade: Biographies of Abba by lucasoshiro on Saturday January 04, 2025 @05:31PM (#42598164)
> saudade as a sort of deep longing to be back with a loved one in person

Brazilian here. Not only a person, it can be a place, a thing, a scent, a moment and so on. It's kind of a nostalgia, but it doesn't need to be exactly related to a distant time. For example, if you are traveling you can feel saudade of your home the moment in the first day. You may also feel saudade when you listen to a song that you used to listen in a good moment of your life.

Nowadays everyone knows that it's a word that only exists in Portuguese (and in Galician, which is really close to Portuguese), but it was really shocking for me and other people that almost no other language has a similar word. Perhaps it is one of the most used words for describing a feeling here, it's like not having a word for "love", "anger" or "envy".

Other unique thing in Portuguese is that we have two verbs for the verb "to be": "ser" and "estar". "Ser" is when something always "is" and "estar" is for something that "is" at this moment. For example: if you translate "she is beautiful" as "ser" you expect that she is beautiful everyday, in all situations, while if you translate as "estar" is because she is looking good at this moment (perhaps she is wearing a nice dress, or recently has her hair cut, etc). Only having this in Portuguese was also shocking to me, as that distinction is natural for us.

Re:Twinge of Saudade: Biographies of Abba by mixmastamyk on Sunday January 05, 2025 @03:34AM (#42600513)
Ser/estar in Spanish as well.