Path · Portugal · Language
A language that went to sea
Saudade, four continents, Camões
A word people call impossible to translate, a language that went aboard with the caravels, a poet schoolchildren recite. This chapter tells where Portuguese comes from and how it travelled, with the texts that say so.
Context first
This one opens without an account, and it is read before the lessons.
- The place
- The era
- The people
The lessons in this path
- 1Saudade, the word they call untranslatableSaudade comes from Latin solitas, solitude. Since the 15th century, Portuguese writers have said no other language has the word; in 1914, Carolina Michaëlis answered that this is an illusion: German Sehnsucht comes close.9 min
- 2Why Portuguese is spoken on four continentsPortuguese was born in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula. Ships, colonies, the slave trade and laws carried it to four continents, and those who learned it made it their own: over 260 million speakers today.9 min
- 3Camões, the poet people reciteOs Lusíadas, printed in Lisbon in 1572, sings Vasco da Gama’s voyage in ten cantos. In canto V the giant Adamastor, the Cape of Tempests, threatens the fleet. Camões died on 10 June 1580: today, that is Portugal Day.9 min
How these lessons are written
Each lesson starts from a brief and from period sources: Wikisource, Gallica, Persée, archives and museum websites. A fact that cannot be tied to one of them does not get written. The sources are listed under each lesson, linked directly.
The rhythm
A lesson takes five minutes, four questions at the end, then a review the next day, at three days, seven, twenty-one and sixty. It is that spaced return that makes what you read stay. One a day is enough, and nothing stops you doing several.