Ep.2 Reducing the entire Portuguese culture to 5 expressions

Last week, I introduced my personal project of reducing the entire Portuguese daily-life interactions into five basic expressions. I also introduced the first of these expressions, pois, and explained its wide and encompassing use. I finished by saying that "most of Portuguese social life, around 50% of all the essentials, is just understanding and using pois. The rest is all optional."

In this lecture I would like to introduce another very important Portuguese phenomenon.

2. "Depende."

While sometimes used in a slightly longer form ("Isso depende."), this sentence, directly and easily translatable to "It depends." or "Depends." has one uniquely Portuguese aspect:

It has a period at the end.

You ask a simple, straightforward question to a Portuguese person. Let's think. Something like: "Would you like to go to the movies?" or "Wanna go to this bar?" or "What are your holiday plans?" or "How much would a university graduate earn in Lisbon?". Then you get an answer:

"It depends."

And this bizarre non-answer is socially acceptable.

Depends on what? If it depends on X or Y, how does it depend on them?

The Portuguese person cannot be bothered with such technicalities. It depends. Period.

Now, if you actually wanted an answer, the Portuguese person will not let you get it so quickly. I had a real-life example which at first was a bit annoying but it slowly turned outright hilarious.

Me getting a ride from a friend: How long do you think we take to get there?

Friend: It depends.

Me: ??

Friend: ...

Me: Depends on what?

Friend: Pois olha, if there is traffic, we may take quite a while. If the roads are empty, we would be pretty quick. With this rain, there may also be an accident.

Me: ????

Friend: ...

Me: Yeah okay, but that's all obvious. I actually need to know this to plan the rest of my day.

Friend: Pois.

Me: ????!!!!

Friend: ...

Me: I mean, if there is traffic, will be take, like, seven hours?

Friend: NO! Que disparate! We would never take that long.

Me: So, how long at most? Five hours?

Friend: Pá, if there is an accident the whole can take four hours.

Me: Great. Now, if the roads are all empty, how long to we take? One hour?

Friend: NO! There's no way we can get there in an hour.

Me: OK, so... two hours? (trying not to laugh out loud)

Friend: Once I did this trip at night, with no cars, it took me like two-and-a-half hours, maybe a bit more.

Me: Wonderful. Thanks, let me text my friends.

True story.

What's the moral here?

As you may remember, Pois acts as a void answer that may mean affirmation, rejection, neither or both. (See previous lecture.) It allows you to avoid giving any opinion in a socially acceptable way.

Depende. (always with a dot throughout these lecture notes), on the other hand, allows you to avoid giving factual information in a socially acceptable way.

And I am serious: Portuguese people actually take "Depende." as a full answer and move on to a different subject without hesitation. It really is socially acceptable.

So if you want to get information, you really have to be persistent and patient. But if you don't want to get information or you simply don't want to think about the question, you can just randomly shoot "Isso depende." and you are juuuuust fine.

When I noticed the power of "Depende.", I was astonished. Initially, I used to think "They just don't care! And they are okay with each other not caring!"; but then I realized something else:

Application of reduction

You may have heard that Portuguese people are always very calm and peaceful. They even made an armed revolution without using the arms! It is true that Portuguese culture is probably one of the most peaceful and chilled cultures in the world.

But how does it work? How come the Portuguese are always so calm? (Just next door, Spanish are so not famous for calmness.)

The equation "Pois + Depende." is your answer.

The entire culture allows you to not give a shit about neither opinions nor facts! You can dodge literally anything that can give you the slightest discomfort. Voila! The calmness is a linear combination of Pois and Depende. .

Thereby, we solved one of the long-lasting mysteries of the Portuguese culture by the rigorous application of only two expressions.

In my next lecture, I will address some of the remaining aspects of the Portuguese daily-life, although I should warn you: very little cultural content is left that is not covered by these two expressions.

The entire Portuguese culture reduced to 5 expressions

In today's lecture, I would like to introduce the five expressions that can explain the entire Portuguese culture.

With these five expressions, you can comprehend and engage in all kinds of day-to-day social interactions. Many Portuguese people are not aware of the power and scope of these expressions, although they do admit their common use.

1. "Pois."

This is a lifesaver. It is somewhere around "right!", "right?", "well..." and "well?". It is neither of them and it is all of them. (It can also be used as "because".)

But besides its meaning, it has one power that no other expression in any language has: Lets the conversation flow no matter what. Here's how:

When you are a foreigner and you are talking about a sophisticated subject or interacting with a child or an elderly, sometimes you don't understand what is being said. In such cases, unless it is important, it is generally considered kind to just nod, smile or say something like "yeah", "right", etc. None of this works if the speaker poses a Yes/No question. You cannot nod, you cannot smile, you cannot say "yes" until understanding the question. But you can always say "Pois.", and the speaker will continue with his/her story.

It's like a void affirmation.

In my first few years in Portugal, I was very reluctant to engage in conversations with strangers because of my lack of language skills. Then I discovered the power of pois. I still had extremely limited vocabulary, a messy and improvised grammar, and extremely narrow experience in listening, but I had pois! I managed having full conversations with the locals in the south, in the interior, in the north, in cities, in villages, everywhere... Yes, I admit that I understood maybe a third of what that alentejana old lady told me, but she doesn't know that! And I did understand the essential: her children living abroad and visiting only very seldom. I didn't catch their profession, their ages, etc. but who cares: it was just a chitchat in a pastelaria where we had a coffee in passing. I didn't have to constantly stop her speech to ask for repetition. It was a pleasant moment for both of us.

But this is just the beginning. Here is an opposite situation:

(Me in Social Security office asking for a document)

Me: So, I need this number to enroll to my university.

Lady in the counter: Well but you need to bring us your income proof first.

Me: My income will be a scholarship. I will take care of that right after enrolling to the university.

Lady in the counter: Okay but we need the income document to give you the Social Security number.

Me: ??

Lady in the counter: ...

Me: But I cannot get the scholarship without enrolling to a university, and I cannot enroll without this number. So I need the number to get my income.

Lady in the counter: Pois.

If this looks surreal, you can confirm with your Portuguese friends... even better if you talk to immigrants in Portugal. 

Please read the above dialogue carefully: this is a void denial.

So the same word can work for answering anything, to the extent that you can evade a Yes/No question by simply affirming the speaker's point, as well as not answering anything, to the extent that you can evade a direct, objective question. The same word is for void affirmation and for void denial.

Pois is so void that it fits everywhere and resolves everything.

I told my Portuguese friends about this multi-functionality and they all responded: Pois!

When I started this "personal project" of reducing the Portuguese culture into five expression, the real challenge was: what in the Portuguese culture is not covered by pois? What social situation may not be explained by pois? So my problem was not to get enough expressions to cover all the situations, but to look for situations that are not covered by pois. I found a few, but I should admit: most of Portuguese social life, around 50% of all the essentials, is just understanding and using pois. The rest is all optional.

Next time, I will tell you the second expression.