Ep.4 Reducing the entire Portuguese culture to 5 expressions

In the previous lectures, I introduced and analyzed "Pois", "Depende." and "Já agora". I demonstrated how Pois lets you dodge all opinion-based questions and how Depende. allows you to dodge fact-based questions, then went on to explain how Já agora puts you in pro-active position even though you might have limited language skills.

In this lecture, we will study a much more delicate situation about social interactions. The claim is that once the pupil understands this last concept, they can consider themselves sufficiently integrated to the Portuguese culture.

As a warm-up exercise, I invite you to consider the following situation.

You and a friend agree to meet up on Thursday at 9pm. It's 8.30pm, you may be already at the meeting place or perhaps on your way. You receive a message from your friend saying they won't come. How would that message look like?

On one end of the spectrum, you have northern European cultures, where such a thing would virtually never happen. On the other end of the spectrum, you have maybe something like North African cultures where you wouldn't receive any message - you would probably be quite late as well anyway. These extreme examples are not useful for our purposes. Try to think of more similar cultures.

One option is that informing by a message can be rude, so your friend would have to call you to explain their situation.

Another option is that the message would describe the excuse.

In Portugal and only in Portugal, "Surgiu um imprevisto" is considered a sufficient explanation.

4. "Surgiu um imprevisto"

I would translate "Surgiu um imprevisto" as "Something came up". 

In Portugal, your friend would say "Something came up. I won't be able to make it to our meeting today.". (Surgiu um imprevisto, não vou poder ir hoje.)

In any other culture I am familiar with, this is the rudest possible way. I myself receive messages like this on a monthly basis. In my first few years, this was a serious concern for me: What did I do wrong? Why do these people don't give a shit about me? I am not such a bad person to discard by a message like this... What is wrong with me?

Think about the cultural shock: I am from Turkey. When you skip a meetup, you would set up an entire story as an excuse. I recall my friends explaining their mother's medical complications in detail and their friends' messed up emotional lives to me, because those were the excuses why they couldn't make it to our meetup.

In Portugal, no one cares. "Something came up." A thing. I don't have to tell you what it is. I don't have to justify anything to you. I am not coming to our meet up. Fuck you.

To be fair, you can also interpret this as a chilled-out culture where people are tolerant and understanding towards each other. In fact, it is really civilized not to ask what's wrong, and let the other person decide if and when they would be ready to tell about their problem. It is also a manifestation of a reserved culture.

Then I started testing this. And I verified that people do not trust you less because you surgiu um imprevisto them. It really is acceptable.

It is acceptable when you miss out a meeting, when you are late, when you fail a deadline, when you skip a task - basically, whenever you fail other people's expectations.

How the four expressions build up

The four expressions identified in this online course allow you to slide and flow through all kinds of day-to-day social interactions. They also allow you to deeply grasp how Portuguese people surf through their daily lives.

Look at these expressions carefully, and you will realize that key characteristics of the Portuguese culture are indeed deducible from them.

We already mentioned calm, peaceful, tolerant. subtle and reserved throughout the lectures. Now if you check travel guidebooks or online articles on Portuguese cultures, these are the keywords you will keep on encountering. And they are all concepts complex yet reducible to four expressions.

Project Finale

You may now be expecting a fifth expression.

There is none.

My claim is that if you fully comprehend the four expressions, you have it all figured out. You don't need any other expression.

However, as any other serious scientist would also do, I would apply methodological skepticism in this study, and leave a margin of error.

The margin of error would be the fifth expression. I analyzed and demonstrated how four expressions can explain the entire Portuguese culture. I myself fail to find a social situation that may not be reduced to these four expressions. I have been asking around, and other people also failed. But from a perspective of rigor, I would not publicize the results of this study as "4 expressions" but instead as "5 expressions", so as to allow for an eventual correction to the theory.

Therefore, we are finalizing this project with this article.

I hope you enjoyed the project. If you got triggered or offended, I would be proud of myself. (Any serious scientific revolution is expected to cause some discomfort after all.)

Finally, if you disagree with this reduction process, I challenge you to come up with a social situation that cannot be reduced to these cases. You can further suggest the fifth expression that would complement the theory.