#NOSTALGIA PRONUNCIATION HOW TO#

Until, that is, my mother knocked on my door one afternoon shortly before my 16th birthday and informed me that he had passed away from a heart attack. I cherished these afternoons with my grandfather, and I looked forward to them every year. Considering I was one of his 20+ grandchildren, having his exclusive attention for those fleeting hours made me feel so special. If I was really lucky, we would stop by a florist on the way home and buy a yellow rose (his favorite flower). How silly it was for us to even drive, considering it was just a 10 minute walk! But that was our thing - to drive to the local sugarcane man, watch him chop up and grind long sugarcane sticks into his rickety metal press, and sit by the roadside, clutching our warm plastic cups of sugarcane juice. We would hop into his 1970s Volkswagen Beetle which, after two decades of usage, had fraying leather seats and a cream paint finish almost turned gray from the dusty Brazilian roads. He would then stand up, slap on his straw hat, and smile at me with cheeks so ruddy it had earned him the neighborhood nickname of João Vermelho (“Red John”). It was a well-rehearsed routine we both knew that he would ask me if I wanted to go get freshly pressed sugarcane juice, and that I would say yes.

I’d plop down next to him and ask him why I had been summoned. Every few days, he would call me into the living room, where he’d be sitting on the couch watching television, hands resting on his plump beer belly. I only visited Brazil once a year as a child, but when I did, I was my grandfather’s darling. So instead of trying to explain it, let me tell you a story. It’s a word so close to my heart that it’s almost difficult to express through, well, more words.

#NOSTALGIA PRONUNCIATION HOW TO#

LISTEN: How to pronounce saudade perfectly.īeing half Brazilian and a fluent Portuguese speaker, I grew up with the word - and spending most of my life thousands of miles from people I love, I’ve understood it through practice. One thing is certain: the object or person of that saudade does not inhabit the present space or time. It carries with it a touch of melancholy, yet in that wistfulness there is love as well. It describes a deep emotional state a yearning for a happiness that has passed, or perhaps never even existed. Saudade is a feeling of longing, melancholy, desire, and nostalgia that is characteristic of the Brazilian or Portuguese temperament.

Saudade is a famous Portuguese word: countless articles have been written trying to capture its essence, but none of them have quite explained how it makes me feel. No one had to teach me the meaning of saudade, because I’ve intimately understood it since I could speak. Reading Time: 3 minutes Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Nostalgia pronunciation