Re: by. The "If you call me insane again..." page, at long last!

On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 21:44:48 +0100, Dan Jones <feuchard@...> wrote:

>Portuguese:
>Se você me chama demente de novo, o comerei o outro olho de você.
>
>Correct me if I'm wrong, by the way. I'm not so sure of the grammar in the
>second clause of the Spanish example.
OK, here we go:

"If you call me insane again, I'll eat your other eye."

"If" = Se; that's OK.

"you" could be replaced by three different Portuguese
pronouns: "você", "tu" and "o senhor"; the last one (which btw I wrote in
the masculine form; the feminine would be "a senhora") denotes respect (as
for an older person, or your boss, etc); the other two tell more about your
regional background (I use to prefer "tu") than about the person you are
addressing. So that's OK too.

"call me" Now here we have some problem. Though "me chama" is perfectly
intelligible, and I would dare say technically correct, it sounds somewhat
awkward, since this is the indicative mode. It would be preferable to
say "me chamar", which is the subjunctive. All this if you maintain "você"
or "o senhor" as the pronoun; if you prefer "tu" the verb would flex to the
second person: "Se tu me chamares". Either way, the pronoun could also be
ommited: "Se me chamares", "Se me chamar".


"demente" is, well, correct. But it sounds rather archaic or
pedantic. "Louco" would be the most common word, and "maluco" or "doido"
would be acceptable options (more insulting, indeed).

"de novo" is correct. Perhaps in this particular case "outra vez" would
have a more comical effect, due to the "other eye" that comes
after. "Novamente" would be another option.

"o comerei" No, this is not good. If you are dealing with "você" or "o
senhor", the pronoun should be "lhe"; if you stick with "tu", then you
should have "te", that are the "oblique" case forms. "O" is the "straight"
case ("caso reto") and should be only used for direct objects (o comerei =
I will eat YOU!). So you should say "lhe comerei" or "te comerei"; if you
want a more archaic effect (as if you were using "thou" in English), you
could use the forms "comer-lhe-ei" or "comer-te-ei". Alternative forms
are "vou comer" (sounds like English "I'm going to") or the present
tense "como" (which perhaps sounds more menacing).

"o outro olho" That's right!

"de você" is technically correct, maybe. But very strange. You would
use "seu" or "teu" for respectively "você" and "tu" and only if you dropped
the "te/lhe" before. And this would change the word order and supress the
article: "comerei seu outro olho" (If you decide to use "de você" in spite
of my advice, however, you must supress the "lhe" but maintain your word
order).

So:

Se você me chamar de louco de novo, comerei seu outro olho.

or

Se me chamar de maluco outra vez, te como o outro olho.

This last one is technically incorrect (using "chamar" in the beggining
instead of "chamares" would prompt the use of "lhe" later) but it is my
favourite, perhaps because and not in spite of that - you wouldn't expect
someone threatening to eat somebody's eye to be very respectfully towards
grammar. And it would sound more or less like:

/Sy my shamah je mahloocw owtr@ vays, che comw oo owtrw olhw/.

(the /lh/ sound doesn't exist in English; it is the same as Italian /gl/)

As you see, it is very, very simple... and if you call me insane, well...

Luís Henrique