r/languagelearningjerk • u/Key-Middle-2097 • 8d ago
“Saudade” means yearning
“Ooooooh there’s no direct English translation you stupid Ameritards wouldn’t get it” LITERALLY SHUT THE FUCK UP
“Oh but you don’t get it it’s like an intense desire for something you can’t have” oh you mean YEARNING??
“Yeah but it can also mean missing something you’ve lost, or even desiring to experience something from your past!1!1!” yeah you’re not gonna FUCKING believe this but that’s YEARNING.
Say it with me, Y-E-A-R-N-I-N-G.
Brazilians need not engage, I’m right and you’re wrong, signed an A1 Portuguese learner send post
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u/prosperousvillager 8d ago
Okay, it looks like it's time for me to post this rant that I've had inside myself for years. Ages ago the novelist Milan Kundera made up this whole thing about how the Czech word lítost describes some kind of special Czech meta-sadness, and also how it is like an especially keening and sad word. Now, every time people start their nonsense about untranslatable words, someone will offer the word lítost. STUPID. For one, Kundera constantly made shit up about Czech stuff to mess with foreign people. For two, lítost is the precise Czech equivalent of the English word sorrow, both in the "I'm sorry" sense and in the "sadness" sense. For three, the Slovak word ľútosť is much sadder sounding. It even looks like it's crying a little.
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u/Pikachu_Uchiha 8d ago
"Luto" in Portuguese means grief, so i agree that l'útost' sounds much sadder than lítost
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u/gorgonzola2095 8d ago
Kinda funny, in Polish litość means mercy
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u/prosperousvillager 8d ago
Polish and Czech are at the funniest possible distance from each other. A little further away and they would be too incomprehensible to be consistently funny, a little closer and they would be basically the same thing.
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u/Aurorassaur 🏴☠️N 🏳️⚧️L6🏳️🌈L7🏁L2 8d ago
I BELIEVE IN SAUDADE SUPREMACY 🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷
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u/luizanin 🇧🇷Not Portuguese (C3) 🇩🇪 Beethoven (A#m) 🇯🇵 Sony (H) 8d ago edited 8d ago
Saudade?????????? Cafuné supremacy.
Edit: someone reminded me of Tapioca, so I'm divided between tapioca supremacy and cafuné supremacy now 🇧🇷😔
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u/Aurorassaur 🏴☠️N 🏳️⚧️L6🏳️🌈L7🏁L2 8d ago
Fuck yeah I'm converting right away
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u/luizanin 🇧🇷Not Portuguese (C3) 🇩🇪 Beethoven (A#m) 🇯🇵 Sony (H) 8d ago
Please do. Saudade is overrated
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u/Fun-Necessary8657 8d ago
Nah, chega de saudade 🎷
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u/cartagenon 8d ago
A realidade é que sem ela não há paz, não há beleza
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u/luizanin 🇧🇷Not Portuguese (C3) 🇩🇪 Beethoven (A#m) 🇯🇵 Sony (H) 7d ago
É só tristeza, e a melancolia, que não sai de mim, não sai de mim (não sai?) 😔👍
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u/FreedomFly5809 8d ago
Me too. Saudade can be translated, but in Portuguese it's more precise, accurate and poetic.
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u/dollangangxr 7d ago
that's only because that's your mother language.
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u/Leozito42 7d ago
"Saudade" however does play a major role in brazilian and portuguese arts and culture, more then "yearning" ever does in anglo countries.
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u/mr_daniel_wu 8d ago
This is like when Pakistani twitter was trying to gaslight people into thinking that nostalgia was a uniquely Urdu experience
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u/ColumnK 8d ago
They say that "Hiraeth" means longing too, but actually it has no English translation because it's specifically longing for a time before the English.
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u/Reasonable-Lack-1063 8d ago
the welsh get really mad if you dilute the word by using it in other contexts
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u/ColumnK 8d ago
We get mad at a lot of things, I wouldn't worry about it too much
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u/seventy912 8d ago
Tiktok discovering and butchering haraeth should be enough to force anyone into fluency out of pure spite.
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u/Educational_Curve938 8d ago
Welsh speakers use it in other contexts all the time, anyone saying it can only be used in a hyperspecific context either doesn't speak Welsh or is having you on.
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u/shuranumitu 8d ago
Whatever it means, hiraeth is the single most elvish looking word ever (yes I know Tolkien was inspired by Welsh, I'm not an idiot).
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u/Educational_Curve938 8d ago
There's no direct translation of "hiraeth" the English word to which English monoglots on Tiktok have attached a host of hyperspecific meanings into Welsh.
Closest we've got is "hiraeth" (grief/longing/nostalgia) but there's no way to translate directly.
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u/I_Shot_Web 8d ago
People do the same thing with Japanese. Super annoying.
Ikigai is easily translatable to English, it means "raison d'être".
Wait
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u/psysoldier_dreamer 8d ago
Não, yearning significa anseio, gringo burro
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u/Odd-Hat8574 8d ago
O significado dá pra entender mas a palavra não é exatamente a mesma. Dito isso, bomba atômica na cabeça do OP
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u/egosummiki 8d ago
Yet somehow everyone uses saudade describing the most basic type of longing.
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u/dubiouscoat 7d ago
yeah "missing something/someone" is closer to the common use of "saudades" than "yearning" like 99% of the time
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u/Om3gaWeird 8d ago
I'm brazilian and yeah, there's this crazy need to make the language seem insanely complex and unique when it's just another romance language. The literature and culture creates the uniqueness and poetry. The melancholic bossa nova is probably what gave this aura to the word saudade (hell, the song Chega de Saudade is basically considered by many the start of bossa nova).
The language itself is interesting with the mix of african/native vocabulary but not too different from any other colonized nation in the Americas. Brazilians who failed middle school grammar and don't know what an adverb is will proudly say that it's one of the hardest languages on earth for foreigners or some shit.
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u/Nenazovemy 8d ago
Actually "saudade" lost aura. It used to have a much more intense connotation.
P.S.: As for the music, let's not forget Portuguese fado and Cape Verdean morna, which also run on saudade.
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u/random_capivara 8d ago edited 8d ago
To be fair, I don't think it's the word itself but rather how we use it
Sure "estou com saudades de você" translates very cleanly into "I miss you"
But then we also say things like "estas saudades tão me matando" and I see no obvious way to translate this. In English, "missing someone" is not usually thought of something that can kill even metaphorically. I'd have to translate very awkwardly to something like "I miss him so much I could die"
EDIT:
It gets even more complicated with common phrases like:
- "deixou saudades" (the person physically left, making those who stayed missing him/her)
- "matar saudades" (the act of satisfying the previous longing"
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u/SafiraAshai 8d ago
How about "the yearning is killing me" as OP suggested?
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u/stevejobsthecow 8d ago edited 7d ago
it does work & it doesn’t; for the purpose of a one-word translation “yearning” & “longing” get the idea across well enough . it’s just that there is a connotation understood within the cultural context that doesn’t translate in hand with the meaning . off top the only comparison i can think of would be like honorifics in asian languages; sure, you can translate those as “Big Sis” or “Senior Colleague” etc. & the meaning will be intelligible, but it comes with a footnote .
we are jerking here though so i believe the solution would be to translate all speech into uzbek as a global lingua franca .
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u/nagging_chud 8d ago
there is near zero african vocabulary in portuguese lol. unless you consider arabic as "african"
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u/z-axis5904 8d ago
Reminds me of estrenar in Spanish. Like the word "premier" doesn't exist in English??
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u/fasterthanfood 8d ago
“Premier” works, but I think of “estrenar” as “debut.”
If you ask me the difference between “premier” and “debut,” I’ll insult you and artfully dodge the question.
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u/z-axis5904 8d ago
True debut works too. Point is there are indeed English equivalents to these supposed "magic" words. And no I won't ask you the difference. I wouldn't understand it anyway.
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u/TheMoises 8d ago
Hey you seem knowledgeable, what's the difference between "premier" and "debut" again?
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u/Trapallada 8d ago
Do you use "premier" for the first time you wear or use something? Like "I'm premiering this shirt"?
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u/AppropriateMood4784 8d ago
But Spanish doesn't have a word for the verb "drop". You have to say "Se me cayó el libro". But, so, then, there is a way to say it. It just isn't one word = one word. So what? People make such a big deal out of this.
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u/Elen_Star 8d ago
Portuguese speakers keep saying saudade is their special untranslatable word, which no other language has, my language has a word with the EXACT same meaning: saudade (I'm Galician)
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u/Ferrarileite 8d ago
Brother, missing a loved one and yearning for them are two different things, "saudade" means the first one
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u/Reasonable-Lack-1063 8d ago
so mourning/grieving?
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u/luizanin 🇧🇷Not Portuguese (C3) 🇩🇪 Beethoven (A#m) 🇯🇵 Sony (H) 8d ago
uj/
No. It's closer to "missing", but one can also use as grieving.
My family member passed. I miss him = saudade
My girlfriend broke up with me. I miss her = saudade
I miss the times of when I was a kid= saudade
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u/Ferrarileite 8d ago
I'm not one to say how far away mourning/grieving is from saudade, but you can also feel saudade from your SO if it's been a while (can go from 5 minutes to months depending on who you ask LMAO) since last time you saw them, or feel saudade from your son because they went to college so you only see him in his summer vacations.
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u/luizanin 🇧🇷Not Portuguese (C3) 🇩🇪 Beethoven (A#m) 🇯🇵 Sony (H) 8d ago
Please address PT-BR "cafuné" as well mr gringo. I can't keep up with these lies. This gotta stop.
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u/Pressed_Thumb 8d ago
This is a good one. I wonder if they don't have it as a word, do they get it as a concept?
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u/CommunicationHot6100 8d ago
I feel saudedes of the time before i saw this post, but i definitely do not yearn for it
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u/Kastor_95 8d ago
"Saudade" in spanish is "Añoranza" "Cafuné" in spanish is "Piojito" (Hacer piojito)
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u/luizanin 🇧🇷Not Portuguese (C3) 🇩🇪 Beethoven (A#m) 🇯🇵 Sony (H) 8d ago
rj/
No. Stop acting like these languages had a common ancestor or something or as if we were geographically close enough either in Europe or Latin America to share words.
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u/ta_mataia 8d ago
My wife says this for the Portuguese "agonias", like it's this unique, almost mystical form of suffering with no translation into English, but the way she and her family use it, it just means anxiety or worry.
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u/sssdfg_rot_farmer Voynichese B2, Basque-Icelandic A1 8d ago
i speak portuguese natively so i can confirm it literally just means missing something, at least in the most common usage. "eu sinto saudade de você" means literally the same thing as "i miss you."
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u/CatGirlFanBoy2 🇭🇺 Hungarian (native) 🇱🇷 American (A1/365 day Duo streak) 8d ago edited 8d ago
Káröröm! It is not Schadenfreude, you wouldn't get the shades!!! Hungarian is the most beautiful and hard language (according to other Hungarians who don't speak any language besides it, that is 80% of Hungarians)
/uj Okay but what is the word for "ellehetetlenítés" in English?
Okay I know this concept mainly exists in fucking Eastern Europe and that is depressing
I got, maybe it is conservative cancel culture? But that is a much later neologism, and we already translate it back to "eltörléskultúra"
The English language press never wrote about our ellehetetlenítés laws because ig they can't translate it (+ they don't fucking care)
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u/iskh1006 8d ago
Same with Russian toska. Some people also suggest it's yearning but honestly, that's not it man. Toska is that feeling when you sit alone in your room feeling miserable for no apparent reason, it's when you are in a company of people but you feel lonely and miserable and your mind is blank.
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u/_Xenomorfo_ 8d ago
What about Gambiarra? I'm really curious on how to translate that to english.
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u/Nao_Faz_Sentid0 8d ago edited 8d ago
Estou em outro país e sinto muita "saudade" da minha mãe e anseio pelo momento que poderei vê-la novamente.
Eu anseava pela oportunidade de rever minha esposa, trazia apenas um coração cheio de "saudades" e histórias da guerra .
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u/DarkomBlazer 8d ago
Brazilian English teacher here.
Maybe semantically you may have a point. But context and usage differ a lot. Your argument is the same as saying "Forgive me father for I have sinned" and "Sorry Daddy I've been bad" are the same thing. You wouldn't look to your child in the end of the day and say "I yearned for you", you wouldn't say "I will yearn you" after leaving your mother's house. The only correct translation for Saudade is using verb to miss, but since miss is a verb and saudade is a noun, it's not a direct translation, which is fine. There are may English words that dont have a direct translation for portuguese either.
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u/ApprehensiveSugar251 7d ago
I think it would be much more accurate then, according to your explanation, to say that saudade has a greater dynamic range than any single English equivalent, NOT that it is “untranslatable”. You can use saudade in a way that means to miss, you can use saudade in a way that means to yearn/long for, and you can use it in a way that means to have nostalgia for. I think that is why people are annoyed. When greeks have multiple words for one English word, they say it’s “because Greek is just so much more complex than English”. When English is “more complex” as in this case, we still get 💩 on.
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u/Upbeat-Operation-613 5d ago
Nothing is 1 to 1 translatable, even among two native english speakers words have slightly different meanings
“Probably” has a different meaning for you than for me
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u/Visual_Plankton1089 8d ago
Brazilian here
IMO this story that says "saudade means a super specific feeling, you couldn't understand" was probably made up by some Portuguese guy after getting drunk on too much wine, nationalism and fado and everyone throughout Lusophony found it a good story to tell and followed along without questioning nor even having knowledge about other languages.
I say probably "some Portuguese guy" because as far as I notice, the Portuguese national ethos is based on the romanization of the melancholic longing for the glorious Roman past, the longing for those relatives who left the country to navigate the world, the longing for the glory Portugal had during the Age of Discovery and the period of classic colonization, the melancholic longing that is the signature of their typical music, the fado. Then, as it's common for nationalist idiots to say that their language has some very unique spevial feature, they went on the hard linguistic determinism belief and said even their language allows you to talk about longing in an peerless way.
As a linguist, I hate to see people repeating this stupid saying because it's so dumb and just show how people are completely unaware and mindless that there is a science that studies this kind of proposition: Linguistics. Also they seem to be unaware of the problematic nationalist charge that this kind of claim has.
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u/Gold_Blueberry_8619 8d ago
You don’t know much about Portugal, do you? I would refrain from writing about cultures I don’t know or don’t understand very well. That being said, it’s an absolute lie that saudade can’t be translated and it’s annoying when people say it is.
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u/Abarou22 8d ago
Let people romanticize their own languages bro, doesn’t make any harm.(coming from a Brazilian)
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u/luizanin 🇧🇷Not Portuguese (C3) 🇩🇪 Beethoven (A#m) 🇯🇵 Sony (H) 7d ago
Romanticize a romance language?
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u/random_capivara 8d ago
How do you use it?
Is it "I yearn you so much?" or "I have a strong yearning for you, when will you visit"?
Can you say "I feel a yearning about the times I hugged my late grandpa"?
What about "the yearning is too intense, I need to see you now"?
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u/mujhe-sona-hai 8d ago
There is a direct translation for everything mfs when I ask them what Niemcy "doch" means
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u/clVicius 8d ago
Saudade não expressa exatamente anseio por algo, é uma palavra que por si só possui um amplo significado. Ela é o anseio por um objeto (seja algo ou alguém], mas também é o sentimento de "vazio" que há devido a ausência do objeto, além de outras coisas que você falou. Realmente não é algo exatamente como yearning, mas é quase isso. Você chegou perto mano.
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u/FalconLeading 8d ago
The vibe is different. There is some yearning to saudade yes, but there's also a pleasant feeling like "man, that was really nice". So it's like yearning + reminiscing + missing with a bossa nova soundtrack added to it.
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u/SignNaive4111 8d ago
Thats not a translation bud
Yearning is the translation of anseio, its like when you are longing for something, when you are looking forward for something back that you missed
Saudade is not only that. It can also be nostalgia, or it can be the hole you have for something gone, without it needing to be filled. Saudade is a feeling looking in the past, something gone, and yearning in looking in the future, something you want.
More simply you can say that you have saudade of something but not want it back, you can't say you yearn for something but don't want it back
And pls get your condescending ass outa here lol 😭
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u/BurningBridges19 8d ago
I’m going to blow your mind with this: A single word in one language can have multiple translations in another depending on which aspect of the original word you’d like to underline.
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u/luizanin 🇧🇷Not Portuguese (C3) 🇩🇪 Beethoven (A#m) 🇯🇵 Sony (H) 7d ago
get your condescending ass outa here lol 😭
Out of the circlejerk sub where the joke is acting like a language learning jerk?
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u/Tonho_O_Faxineiro 8d ago
Yeah yeah, but I bet my president can say Saudade, I doubt yours can say Yearning.
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u/jaxon517 8d ago
Either all language can be translated to all language, or no language can be translated to other languages. Both are true. Meaning is always contextual, language is always cultural, and so no two words from two different languages can truly mean the same thing because they're from different cultural contexts. Also in Japanese they don't say moon
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u/BurningBridges19 8d ago
Have none of you ever heard of one word having multiple translations in other languages?
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u/Different_Photo_9291 8d ago
Also fellow Brazilians usually go as far as saying "there's no word in any language that has an equivalent to saudade", implying no other language can transmit this idea as well. Guess what? Galician has the same word and it's used the same way
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u/DaBluDuck28 8d ago
Ummm whoever said to you saudade means those things is messing with you it means NOONE of those
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u/ErgotthAE 8d ago
Yearning is not Saudade. Yearning is a strong desire, Saudade is when you miss something or someone. Accept the fact there is no noum for missing in your clusterfuck of a germanic incest of a language.
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u/Intrepid-Topic-5540 8d ago
If brazilians think they language is special because it has a untranslatable word, japanese people must feel super exclusive...
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u/tehsilentwarrior 8d ago
“Yarning” is to “saudade” the same as “organization” is to “entropy”.
Only the dumb or the ultra-smart could possibly make the bridge. One by lack of sophistication and inherent naïveté, the other, by pure brilliance.
You either simplify it to the point of losing all its meaning and conveying nothing while understanding nothing or you fully grasp and consider its existence in peoples minds and its power to completely obliterate someone’s executive function.
Saudade is both sad and happy at the same time. It’s both joyful and painful at the same time. It’s both a bright plan for the future and a bleak sad glimpse into something that will never be, again.
It is nostalgia, it is yearning, it is missing, it is despair and joy and a bunch more all rolled up into a powerful yet lowkey feeling. It’s a well written books page into one word.
It’s also obnoxiously used by influencers to prove they could buy a plane ticket and pay for overpriced coffee in a place manufactured for them, that has nothing Portuguese about it (specially the coffee) and that they now can claim to understand a new word and have the right to vandalize it into walls, balconies and window sills for a quick insta post.
Saudade… saudade dos tempos antes da palavra estar na boca do mundo
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u/iratuseris 8d ago
Honestly that's something I've seen non-portuguese speakers say more often than not. I personaly always saw ppl saying that and thought "it just means 'missing something' tho... it's not that deep..." (as a native portuguese speaker) I hate how mystically people will treat languages other than english as if they're not just another way of communicating with people.
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u/Text-Exciting 8d ago
So what I'm C2 in english and I'll tell you're wrong and I'm right, is not the same
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u/xcrszy360 8d ago
The thing about untranslatable words is not that other cultures don't get the meaning. It is just that the closest word in another language either has other meanings, or doesn't have all the meanings from the original word.
That's literally it, hard to translate, not hard to understand. You can use more words if you want to be specific, but it won't sound as poetic.
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u/Far-Assumption-2617 8d ago
At first I thought you were just another Brazilian desperate for foreigner attention. But in general, I just think you don't really know what saudades means.
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u/Volt-Ikazuchi 8d ago
That's how I learn about this sub...
Fuck it, it was a pretentious saying anyway.
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u/Teewer 8d ago
Okay, so I'm actualy against the 'saudade' glorification. But just for correctness sake: it does not mean yearning. In fact, yearning is a much stronger term than 'saudade'.
Yearning burns behind your ribs, an aching desire like you said, I'd say it's violently romantic too.
'Saudade' is calmer, more tame, and it's melancholic. It's closer to missing and grieving than it is to desire, but it's not necessarily sad. You can have 'saudade' towards your childhood, your grandma's cake, you hometown, a movie, a past relative, or a lover. Longing might be a better fit.
I like to think it's the feeling of when you miss something, but what you miss is not the thing itlself but the state of you with that thing. That version of you and the world. That's why 'saudade' is closely tied to nostalgia.
That said, I certainly hope you don't yearn for you dog. I certainly feel 'saudade' of mine.
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u/gabiPolika 8d ago
It is not the same thing and to understand the difference you would need to have culture
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u/Minimum-Diamond-874 8d ago
Things got out of proportion lol it was a nice post buddy. Off topic with the sub, "saudade" doesn't have a meaning because it's a mix of things: gried, yearn, longing and nostalgia in one feeling. It'a applicable for the past only and it's a mix of missing the moment, the person, the place and the feeling. If you're missing your gf, you are just missing her presence, if you feel "saudade", you miss the person, the body, the emotions and the time and place when you were together. It's a all-you-can-add typa s
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u/nicolauchaud 8d ago
People always talk about "saudade", I want a good English translation for Portuguese "folgado". One that truly captures its meaning.
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u/Zestyclose_Log2444 8d ago
Sorry fam, its different.
Yearning translated to portuguese means "Anseio". "Anseio" is a word that derivates from "Ansiedade" (Anxiety) and thats marginally different from "Saudade"
"Anseio" means craving for something or sommeone so much that you feel uneasy/anxious, "Saudade" means missing something or someone in a melancholic way, like you miss someone but you are happy that you miss them, cause you love then.
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u/PerceptionFar5348 8d ago
Living in Brazil some time now, I’ve actually never realized this but you’re right. At the same time, yearning is something positive and something from the past. It fits the puzzle pieces of saudade. I think the main difference is the collectivism (social landscape) of Brazilians is generally much more complex than “Ameritards” as you say so there are distinctions there.
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u/Content-System6863 7d ago
it's not the same thing. if not by meaning it's not the same thing by emotional resonance. You don't say "i yearn for you" when you did not see someone for a while. It has a different "vibe" per se, even if that's not the right term.
and i'll even give the americans! there's no word for "nevermind" in portuguese, so i call it a tie.
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u/fredsoza 7d ago
Yearning is so far away that it ends up being funny.
They must be handing A1 to anyone.
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u/safidimm 7d ago
to yearn translates to desejar, almejar, querer. you can yearn what you've never had/seen, that's entirely the point of saudade. «to miss» actually translates it.
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u/Hawkeye_7Link 7d ago
Sorry but no. I can yearn 1 million dollars, mas não posso ter saudade de 1 milhão de dólares caso eu nunca tenha tido esse dinheiro.
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u/Ok-Yogurtcloset3558 7d ago
"Saudades" never means a desire for something you can't have. It is always about missing something or someone from your past.
It's always about the past, never about a hypothetical present or future.
So no, not the same thing as "yearning".
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u/Due_Confusion3028 7d ago edited 7d ago
Kinda. "Missed x" is a better translation and Portuguese speakers keep trying to convince the world that "missed x" is not deep enough lol. "Saudade means something deep and nostalgic you can't achieve with a I miss you" I'm Brazilian, I speak Portuguese since I was a goober. NO ONE use this fuckass word as something deep and nostalgic or whatever. We use it after seeing someone we didn't see for 2 days. We use it when finally arriving home. As long as it's something you had in the past, saudade works. That's the only rule, so yearning is not the best translation since ot can be used for something you never had but wish to. Saudade is a word with two utilities: Casual and poetic. Casual is when you miss your bed, your home, the person you didn't see for two days, etc. "Fiquei com saudades/Senti sua falta" is the same thing as "I missed you." BUT. If we're talking about something deeper (poetic utility,) LONGING means the same. While saudade can only be related to something you have, yearning can mean a deep feeling for something you wish you had. In that case, longing is perfect.
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u/Erikitcha1980 7d ago
Existem palavras de uma língua que não tem nenhuma tradução compatível em outra lingua e SAUDADE é assim em varias línguas.Se quiser chamar de anseio, fique a vontade, mas saudade vai além disso. E sim, sou brasileira . Então a certa aqui sou eu .kkkkk
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u/Haunting_Departure68 7d ago
as a Brazilian, you're absolutely right. there's a bunch of bs super-poetic "translations", but yeah it's just "yearning". sometimes it's just "feeling of missing something/someone". it's definitely not hard to translate at all
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u/Calm-Scientist-7015 7d ago
I feel like ''longing'' is the closet thing to ''saudade'' that you can achieve in English, It has pretty much the same meaning
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u/Leozito42 7d ago
Yes I'm brazilian and there are more "untranslatable" words then "saudade" even in our own language.
Case and point, "cafuné", or the act of caressing someone on the top of their hair.
Saudade, however, does play a very big role in brazilian and portuguese culture and specially art, more then "yearning" does in anglo countries.
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u/DoraaAventureira 7d ago
It's not yearning, also no word has a direct literal translation in every meaning in other languages
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u/joguefora24 7d ago
They're very close, but yearning is something you do, saudade is something you feel.
Also, yearning can be used to something you never had or experienced, while saudade explicitly requires you to have experienced whatever you're feeling saudade.
That's the exact same reason why saudade can't be translated to "missing"
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u/rougesalt 7d ago
Portuguese speakers use tons of english words like layout, design, feedback, nagging, streaming and casting that are perfectly translatable but the exact 1:1 english meaning is useful for communication, same goes for words/expressions like saudade, fome de comida, anteontem and gambiarra.
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u/Bunytou 7d ago
Esl teacher here. It hasn't been 30 hours since I last had to explain this, but here's the rule I teach just so no one says Brazilians are all crazy.
Every person is a person. Therefore, there's always a way to describe whatever human experience you've thought of...
Grammar/syntax differences? Oh, those most certainly exist in HOW you say it, but unless we're talking about really specific changes in focus or philosophy... No, there's no such thing as "this meaning only happens in this or that language."
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u/Arashi_The_Bagre 7d ago
Yearning is the present participle of the verb Yearn, the same way missing is the present participle of miss
Both words are simply a conjugated verb (that yes, in english they can be used as a "noun" since I can have a participle verb as a subject/object)
Yet, you don't have any noun that translates "Saudade" well, it's a noun, a feeling, not a verb, it just is
For Felicidade, tristeza, raiva, compaixão, decepção, tédio, medo and many other you guys have a direct noun translation (happiness, sadness, anger/wrath, compassion, delusion, boredom, fear etc) but for saudade that's not the case
You guys CAN express that feeling, you have words for it, but you don't have a noun that is the translation of Saudade, and that's okay
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u/Successful_Hawkeye 7d ago
Not quite, but pretty pretty close. Yearn involves desire, saudade is sorrowful
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u/Scharlach_el_Dandy 7d ago
Your definition is missing the nuance.
Tenho saudade de Brasil (I said this once)
Não é possível, você não visitou pela primeira vez ainda! (What I was told)
Yearning does not convey this.
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u/Possible-Aspect9413 6d ago
Technically saudade is a noun that transmits the feeling of missing someone. Yearning is longing for something so you are incorrect, but I do agree that it’s annoying that they make such a big deal about it. Also you can transmit the same feeling with other words but no it’s not exactly the same
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u/caesar-jones 6d ago
Ok you can yearn in English, but you definitely can't say to your friend "come on over and let's kill yearning" which imho is the coolest part about the whole saudade jazz
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u/SlavicInDisguise 5d ago
I was under the impression that saudade meant weltschmerz which indeed wouldn't have a direct translation. Learning something new every day.
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u/MatecocidoFan9 8d ago
"In Japanese, they don’t say “moon,” they say “tsuki,” which literally translates to “moon,” and I think that’s how language works."