I always been curious about the stereotypes of Portgual and portuguese
people, so I search for them in the internet and found several, here's some of them :
“ Portuguese women have mustache”
I was already aware of this
stereotype about Portuguese women, and I
must say that is not true!! Portuguese women (at least most) dont have mustache !!
“Portuguese people are considered more taciturn and fatalistic than
other southern European populations, probably because of Fado music (fado means
“fate”)”
It is true, Portuguese tend to
think only about the negative things and
are more taciturno. We complain, a lot ,about everything and everyone.
“People from Alentejo (one of the most
rural and underdeveloped regions in the country) live life at a snail’s pace,
are lazy and mostly old. They’re probably communists too.”
It's funny to
find this stereotype about Alentejo and it´s people, because in Portugal we also have this stereotype about this region
of our country and it´s people. Like some Nordic countries in Europe see the
southern countries as lazy, we (portugueses) also do that with Alentejo and
it´s people.
On the
question of being mostly old people that
live in Alentejo, I can say that is true,
Alentejo like any other inland regions of Portugal suffers from
desertification, younger people tend to go to coastal areas to
find a better live and employment. About the part that says that people from Alentejo are mostly
communists, well Alentejo is one of the areas of Portugal where Communist party
have more fans, but it doesn´t mean that
they are all communists.
“(…) cultural habit to make an afternoon nap”
In Portugal we don´t have the habit of napping, unless if you are child. In fact we associate this
stereotype with Spain´, but I don´t know if it is true or not . It's one of the cases where the Spanish and Portuguese
cultures are confused.
“The Portuguese language even has a word, “saudade”, which doesn’t
translate into English. It roughly means “nostalgia” or “homesickness”
It´s true like any other languages portuguese language also has a word that can not be translated ,the
word is "saudade”, as the phrase said it can be translated as" nostalgia
"or" homesickness "but it's much more than that.
In my sources you can find more stereotypes about Portugal and the Portugueses and also about other European countries and perphaps
about your own country:
http://www.nationalstereotype.com/european-stereotypes/
http://www.nationalstereotype.com/portuguese-stereotypes/
Woow, this was interesting to read, I didn’t hear these stereotypes before. But I was shocked about the second stereotype, that portuguese tend to think only about negative things and they complain a lot about everything. Since I live in Faro, I didn’t realized this, I always thought that portuguese are always happy, don’t pay attention to bad things, I always had impression that they prefer just chill and enjoy a life, without any sadness, also my friends, who were in here in previous semester (also Erasmus) said that people in here are very positive, even if economical situation is not so good. And I still think that portuguese in general comparing my country are very polite and always try to help, but maybe if I would live here longer, then I would change my mind. :))
ReplyDeleteIts funny read the first stereotype because always I listenned about this, but now I can say that its not true.
ReplyDeletethe others topics only I want to say something about the last point. In Galicia we have one word that it is "morriña" and it have the same mind like a saudades but dont have tranlation in spanish and any other language, only portugues