By jcapobia
When I was in Lisboa, one of our tour guides told us about a Portuguese word that has no equivalent in English or Spanish. The word is Saudade, a word which describes the feeling of depression that one feels when they think about the “good old days;” the longing for something that cannot exist. Our tour guide described it as the feeling you get when you see your Ex walk by and you remember the old days, but simultaneously realize your life can never be like that again and that you may never feel that same happiness. (In Portugal, they express this sadness through music, most notably in the melancholy music of Fado)
This encounter made me think of a linguistic hypothesis I heard a couple months ago in a movie. The hypothesis, recently popularized by the movie Arrival, is called the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. This hypothesis holds that as someone’s language influences their thoughts and decisions. In other words, the limits of your language, all the way down to the grammatical structure, determines the way you perceive the world. Although I haven't thought about it much before this week, as I learn more and more and become immersed in this culture and language, I am learning the subtle differences that Spanish and English (And the two Portuguese words I know) have and the subsequent effects of these language peculiarities.
