Talk:Saudade

message: Being a native Portuguese speaker, I reckon that "Saudade" heads only toward the past, not the future, and always refers to something/someone that once was or is no longer present, never to something utopical...
I sense Brazillian influences over the article...
One must consider the roots and true meanings of the word, hence an original Portuguese language word shall be explained as such.
Amorim
I, as a native Portuguese citizen, think that the word "saudade" is very tricky to translate. Don't you agree that, sometimes, you have "saudades" for a person that is right in front of you? And which language has a word or expression of loss for a person that is right in front of you? In the article, it says that "Saudade is the love that remains", but I think that saudade is the love that lingers from past to the future. I think also you can never translate the word "saudade", because it is a feeling that is rooted in the deepest place of our soul and has different meanings for each person. Trying to translate a feeling that is the result of a collective experience, of the Portuguese people in this case, will never work. The English never felt the Reconquista, the Romanians never felt the maritime expansion, the Japanese never felt the disappearance of King D. Sebastiao in the Alcacer Quibir battle, and the loss of independence, and so on. So, we can only try to translate with the words that each language has, trying tho give the feeling that the word gives to us.
Francisco Xavier B Fernandes
guerreiro_da_luz@sapo.pt  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.152.148.160 (talk) 17:40, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Wrong meanings

message: SAUDADE in Portuguese is  AÑORANZA in Spanish.
So this word is not that untranslatable at all!
:No it is not. I am fluent in Spanish and añoranza is not the same as Saudade. This is rubbish --Pinnecco 13:30, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, añoranza is the Spanish translation, and the Real Academia Española confirms it. I've applied the changes, with the reference. --Langus (t) 22:58, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: AÑORANZA

message: "Another permanent source of saudades for the Brazilians is the hugeness of the country itself, which in the past caused most people to feel alone almost everywhere." This is really so unencyclopedic that I'm surprised it's lasted very long here. "Most people" had a feeling of being along "almost everywhere"? Please. And the idea that the mere size of a country immediately and constantly affects how people think is also very unlikely. People feel crowded or abandoned or isolated not because of a nation's borders but because of the relative proximity of people near them. People in Sao Paulo do not, because of the greater size of the country, feel appreciably less crowded than those, say, in Guatemala City. Interlingua 05:51, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Original Research, Lack of Citations, and Maybe a Bit of Silliness

message: This article was marked "Move to Wikitonary" which is not appropriate because the article had been marked as such, was nominated to VFD and then survived. Personally I think it should be transwikied, but I think that all articles about words, their translation, and entymology should be in wiktionary no wikipedia. However, I am but one lone voice. Kevin Rector 15:04, Mar 15, 2005 (UTC)
Hmmm... Nostalgia is not a very satisfying english translation for "saudade". It isn't even used in the same way, maybe not even in the same context. For instance, one does not say "i have nostalgia" for this or that, like one would say "tenho saudade" for this or that. It also does not have the same heartsick connotation attached to it. Nostalgia can even be used in a positive sense, for instance "she smiled a nostalgic smile, reflecting on the past"... but saudade is almost exclusively used to express the negative aspect of this feeling. Longing for things long gone. It is closer to a melancholic longing than it is to nostalgia.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.53.137.84 (talk) 17:05, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Removed Move to Wikitionary tag

message: El origen de la palabra saudade tenemos que buscar en la palabra arabe säwdâ. En los diccionarios etimologicos de las lenguas romances de peninsula Iberica  relacionan esta palabra con palabra soledad. 
Pienso que esto no es correcto. 
Po no hablar mucho les mando un trocito de texto sobre el säwdâ (sevdah) que he encontrado en el internet. 
El significado de säwdâ (sevdah) es casi igual que de saudade.
Aqui esta http://www.mostarsevdahreunion.com/Color/aboutsevdah.htm
To millions of people in the world, Bosnia and Herzegovina is known only for horrible news on violence, ethnical cleansing and war. The recent war has completely overshadowed the very rich and unique cultural tradition of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the cultural heritage of this country, a special place belongs to the traditional Bosnian music form "sevdah". Although it is reliably known that the sevdah originated after the Turks came to medieval Bosnia, nobody has been able to determine exactly when this was. The word sevdah itself is open to several interpretations. The most accurate explanation is that is an Arabic word "säwdâ", which means love, desire or ecstasy. In an attempt to establish the meaning of the word sevdah, people went back to the old age when the Arabic word "sevdah (säwdâ)" was used by physicians to describe black gall, a substance which circulates through human organism that control feelings and emotions.
Otro http://www.zimba.nl/sevdah/english.php
“The meaning of the word sevdah in the Turkish language denotes amorous yearning and ecstasy of love, and has its origin in the Arabic expression “säwdâ”, which encompasses and specifies the term “black gall”. Namely, ancient Arabic and Greek doctors believed that the black gall, as one of the four basic substances in the human body, affects our emotional life and provokes a melancholic and irritable mood. There from derives the expression in the Greek language “melancholy” with a figurative meaning of the direct projection of its basic meaning: melan hôlos – black gall. Since it is love itself that causes the same mood, in the Turkish language these terms were brought into a close link with the semantic identity, accomplishing a conceptual result of a dual projection of the basic meaning. Linking these two meanings has opened the process of a poetic transfer of symbolic and emotional qualities from one term to another. This resulted in the birth of a new term related to specific lyrical and psychological features. 
In our society, the feeling of love expressed by the word “sevdah”, retaining the basic tone of its emotional commitment has got a melancholic notion of the Slavic-Bogomilian transience of space and time. In essence, our sevdah is both, the passionate and painful longing for love, as well as the melancholic and sweet one, the feeling when you are incapable of enduring the pain caused by love, and the pain transforms into the ecstasy of the intoxication of love that compares to the slow process of dying.
borut@fe.uni-lj.si
* http://www.priberam.pt/dlpo/definir_resultados.aspx?pal=saudade
*I'm 75% sure that is of erudite origin, that is, it is a word created by poets derived directly from Classic Latin, rather than of popular evolution. I don't know for sure, but I remember something like that (the mind plays tricks), but it is Latin for sure; Arabic influence in Portuguese is half that of Spanish, and Arabic words are always related to places(in the south), agriculture, other clafts and some other things. The Spanish soledad is not the same as Portuguese saudade.
BTW I found this:
Em 30 de janeiro celebra-se o "Dia da Saudade". Na gramática Saudade é substantivo abstrato, tão abstrato que só existe na língua portuguesa. Os outros idiomas têm dificuldade em traduzi-la ou atribuir-lhe um significado preciso:  Te extraño (castelhano),  J'ai regret (francês) e  Ich vermisse dish (alemão). No idioma inglês encontramos várias tentativas:  homesickness  (equivalente a saudade de casa ou do país),  longing e  to miss (sentir falta de uma pessoa), e  nostalgia (nostalgia do passado, da infância). Mas todas essas expressões estrangeiras não definem o que sentimos. São apenas tentativas de determinar esse sentimento que nós mesmos não sabemos exatamente o que é. Não é só um obstáculo ou uma incompatibilidade da linguagem, mas é principalmente uma característica cultural daqueles que falam a língua portuguesa. in here: http://www.spectrumgothic.com.br/gothic/saudade.htm
-Pedro 18:48, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  hipotesis: saudade derive de säwdâ 

message: I was told Hebrew has a word that can almost be translated to Portuguese as "saudade".
:Every language has a few "almosts" for saudade. In English, words like "longing" and "nostalgia" come close sometimes, but not always, and never really hit the sentiment in the heart. Morganfitzp 22:09, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hebrew 

message: I just can tell that I like this word "saudade" becouse has much explanations and is so weird. I'm from Croatia and I don't realy know what it mean, but I hope one day I'll know. Salutation.
vale
v:);(
That article kind of makes me proud of being a Portuguese speaker... Every time I say saudade I should think about all those people who will never be able to say it. 201.21.126.147 00:27, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Comments

message: I would suggest that saudade comes from Arabic sawda with the same meaning. In the Balkans, word sevdah means the same. Like in Portugal, it is expressed through a particular music genre, also called sevdah. For me personally, it is interesting that both in Portugal and in Bosnia, people generally believe that these kinds of longing cannot be translated and thus represent the unique features of their respective cultures.
:That's curious, but it's generally agreed that saudade derives from Latin solitatem, like the (not synonymous) Spanish word soledad. FilipeS 12:21, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Saudade and Sevdah 

message: could someone who understands wikipedia better than i do please undo the deletion?  thanks.  Streamless 14:35, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. Did I get verything? Morganfitzp 14:44, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  please do not delete talk page comments 

message: * The loved ones who are dead (whom you'll meet again in Heaven, of course)
It seems to me that this needs some kind of explicit caveat or contextualization. Since I don't have a native sense of saudade nor does "whom you'll meet again in Heaven" have a positive truth value for me, I don't know how to fix it, other than to delete it. I hope someone can fix it so it it represents NPOV at a very basic, literal level. Nohat 05:52, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I gave it a crack. There are many POVs running amok throughout this article (though most are quite friendly and do not bite). Morganfitzp 06:22, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Examples 

message: Saudade is one of the central themes in the 1998 indie romantic comedy Next Stop Wonderland.
The main character, a nurse played by Hope Davis, is treating a Brazilian patient. As the scene evolves, he says to her:
:"You like my country's music, right? I can tell there is a little bit of Brazil in you."
:"Oh yeah?"
:"See, you are sad and happy. You don't smile but you are content. You are sad and happy at the same time. In Brazil we have a term for that - it's 'Saudade'. It's like ... melancholic, nostalgic; it's very Bossanova."
Thought you might find this of interest. (It's on-topic and off-topic at the same time :-) ). Plus the film's enjoyable in a low-key way. Dugo 02:27, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Next Stop Wonderland 

message: The 'Translation in Italian' section ( "Saudade can be translated with malinconia romantica...") makes absolutely no sense to me. If this were true saudade could be translated in many languages with things similar to 'romantic melancholy'. And then there would be no reason why Italian would have a special section. Yet the article seems to assume that saudade is not mere romantic melancholy, so the italian translation is inaccurate too. If you agree, please remove the section.
Junuxx 14:32, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Translation in Italian 

message: I don't know of any non-original research, but this article seems to focus very narrowly on the concept. In Brazil, at the very least, Saudade can have positive connotations. It sort of suggests that you have a place in the world, and you're only away from it temporarily, or something. 
Does anyone know of any research that can back this up? Because I'm absolutely sure this is true, and this article puts the word in a light I always considered overly poetic. "To Morrendo de Saudades" isn't always, to me, suggesting a person you'll never see again. Kyle543 10:42, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Troubles 

message: Hardly any word in any language has exact translations; every word has its subtleties. OK, saudade may have more subtleties than the average Portuguese word... so what? (And, anyway, it's fairly accurate to say that ter/sentir saudade(s) translates as to miss -- Tenho saudades de ti/você. = I miss you.; Sinto saudade daqueles tempos. = I miss those times.) I just can't understand why people keep talking about it as a superspecial word. I love talking about my mother tongue (Portuguese), but it bugs me when people mention this claimed exclusivity of saudade with pride. What exactly makes this word so special that makes it deserve a place in an English-language encyclopedia? (Actually, I don't think this article should be deleted. Instead, I think the hype over the word should be the main subject of it.) Eumedemito 04:26, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reason for the existence of this article 

message: I tagged the article as Original Research and Unreferenced. These takes were removed by an editor without fixing the problem Many editors do not know that WP:V is policy and that any unsourced material can be removed by any editor at any time. 
Also, it against the guidelines to remove tags without fixing the problem. Editors should  remember that wikipedia is an encyclopedia and has a duty to warn general readers of possible inaccuracies and Original Research. It is very important to be responsible regarding this. It is wikipedia's article and wikipedia's credibility rests on being honest about article quality.
Especially the OR and at least some general notice that the article is largely unreferenced and unverified is in order. If the editors of this article do not replace at least some of the tags then I will have to. Please be  responsible wikipedia editors. Regards,  Mattisse (Talk) 12:38, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I notice that there are POV concerns as well. Mattisse (Talk) 12:39, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I agrre this articles has multiple cleanup issues and I have resotred the cleanup templates. Please do not remove them unless the specific cleanup issues are addressed.--Gavin Collins (talk) 15:57, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removing of Original Research and Unreferenced article 

message: We are told in the article that «"saudade" is untranslatable in any other language» and later that «Saudade is said to be the only exact equivalent of the Welsh hiraeth and the Cornish hireth», not to mention that it technically _is_ translatable to Esperanto (and by extention I'd guess in Ido too). 85.138.186.123 (talk) 22:31, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Esperanto does have an exact word relative to Saudade (I was told is "Saudado"), because it explicitly borrowed the word from Portuguese. That is the benefit from being a constructed language =) --Pinnecco (talk) 23:01, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  I don't get it 

message: In reference to the Finnish idea of kaiho: I would like to quote from the article:
"Ironically, the sentiment of kaiho is central to the Finnish tango, in stark contrast to the Argentine tango, which is predominantly sensuous."
I do not argue with the first part of this sentence; as someone who knows little about Finnish culture, I cannot speak to it one way or the other, but I am prepared to believe that it is true.
However, the half of this sentence after the comma, could only be written by someone who is not familiar with the richness of the 120+ year tradition of Argentine tango, which is varied and includes strains from Africa, Europe, the Americas, Russia, and beyond. It is, frankly, a ridiculous simplification to describe it as "predominantly sensuous", because it raises the question - which tango? which tango are you referring to, the turn of the century tangos, the tangos of Canaro in Paris, the blossoming in the 40's, the modern tangos, the jazz of Piazolla - where? To where, exactly, does this gross simplication apply?
And THAT is exactly my point. An exercise in cultural comparisons like this always risks degenerating into precisely this dialogue:
"MY culture - with which I am intimately familiar - has a richness and a profound complexity that SIMPLY CANNOT be translated into another culture. For example, culture X, with its simplistic idea of "a", or culture Y, with its entirely trivial ideas about "b" - they simply do not encompass all that is wonderful, special, and marvellous about MY culture". 
So why should we believe you? On whose authority do you speak?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mateomateo71 (talk • contribs) 23:12, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  This is why this article is problematic: 

message: Nostalia exists in the English dictionary (see: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nostalgia), and ALSO in the Portuguese dictionary. So it isn't fair to say that Saudade is like the Italian word Nostalgia. Melancolia is, simply put, melancholy (see: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/melancholy). --Pinnecco (talk) 13:20, 13 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Relation to other words 

message: In Etymology chapter I have added the short explanation of the word "sevdah" which has the same meaning in languages of former Yugoslavia as saudade has in Portugese. It is known that music of Iberian Sephards influenced sevdah a lot but that word existed before the Big migration of Jews from Spain in 16th century. Due to Ottoman rule in Balkans from 14th and 15th century Arabic root of this word is very certain.
RacoYes (talk) 22:33, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sevdah 

message: Don't worry, I'm Romanian, we also have a words at least as emcompassing as Saudade, if not   more, Dor, and they refuse to acknowledge it. This is what Western nationalist scholars are used to to. to completely and blatantly disregard anything outside the West. They simply don't acknowledge our region. They find it somehow inferior. It is sad that Sevdah and Dor are supposedly less in a Portuguese's eyes, just because the words aren't portuguese. 89.136.167.81 (talk) 13:36, 1 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Indeed 

message: I would like, for the third time in this talk page, to bring up the fact that Dor is not under any circumstances encompassing less that the word Saudade, as it is wrongly claimed in the article, with no references. O have added a cite reference tag to the claim, if no one will cite at least one scholarly article which claims this, I will personally delete it.
It seems that nationalism has crept into this page, unfortunately, and the Portuguese author had merely superficially flagged the Romanian "dor" as meaning pain.
It is not true. I am Romanian, I can certify, along with my fellow country men above, that Dor is one the trickiest and untranslatable words in Romania. There have been books written on this subject since Lucian Blaga until today (Suffice to say that "gossamer pain" has no meaning in english, yet it is what the Portuguese author would have us translate Dor Mărunt, a Romanian village, right? That is an absurd translation).
Dor encompasses feelings such as wanderlust, pain, longings, a distinct combination of both positive and negative, intertwined longings about the future, the present and the past, missing someone, something, wishing for a utopian future, etc; it is at least as complex if not more encompassing than even the German sehnsucht. 
Wanderlust, woe, ardent desire, nostalgia, missing someone, homesickness, grief, heart's desire, aspiration, utopian desire for the future, these all mean dor: just go here http://en.bab.la/dictionary/romanian-english/dor-n%C4%83zuin%C5%A3%C4%83 so you know I'm not making it up. I'm researching articles as we speak.  89.136.167.81 (talk) 13:37, 1 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Romanian Dor versus Portuguese Saudade 

message: I have deleted the wondrously, tragically wrong phrases from the article. The Romanian Dor is obviously more encompassing than Saudade, as any Romance language scholar can attest. 89.136.167.81 (talk) 13:43, 1 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deletion 

message: The entry seems to include a series of attributions of a possible etymological origin, sometimes solely on the basis of homophony, which are speculative at best, and with few grounds on sound modern philology. This occurs to a degree which is surprisingly uncanny, considering that the entry itself appears to have been authored by more than one native speaker. 
The Portuguese word ‘saudade’ is of the same family as ‘saúde’, ‘saudar’, ‘saudação’, deriving from the Latin ‘salus’, ‘salutare’. Kinship with other languages should have been established on that basis, as more remote connections would only be found in the Indo-European stem of ‘salus’ at any rate. 
At that level of remoteness, there would no longer be a semantic connection to the term ‘saudade’ as such, but only with its Latin root ‘salus’, the meaning of the former being significantly at variance with that of the latter.
The term is both presented as untranslatable and synonymous to a number of terms in different languages, with which, in most cases, it evidently cannot bear etymological connection. In fact, the discussion on whether the term is translatable or not, would just as easily apply to countless terms in most languages, where the semantic field of this or that term is naturally at variance with that of the term in question. 
A similar argument could be made with regard to finding a synonymous in the Portuguese language itself, or any other language, since ‘perfect’ synonymi can never be found. The emphasis on untranslatability seems therefore to indicate a proported exclusiveness, not only of the term, but also and especially the concept, failing to establish a neutral point of view.  
Given the variety of possible translations in different languages, the entry should then have included especially the German term ‘Sehnsucht’, with which ‘saudade’ is not only synonymous, but also shares the same syntactical elements. Where ‘Sehnsucht’ calls for the preposition ‘nach’, ‘saudade’ calls for the preposition ‘de’. E.g. ‘I habe Sehnsucht nach…’, and ‘eu tenho saudades de…’ – this in the absence of any shared etymological ground.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.170.99.72 (talk) 23:40, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Etymology and translation 

message: I believe the link to the Hebrew page should be removed as it does not involve the portuguese word "saudade" as do the links to pages in other languages. It involves a rough translation of the word and furthermore is a tiny stub of an article.
31.51.149.58 (talk) 11:02, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Link to Hebrew Wikipedia 

message: I'd like to add here shortly that there is the word 'Sauda' in Urdu, too. In Urdu the word derives from the Arabic language. It has the same meaning like the Portuguese 'Saudade' or the word 'Sevdah' from the Balkan. So it seems quite likely that the Arabic 'Sawda' is in fact the common origin of all three words.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by C Nocon (talk • contribs) 19:10, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sawda (Arabic origin) 

message: Someone wrote "it is a combination of longing, melancholy and nostalgia". Yes, but it's also a feeling of happiness. There's no saudade without a mixture of sadness and happiness, that's the reason it's such a complicated feeling. --Good Hope Phanta (talk) 11:49, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: True. The song Mil Pedaços (a Thousand Pieces) by Legião Urbana, Renato Russo sings [...] guardo um retrato teu, e a saudade mais bonita [...] (I kept a portrait of you, and the most beautiful saudade). There is a melancholic fondness in the lyrics. Good example on the complexity of the feeling. --Pinnecco (talk) 15:30, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Saudade is happiness too 

message: "It describes a deep emotional state of nostalgic or deeply melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves. Moreover, it often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing will never return."
It's just nostalgia then? 124.148.123.9 (talk) 15:31, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Is similar, but brings more sadness. Erick Soares3 (talk) 23:21, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
replies: text:  Eunoia: "Saudade: melancholic longing, nostalgia, dreaming wistfulness." Erick Soares3 (talk) 13:33, 11 February 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  So... 

message: Hello! This is a note to let the editors of this article know that :File:Almeida Júnior - Saudade (Longing) - Google Art Project.jpg will be appearing as picture of the day on February 14, 2017. You can view and edit the POTD blurb at Template:POTD/2017-02-14. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 01:50, 9 February 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[:File:Almeida Júnior - Saudade (Longing) - Google Art Project.jpg]] to appear as POTD soon 

message: Are you joking? Look at a map, Portugal couldn't be more Western Europe. If you mean Brazilians, then South America doesn't make sense. You can have both in the same sentence. --2001:16B8:3124:F900:9C65:7150:F98C:422F (talk) 16:24, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Portuguese-speaking people left in search of better futures in South America, North America, and Western Europe 

message: I don't feel qualified to edit this article, but I can't help but be frustrated by the paragraph about Galicia. It fails to mention the Galacian language, which is more closely related to Portuguese than Spanish. Surely that's worth mentioning in an article about a Portuguese word? Isaac Rabinovitch (talk) 15:15, 14 May 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Galicia and Galacian Language 

message: Is there an analogous term for this sentiment in relation to something unrequited? That is, never experienced, and nor ever will be? An absent parent, for example.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.151.210.84 (talk) 16:16, 3 June 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Analogous Term for the Unrequited Experience