thegoodfellas/blogset-br huggingface dataset:
[Desculpa falantes de Portugues. Dessa vez sem traducao =/ ] In the end of 2013 and the beginning of 2014, I spent some time with a colleague who liked to be "philosophical", to discuss about random concepts. One day, I suggested a question (but we ended up never discussing much about it) to him, which is the topic of this post: "what is 'to be' something?" [see below for a discussion on how this question was badly translated into English]. As the time goes, I often come back to this question. This post is about random stuff I thought about it.On the "Romance copula"When I asked this friend, I said it in Portuguese (naturally, since I was in Brazil -- and no one in his full mental health would be speaking in English there unless there is a very good reason for it). This has some "hairy" implications, which justify making a detour on the main topic and talking about how our verb for "to be" evolved.[the Wikipedia has a full article on this topic, but I recommend a grain of salt: the Portuguese part has at least one example sentence that I don't like, "confusing" copula with the passive]As (I suppose) you know, Portuguese, Spanish and Italian (and many other languages) descend from Latin. As any Indo-European language (besides English =P), verbs in Latin could assume many forms. Because of that, it was easy to confuse conjugations of one verb as if they were part of some other (or simply not using some conjugation because it "didn't sound" well). Through time, three verbs gave birth to "to be" in the Romance Languages: sedere, esse and stare. I want to talk a little about these verbs:sedere: apparently, it meant "to sit". There is another verb related to it, sidere, which meant "to sit down". I was taking a look at their etimologies and comparing them to the opposition between setzen and sitzen in German (and set and sit in English) and apparently they are all cognates (but I'm not sure -- will have to take a better look at the Wiktionary).For our purposes, what matters is that this verb merged with the third one, esse and generated a lot of its conjugations.stare: "to stay", or "to stand". Stare is a very interesting verb. Its past participle was status, and gave birth to English's state and it is even cognate with English stand and German stehen. Words like instance or circumstances are also derived from its active present participle.In Latin, it was possible to sometimes use stare in places where esse should be used, but apart from these cases, it didn't normally have (as far as I know) the meaning of to be. esse: this was the verb for "to be" in Latin. But notice also other words that this verb created. From its active present participle, the word essentia gave birth to essence and essential. A corrupted version of the active present participle, ens, created things like entity.Why it is interesting to know this? The thing is that Portuguese (the language in
which I posited the question to my friend) has two translations for the "to be" from English (similar usages also occur in Spanish and Catalan, for example; but there are some discrepancies, and it is always great to talk in Spanish and find out I am using the wrong one):ser: descendent of a mixture between sedere and esse, this to be is more related to the "essence" of what is being talked about. If I say "I am (ser) happy", this means I am a happy person. It doesn't mean I can't get unhappy for a moment, but it means that "overall" I am happy.estar: direct descendant from stare, but with a different meaning. This to be is more related to the "state" of what is being talked about. If I say "I am (estar) happy", this means I am currently (at this moment) happy, because, e.g., the sun is shining or I ate a good lasagna.So, now, I can finally "retranslate" my question (that one I asked my friend) in a [weirdly] different way: "What is 'to be' (ser) something?".Another possible way of viewing itSomething that disturbs me a litte is how loose our use of this "essence vs. state" difference is in Portuguese. Instead of (or in addition to) this difference, people often refer to another opposition: that of "permanence vs. state". But...When I say I am alive, I use estar. If I say I am (ser) alive, then it sounds like (i.e., it is a slang for) I am always careful not to be fooled. Analogally, I say my grandfather is (estar) dead, but he obviously can't change his state of being dead. It becomes actually worse because I can say someone is (ser) dead, and it sounds to me either that he is always "down", "slow", in a terrible mood; or that he is (and won't ever not be) a dead being (like a zombie, or something).And to confuse the non-native speaker, there is actually even an expression, agora Ines e morta (i.e., "now Ines is (ser) dead"), meaning now it is too late, which uses ser for the dead state of Ines (a woman).A humble answerWhen I was a child, I spent a lot of time with my grandma. Sometimes, in order to make us (children) eat something, she would tell us some lies. I.e., she would say there is no something at home, so that I would eat something_else. The problem was that, because she did it too often, and having seen that something was actually there, I would say it is a lie (in Portuguese, I'd simply speak "lie" -- implying that what was just said was a lie).Immediately, the other adults would look at me and tell me something along the lines of "aren't you ashamed of calling your grandma a lier?". For me, it was not the case. I was not saying she is (ser) a lier: I was saying she is (estar) lying [though the lie is (ser) a lie]. She would be (ser) a lier only if she did it all
the time (which actually she did......... but oh well :v ).Here in Kaiserslautern, I made a friend I rarely can trust to be punctual. While initially I would say he only was (estar) unpunctual, through time I started simply accepting that this is who he is (ser). When I complained to him about his problem, I recalled the question (topic of this post). Basically, I told the same: if a person lies only once or twice, I can't say he is (ser) a lier, but only that (probably) the circunstances led him to lie; but if a person lies all the time, then this characteristic becomes part of his "essence", and now he is (ser) someone who lies.So, well... I don't believe this is actually very useful [it was only an excuse to talk a lot about these words], but this is just a humble answer.And... what are (ser) we actually?We are so transitory that we are (ser) not: we are (estar).[a friend posted this in Facebook some time ago]Something I have been thinking about now is that we often change our state. And this is expectable, right? It is just a state. In fact, I will post below my all time favorite Ted Talk, on how simply changing small body behaviors could help one to change a lot in how the body is functioning:But it seems to me that we are often also capable of changing our essence (she herself in video above says "fake it until you become it" -- in opposition to "fake it until you make it"). What I am (ser) now doesn't necessarily is what I will become soon. Though I am (ser) currently a Portuguese speaker, nothing prevents me from (Deus o livre*) having an accident and completely forgetting the language, which would make me stop being (ser) a Portuguese speaker.This can also happen in the opposite direction. Four years ago I wouldn't consider myself a Spanish speaker. Nowadays, I do say I am (ser) a [at least okay] Spanish speaker. Hopefully, in the next years, I will also become a Hindi speaker.All of this makes me think of how much whatever our "essence" is keeps changing. One could think he is (ser) not intelligent, but through time and hard work change this belief (and/or actually even become intelligent?). It seems that if we think we are (ser) something (and, because it is our "essence", we can't change it) we end up embracing this something, and maybe even (if we actually weren't) becoming it. And conversely, if we think we are (state) something, then we feel capable enough of changing it.Of course, I am not saying you can grow some height (if you are short), or change your skin color (though some rich and popular guy from the last century tried it); but there are things you for sure can change. And this reminded me, actually, of a Ted Talk on Mindset (some concept developed by some researchers in Stanford, apparently) I saw some time ago:Well... that is it. I wanted to only share these ideas.
I don't think they are in any way "groundbreaking" or "new", but I thought it would be a nice reminder that they exist =)--* I searched for a link to send you, reader, to understand this, and didn't find any. I couldn't believe. It means literally "God free him [of whatever is gonna be said]", and one often says that before saying something hipothetical situation in which something bad happens. It is also used in other contexts (e.g., if I do something really incredible, I myself would say it; or also if someone eats a lot and we want to express that the person doesn't ever stop eating -- though in this case I'd also use "benza Deus", i.e., something like "may God bless [him/you]"). I had never thought how strongly religious these expressions sound... HUEHUEAHUEA
[English version below]Duns tempos pra ca, eu venho escrevendo poemas ate que com uma certa frequencia. Tem sido um bom escape pra tensao das provas e trabalhos que se aproximam (o problema e que eu tenho "escapado" demais e produzido de menos). Hoje eu ocasionalmente me "inspirei" com o tema "ser adulto" e escrevi isso ai debaixo. Tomara que a alguem agrade =)AdultoO tempo vai passando... com ele, a gente,sem duvida que, quando, no porvir,nem mais banal, nem mais adolescentefor, ja seguro entao vai se sentir.Um dia entao percebe estranhamente,que adulto o e, porem, sem perceber-se diferente do seu eu recente.Entende: terminou-se o adolescer.Mas aonde foi aquela segurancaque os pais passavam quando era crianca,que viamos adultos sempre ter?Parece que nao e como se pensa,que a diferenca adulto nao pertenca... ou o e e eu que adulto ainda nao sei ser?--[Versao em Portugues acima]Since some time ago, I've been writing poems with a certain frequency. It's been a good escape (escape way?) for the tension of the exams and works that are coming soon (the problem is that I've been "escaping" too much and producing too less). Today I occasionally got "inspired" with the theme "to be an adult" and wrote this thing. I hope you like =)[ok ok... again... it is a poem, with metrics and rhymes. It is virtually impossible for me to translate it to English without breaking everything. I won't even try. But don't get disappointed... soon I write some content that makes sense in English :v] [English version below]Um amigo me tinha pedido pra voltar a escrever poemas por aqui. A procrastinacao falou alto, e eu acabei fazendo-o. AtalhoSem paz, permanece o menino,em vao, nem insano nem sao.Sem animo ou fe, pequenino,sem mimo, ao relento, sem chao.Com tantas perguntas em mente,confuso, ao leu, sem resposta.Bem mal, no momento, se sente,no tempo esta sua aposta.Nao sabe se aquilo que veentende de forma correta;lhe cabe, compreende, escolher(assim desistente sem meta)sozinho o caminho a correr.Melhor ja se sente, poeta.--[Portuguese version above]A friend had asked me to start again writing poems in my blog. The procrastination was strong and I ended up doing it. Unfortunately, I write in Portuguese, and I simply can't see how to even start to translate it into English without breaking everything. Sorry to the foreigners =/ [Versao em Portugues abaixo] If you were used to visit this place before, you will notice that I did some (many) changes. I created those menus there at the top, where I now include an "about" page with information about myself and the blog, a "poems" page with the list of all these poems I keep publishing here (in fact, seriously, I am kind of proud of the result :v ), and a "works" page, where I intend (soon) to put some list of different stuff I have worked on. Maybe through time I will have other ideas and create other pages.Of course, it is some kind of "cult of personality" that I am doing here: it is clear I am trying to show how "good and likeable" I am. But
the truth is that I wanted for a while already to create some kind of "website" for myself, where I'd store "stuff" I am somehow proud of having done, and now I decided to use Google's services for that purpose: Google Drive to store the links, and Blogger to create the webpage. Sure, it is not as flexible as it could be, but I think it is probably better than I'd have the patience to make it had I decided to do everything by myself (in fact, I know absolutely *nothing* about Web, and I am kind of ashamed of that =/ -- it is not a problem when you spend most of your time programming low level stuff in C =S).Now... about the poem... I swear... this is the last poem in a row. I actually had already done it some time ago, and now I just wanted to post it here (so that I could list it in the "poems" page). The context is kind of melancholic, and I won't write too many details. To me, it sounds like it could easily become some samba, i.e., it could easily receive an "upgrade" from "poem" to "song" [after all, what is a song, but a poem with music?].I hope you like it.(of course... I know it is a shame the non-Portuguese speakers won't be able to appreciate it. I really hope I will soon come up with content that is not language specific )--[Version in English above] Se estaveis acostumados a visitar esse lugar antes, entao percebereis que eu fiz algumas (muitas) mudancas. Criei aqueles menus ali em cima, onde eu agora incluo [todas as paginas tem versao em Portugues] uma pagina "sobre" com informacoes sobre mim e o blog, uma pagina "poems" com uma lista de todos esses poemas que eu fico publicando aqui (de fato, serio, eu mei-que sou orgulhoso do resultado :v ), e uma pagina "works" [trabalhos], onde eu pretendo (mais pra frente) por uma lista de diferentes tralhas em que eu ja trabalhei. Talvez atraves do tempo eu acabe tendo outras ideias e crie outras paginas.E claro que isso e um certo "culto a personalidade" que eu to fazendo aqui: e claro que eu to tentando mostrar o quao "bom e gostavel" eu sou. Mas a verdade e que eu queria ja ha um tempo criar algum tipo de "site" pra mim, onde eu guardaria "tralhas" de que eu tenho algum orgulho por ter feito, e agora eu decidi usar os servicos do Google pra esse proposito: Google Drive pra guardar os links, e Blogger pra criar a pagina. Certamente nao e tao flexivel quanto poderia ser, mas acho que e provavelmente melhor do que eu teria paciencia de fazer se tivesse decidido fazer tudo por minha propria conta (de fato, eu nao absolutamente *nada* sobre Web, e mei-que tenho vergonha disso =/ -- isso nao e um problema quando se passa a maior parte do tempo programando coisas em baixo nivel em C =S).Agora... sobre o poema... eu prometo.... esse e o ultimo poema um
atras do outro. Na verdade eu ja o tinha feito um tempo atras, e agora eu so quis posta-lo aqui (pra poder po-lo na lista na pagina de poemas). O contexto e mei-que melancolico, e eu nao darei muitos detalhes. Pra mim, ele soa como se pudesse facilmente tornar-se um samba, i.e., ele poderia facilmente ser "subido de nivel" de "poema" pra "musica" [afinal, o que e uma musica, se nao um poema musicalizado?].Espero que gosteis.(e claro... eu sei que e uma pena que os nao falantes de Portugues nao poderao aprecia-lo. Eu realmente espero logo idealizar algum conteudo que nao e especifico pra uma so lingua )Oh LuaA Lua ha tempo ja naoesta.A Lua tentei em vaotocar.Ja a Lua dessa oracaonao ha.Na Lua meu coracaomora.A Lua humilde cancaocriei.Pagao, meus versos, entaocantei."Oh dou-te o meu coracao:Contigo sempre estarei!"bradei e com distincaofalhei.No peito a bondade vouguardardos tempos em que deixou-seestar.Daquilo que me ensinou,sem nada, pois, me cobrar,a Lua, que, ha tempo, ja(dizendo que forte sou)partiu e so me deixousilencio, pois se ausentou.Passou, ja foi, se ocultouno mar.
[versao em Portugues abaixo] I may start writing some random "tales" about someone I call Elisa.Why? Well... through the years I have been writing here a lot of thoughts, and I have many other thoughts that I don't write here, and this place became a place where simply thoughts are "thrown". But lately I had been thinking to myself: what if I could write tales instead? What if these thoughts were somehow parts of my tales? What if, through the tales, I could pass to the reader the ideas that I think about, only in a more "literary" way?Unfortunately, I will write in Portuguese: I want to play with my writing style in Portuguese, which is very "excentric" to say the least, using very strange conjugations, and strange pronouns, and creating new words all the time. I will probably end up creating translations into English -- because I want the ideas I discuss in the story to be also read --, but the English versions would probably lose the style (which may be bad... but well... maybe I end up managing to bring some of my "weirdity" into English anyways). I still don't know where I'd publish my stories -- maybe here, maybe in another blog, maybe I won't even publish them for a while --, but in the worst case I will create a new tab there in the top of the page saying where to find them. I am very excited with this (although, well, I should be studying about Neural Networks at this moment). Hope at least any one reads this and finds it entertaining.R$--[version in English above] Eu devo comecar a escrever "contos" aleatorios sobre alguem que eu chamo de Elisa.Por que? Bem... atraves dos anos eu venho escrevendo aqui um monte de pensamentos, e eu tenho muitos outros que eu nao escrev aqui, e esse lugar se tornou um lugar onde simplesmente pensamentos sao "jogados". Mas ultimamente eu venho pensando comigo mesmo: e se eu pudesse escrever contos em vez disso? E se esses pensamentos fossem de alguma forma partes dos meus contos? E se, atraves dos contos, eu pudesse passar ao leitor ideias sobre que eu penso, so que em uma forma mais "literaria"?Eu devo escrever em Portugues: eu quero brincar com meu estilo em Portugues, que e no minimo bastante "excentrico", e que usa conjugacoes super estranhas, e pronomes estranhos, e cria palavras novas todo o tempo. Eu devo provavelmente acabar criando traducoes pro Ingles -- porque eu quero que as ideias que eu devo discutir na historia sejam lidas tambem --, mas as versoes em Ingles vao provavelemnte perder o estilo (o que deve ser ruim... mas bem... talvez eu acabe conseguindo trazer um pouco da minha "estranheza" pro Ingles de qualquer forma).Eu ainda nao sei como eu vou publicar as minhas historias -- talvez aqui, talvez num outro blg, talvez eu nem as publique ainda por um tempo --, mas no pior caso eu vou pelo menos criar uma nova aba la no topo da pagina dizendo onde encontra-las. Eu to bem empolgado
(This is something I had very long ago thought about, and I am not even sure if I ever wrote about it here, but because I can't sleep and don't have any mood to do anything more productive I thought of writing here.)Something that I have realized for a while about Brazilian Portuguese (ok, maybe there is literature about it, I didn't check) is that Brazilian Portuguese has done a move that is similar to French a while back and nowadays has become mostly non-pro-drop. This means that, while in languages like Spanish or Latin saying things likeSpanish: Estoy comiendo pasta.English: [I] am eating pasta. (the word "I" was ommited in the Spanish sentence)is common, it is not generally common to hear the equivalent Estou comendo pasta (which is, however, prescriptively grammatical, that is, can be accepted generally according to what we learn in school). Instead, we generally don't drop the pronoun (that is why "non-pro-drop") and do it like in English, Eu estou comendo pasta, with the I in the beginning.Why does this happen? I think the problem is with ambiguity (which is the same with French): Brazilian Portuguese has (in many many regions!) simply stopped using the conjugations of the verbs in the second person. What does this mean? Below is a chart with how Portuguese has changed:Hey... it is pretty neat, isn't it. I didn't expect to manage to express it that well =)As you can see in the image, both tu (second person singular, i.e., you singular) and vos (second person plural, i.e., you plural) are simply gone. Most people don't use them. The first person plural (we) also got mapped into the same conjugation of the third person singular (he): instead of saying we, we say a gente (which means the people), and then conjugate the verb as if we were referring to them (in Portuguese, gente is singular... so we use the third person singular).I call this phenomenon "third-personalization" of Portuguese (actually, I use a word in Portuguese: "terceiro-personalizacao"). Because it makes everything so ambiguous (it also causes us to drop the second person possessive pronouns, and use the third as if they were second... and then use something else for the third), we need to say what we are referring to when we conjugate a verb (similar problem with French, where a lot of stuff sounds the same and it is impossible to tell what they are referring to simply by the verb conjugation).[before I proceed, I need to just say something: this is by no means the way everyone speaks. E.g., people in my region, including me, use tu and conjugate the verb in the third person (e.g., you eats). People in Rio use tu and voce interchangeably, people in many regions still use nos, people in the Amazon, as far as I know, conjugate the verbs right, and many other places scattered through the country still make a fair distinction between the conjugations of tu and voce. One thing, however, applies to everyone: noone uses vos (actually, I try a lot to, and