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Sarah A. Hoyt's avatar

Right, one thing you didn't mention: bread MUST be eaten with every meal. When setting the table, bread is the first thing that goes on the table. I shall quote my grandmother, "Comida sem pao nem no inferno a dao." (They wouldn't serve a meal without bread, not even in hell.)

Also bread has magical properties. If for some reason you need to eat a lot (don't ask me why!) you eat it with bread "to push it down" leading to the famous exchange, "Hey, pa, podias comer uma vaca?" "So com muito pao para a pushar p'ra baixo." "Hey, dude, could you eat a cow?" "Only with a lot of bread to push it down."

And on that, if you take your normally brought up American kids to Portugal, you find you need to teach them to be quite forceful with "Nao obrigado!" (No, thank you.) This is accompanied with a hand gesture down and out. Because if you're not forceful, and don't do the gesture, and just whisper nicely, "no, thank you," everyone from street vendors to your grandmother will assume you really want to buy/eat the thing. (My poor kids.)

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Liza Debevec's avatar

My Slovenian grandmother would use the French word ordinaire to mean sth was vulgar/lacking good taste. She would say "so and so is ordinaire" with contempt for the so and so...

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