Title: Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Linguistic Approaches to Food and Wine

Description.
Editors: Margarita Goded Rambaud y Alfredo Poves Luelmo
ISB: 97884-362-6089-2
Publisher: UNED University Press.

WIE: WHAT DOES IT TASTE LIKE I PORTUGUESE?

Caio César Christiano

caio.christiano@univ-poitiers.fr – FORELL,University of Poitiers - France

Keywords: Brazilian Portuguese, European Portuguese, Wine, Taste, .

Abstract: This paper contrasts the European and Brazilian varieties of Portuguese using a comparable corpus of red
and white wine descriptions published in specialty magazines in both Brazil and Portugal. Firstly, words
occurring in only one of the varieties are analyzed. Then, all the nouns used to describe taste in both
varieties are contrasted, suggesting that Brazilian Portuguese presents a certain preference for plurals.

1 ITRODUCTIO As one would expect, a review has many a

In their groundbreaking article using a
corpus of food and drink recipes taken from the
internet, Tagnin & Teixeira (2004) confirmed that
the differences between Brazilian and European
varieties of Portuguese (BP and EP) are more
striking than those between American and British
English at the syntactic and lexical levels.
This paper aims to verify that the
differences between both varieties of Portuguese
would be equally striking when the subject of the
texts is one category not present in the original
study: wine.
Since wine tasting and oenology are usually
considered élite activities in both countries, my
hypothesis was that, with a corpus formed by texts
concerning wine, syntactic and lexical differences
would be somewhat smaller, proving that the
differences between the two varieties diminish at
more formal registers.
The absence of wine in the 2004 study
comes as no surprise, since, for obvious reasons,
wine-making is not as popular a hobby as cooking
and one is not likely to find many explanatory texts
on how to make wine at home. Due to this
impossibility of continuing in the same genre
(recipes), I turned to wine reviews, mainly for their
relative availability and ease of access.
difference when compared to a recipe. By changing
the text type, many features which are characteristic
to one (imperative verb forms, in the case of recipes,
for example) will seldom be present in the other.
2 THE CORPUS
To constitute the corpus I chose four
magazines whose wine tasting sections from
previous issues are freely available on the internet.
Texts coming from Brazilian magazines Gula and
Adega were selected to form the BP corpus, while
texts from Portuguese Wine Magazine and Revista
de Vinhos were chosen to represent EP. All texts
were first published after 2003.
It should also be noted that choosing texts
first published in paper format in specialty
magazines and written by oenologists contributes to
the increase of formality in register.
At first my intention was to analyze four
categories, namely, Red, White, Rosé and Port wine.
Whilst descriptions of red and white wines
abounded, the total number of descriptions found in
the two remaining categories (30 samples in the case
of Port and 20 in the case of Rosé wine) did not
seem sufficient. I also originally intended to devise a
group formed only by descriptions in both linguistic
varieties of the exact same wine. Once again this
proved to be impossible. Although the same brand of
wine was occasionally reviewed in both varieties,
the years of production never coincided.
Given the restraints, I ended up with a
corpus formed by 240 descriptions of red wine and
130 descriptions of white wine for each variety. In
an effort to avoid a biased corpus, the magazines are
always equally represented. In the case of BP, for
example, out of 240 red wine descriptions, 120 come
from Gula magazine and 120 from Adega magazine.
In order to focus only on the descriptions,
all the names of wines were removed and replaced
by numbers. All the peripheral information (year and
place of production, price) was also removed from
the corpus. Thus, a typical sample of the corpus
looks like figure 1.1 below:
3 CORPUS EXPLOITATIO
3.1. Absolute Constrast
The corpus was queried with the help of the
software Wordsmith Tools v5 (Scott: 2008).
Following the study by Tagnin and Teixeira, I
focused mainly on absolute contrast, a concept they
borrowed from Wittman, Pego & Santos and which
they define as: “words or phrases that occur in one
variant but have a zero occurrence in the other”.
Table 1 below shows all the absolute
contrasts found in the comparison between white
wine descriptions in both varieties. Obviously,
many other words appear in only one of the
varieties, but the focus on this article is on words
showing at least 20 times in the corpus.

Key word Freq. Freq.

in EP in BP
CARVALHO (oak - noun, fem.) 0 21
FRESCOR (freshness - noun, masc. ) 0 38
PALADAR (taste - noun, fem) 0 38
CITRINOS (citrus fruit - noun, masc., pl.) 20 0
LIGEIRA (light – adj., fem) 21 0
Figure 1: Example from corpus
SUGESTÕES (suggestions - noun, fem., pl.) 24 0
The corpus is comparable, since the texts in ALGUMA (some - pronoun, fem.) 24 0
both varieties treat the exact same subject, and only FRESCURA (freshness - noun,fem. ) 28 0
texts on the same sub-topic (red wine or white wine) Table 1. Absolute Contrasts: White Wine
were compared. The two graphs bellow show that Out of the 8 words for which the contrast is
the corpus is also statistically comparable. absolute, EP presents 5 positive keywords (i.e.
words that are exclusive to it) and 3 negative
keywords (i.e. words which are not present at all).
The table below presents the results for
absolute contrasts in the comparison between red
wine descriptions in both varieties.

Key word Freq. Freq.

in EP in BP
UVAS (grapes - noun, fem., pl. ) 0 20
Graph 1: White wine corpus Graph 2: Red wine corpus ELABORADO (elaborate –adj., masc. or 0 21
elaborated – verb, past participle)
Although the number of descriptions for AMEIXAS (plums - noun, fem.,pl.) 0 22
each variety is the same, EP presents more tokens NEGRAS (black – adj., fem., pl.) 0 27
(i.e. running words) in both categories. On the other FRESCOR (freshness - noun, masc.) 0 41
hand, the number of types (different words used) in PALADAR (taste - noun,masc. ) 0 71
BP is bigger, hence so is the type/token ratio, SILVESTRES (wild – adj., masc/fem. pl.) 20 0
showing that there is slightly less repetition of words SILVESTRE (wild – adj., masc./fem.) 22 0
in BP. Instead of indicating that BP is more concise, ELEVADA (high – adj., fem.) 23 0
a possible reason for this ratio is that Brazilian PRETO (black - adj., masc.) 25 0
reviewers sometimes allow themselves to add a little AURÉOLA (halo – noun, fem.) 28 0
more than mere wine description to their SUGESTÕES (suggestions - noun, fem., pl.) 31 0
descriptions. Throughout the BP corpus we find FRESCURA (freshness - noun, fem.) 44 0
comments on the history of a particular vineyard or Table 2. Absolute Contrasts: Red Wine
praise on how friendly the person responsible for the
production of a certain wine is.
 This time, out of the 13 words for which the
contrast is absolute, EP presents 7 positive keywords
and 6 negative keywords.
Both categories considered together, what
we have is a total of 18 absolute contrasts, since the
words frescor, sugestões, frescura, paladar and
ligeira repeat in both categories.
At first sight, we can easily spot some
words which correspond in meaning to each other in
both categories.
EP BP
Frescura – Frescor
Pretos – Negras
The noun frescura has a pejorative meaning
in BP (where it can stand for effeminate behavior)
which prefers the form frescor, but this is not noted
in the main Brazilian and Portuguese dictionaries.
The nouns preto and negro are both
presented by all dictionaries consulted as synonyms
and there is no indication of predominance of either
one of the forms in one of the varieties. The results
from the collocation analysis show that, in EP, the
noun pretas appears 12 times followed by the noun
chocolate (chocolate - noun, masc.) and 10 times
followed by frutos (fruit - noun, masc.) while, in BP,
negras appears 25 times followed by the noun frutas
(fruit - noun, masc., pl.) in BP . %egro never
accompanies the term chocolate in BP since the
collocation chocolate amargo (6 times in corpus)
corresponds to black chocolate in this variety.
Fruto and fruta are considered synonyms
by all dictionaries consulted. Once again they
present no indication of predominance of either one
of the forms in one of the varieties. Based on the
corpus, though, it is possible to affirm that EP
prefers the masculine fruto whilst the feminine fruta
is more frequent in BP as shown in figure below.
Key word Freq. Freq.
in EP in BP
FRUTO 150 4 (wood – 71 times in total). In the case of uvas it can
FRUTOS 51 7 be explained by the fact that EP tends to mention the
FRUTAS 2 132
FRUTA 218 159
Table 3. Fruto vs Fruta
The presence of the word fruto 4 times in
BP is explained by the fact that in all these it appears
not with the meaning of fruit but with the figurative
meaning of “originated from.” Still in BP, the term
frutos is found in the phrase frutos do mar, meaning
seafood, in 3 out of 7 occurrences in the corpus. In
its remaining 4 appearances, it does mean fruit and
is accompanied by negros 3 times and azuis (blue) 1
time, which leads to the conclusion that in BP the
feminine fruta is preferable when referring to fruit
and that the masculine fruto, although it exists, is
extremely infrequent. The results also show that, in
BP, negro (and never its synonym preto) is the only
choice to modify the noun frut-.
The word fruta is well represented in both
varieties but it should not be analyzed along with the
other variations of the root frut- for it carries a
technical meaning in wine tasting. Fruta refers to
fruit character, one of the basic elements of wine
structure. The collocations for this term don’t
present a high level of variation between varieties.
The adjective madura (ripe) is a very frequent
modifier for both variations, characterizing thus a
technical usage that doesn’t differ much in EP and
BP.
The word paladar (taste) is not specific to
BP in other contexts, but, at a total of 109
occurrences, it is clear from this corpus that it was
made into a technical word for wine tasting by
Brazilians, a choice not followed by the Portuguese.
Both categories considered together, the word boca
(mouth) appears 269 times in EP and 143 times in
BP. Hence, it is clear that where EP uses only boca,
BP prefers to vary between boca and paladar,
maybe in an effort to avoid repetition.
EP also has a technical wine term not at all
present in BP. Auréola literally means “halo” and
refers to the color of the edge of the wine where it
touches the glass. Wine reviewers in Brazil don’t
seem to pay much attention to this aspect.
The positive keywords in EP silvestre and
silvestres (singular and plural forms of the adjective
meaning “wild,” which when combined with the
noun fruto mean “wild berry”) reveal a reflection of
regional climates in the two varieties. Wild berries
are not traditional to the Brazilian landscape, and the
absence of such a concept to describe wine does not
come as a surprise.
Two words often associated with wine,
carvalho and uvas, do not show up at all in EP. In
the case of carvalho, this can be explained by the
fact that EP instead prefers the generic madeira
type of grape (sauvignon, for instance) without
mentioning the word “grape,” probably because it is
the kind of information the target audience of a
specialized wine magazine is expected to know.
Ligeira and citrinos were only found in the
EP corpus. Ligeiro does occur in BP in other
contexts but usually with the meaning of fast
(refeição ligeira in Brazil means fast food and not
light food). The adjective leve (40 times in the BP
corpus) seems to be the preferred word in BP to
convey the same meaning. Cítrico, used either as a
noun or an adjective in the corpus is preferred in BP
to convey the meaning of citric. Once again, no
variation preference for either term is indicated in AMÊNDOA 3
any of the dictionaries consulted. AMÊNDOAS 2 AMÊNDOAS 7
Ameixas is a curious case. It occurs in both AMORA 11 AMORA 8
the EP and BP corpus (29 times and 8 times, AMORAS 9 AMORAS 22
respectively) in its singular form. The plural form, ANANÁS 18
though, is only used in BP. It appears that BP tends ANIS 4 ANIS 17
to use this noun in plural rather than in singular, AVELÃ 2
similarly to what happens to the noun “raisins” in AVELÃS 2
English. BALSÂMICAS 5 BALSÂMICAS 3
The absence of the word elevada came as a BALSÂMICO 23 BALSÂMICO 2
surprise to me, since it is not at all a rare word in BP.
BALSÂMICOS 9 BALSÂMICOS 2
In the EP corpus it collocates with words such as
BANANA 5 BANANA 3
intensidade (intensity). In BP intensidade tends to be
BAUNILHA 35 BAUNILHA 76
accompanied by other qualifiers such as boa (good),
BERGAMOTA 2
média (medium), and ótima (great).
Elaborado (present only in BP as an adjective BRIOCHE 1
meaning complex) is only shown in the Brazilian BRIOCHES 1
dictionaries consulted, even though the CACAU 24 CACAU 16
corresponding verb elaborar does appear in all CAFÉ 9 CAFÉ 27
Portuguese dictionaries. CAJU 1
Sugestões is used in EP in a rather technical CANA 1
form. It appears with the meaning of “having a touch CANELA 6 CANELA 8
of.” BP prefers others solutions such as notas de, CAPIM 1
also vastly present in EP, to convey the same CAPUCCINO 2
meaning. CARAMBOLAS 1
Finally, the pronoun alguma, meaning CARAMELO 6 CARAMELO 9
“some” is not at all used in BP. To convey the same CARIL 1 CURRY 1
meaning constructions such as algo de are preferred. CARMIM 10
3.2. The Various Tastes of Wine CARUMA DE 3
When it comes to wine language, the term PINHEIRO
“taste” acquires a different meaning from that CASSIS 9 CASSIS 26
ordinarily used since, according to Lehrer (2009: 6), CEDRO 5
“Although we talk about the taste of wine, in fact CEREJA 18 CEREJA 7
what we perceive is a fusion of taste, smell and CEREJAS 3 CEREJAS 13
texture (tactile sensations), often called mouthfeel. ” CHÁ 6 CHÁ 2
In the corpus, many are the words used to CHOCOLATE 48 CHOCOLATE 53
describe the mouthfeel and table 5, below, aims to COCADA 1
present a list of nouns (mostly, but not exclusively, COCO 3 COCO 4
fruit and vegetables) used in explaining what wines COGUMELOS 2 COGUMELOS 6
taste like in both varieties. Due to the extension of CONFEITOS 1 CONFEITOS 2
the list and to the space available, an attempt of CONFEITURE 1
translation has not been made. COURO 3 COURO 37
EP Freq. BP Freq. COUVE 1
ABACAXI 2 ABACAXI 17 CRAVINHO 3 CRAVO 9
ACÁCIA 3 ACÁCIA 1 CRAVOS 1
ACÁCIAS 1 CREME 1 CREME 4
AÇAFRÃO 2 CRÈME 3 CRÈME 1
AIPO 1 BRULÉ(E) BRÛLÉ(E)
ALCAÇUZ 2 ALCAÇUZ 25 DAMASCO 5 DAMASCO 5
ALCATRÃO 6 ALCATRÃO 3 DIÓSPIRO 2
ALECRIM 1 ERVA 3 ERVA 1
ALPERCE 9 ABRICOT 1 ERVA-DOCE 1
ALFAZEMA 1 ERVAS 3 ERVAS 29
ALHO 1 ESPARGOS 2
AMEIXA 29 AMEIXA 8 ESPECIARIA 15 ESPECIARIA 4
AMEIXAS 25 ESPECIARIAS 49 ESPECIARIAS 93
 ESTRAGÃO 1 MATO 7
EUCALIPTO 5 EUCALIPTO 6 MEL 12 MEL 22
FAVAS 1 MELAÇO 2
FEIJÃO 2 MELADOS 1
FEIJÕES 1 MELÃO 3 MELÃO 5
FENO 1 MENTA 1 MENTA 7
FIGO 2 FIGO 2 MENTOL 4 MENTOL 7
FIGOS 1 FIGOS 1 MILHO 7
FLOR 4 MIRTILHO 2
FLORES 15 FLORES 14 MIRTILHOS 3
FOLHA 2 MIRTILO 1
FOLHAS 5 MIRTILOS 1 MIRTILOS 3
FRAMBOESA 4 FRAMBOESA 4 MORANGO 1 MORANGO 3
FRAMBOESAS 10 MORANGOS 1 MORANGOS 3
FUMO 6 FUMO 5 MUSGO 1 MUSGO 22
GELEIA 17 GELÉIA 10 NECTARINA 1
GELÉIAS 6 NÊSPERA 4
GENGIBRE 2 GENGIBRE 1 NÊSPERAS 2
GERÂNIOS 3 NOISETTE 1
GINJA 5 NOZ 4
GINJAS 1 NOZ MOSCADA 4 NOZ MOSCADA 2
GOIABA 2 GOIABA 4 NOZES 1 NOZES 3
GOIABADA 1 ORÉGÃOS 2
GROSELHA 14 GROSELHA 5 PALHA 13 PALHA 29
GROSELHAS 2 GROSELHAS 6 PALMITO 1
HORTELÃ 1 HORTELÃ 6 PAMONHA 2
HÚMUS 1 PÃO 1 PÃO 1
IOGURTE 2 PASSAS 2 PASSAS 5
JABUTICABA 3 PÊRA 7 PÊRA 5
JABUTICABAS 2 PÊRAS 1 PERAS 3
JASMIM 1 JASMIM 5 PÊSSEGO 21 PÊSSEGO 12
JENIPAPO 1 PÊSSEGOS 1 PÊSSEGOS 2
KIWI 1 PÉTALAS 1
LARANJA 5 LARANJA 6 PIMENTA 11 PIMENTA 23
LARANJAS 1 PIMENTÃO 2 PIMENTÃO 2
LEITE 2 PIMENTO 3
LEITE 3 PIMENTOS 1
CONDENSADO
LICHIA 4 PINHEIRO 1
LICHIAS 4 LICHIAS 1 PINHÕES 1
LICOR 9 LICOR 2 PIPOCA 2
LIMA 15 LIMA 5 PÓ DE TALCO 1
LIMÃO 22 LIMÃO 3 PÓLVORA 4 PÓLVORA 1
LOURO 1 LOURO 1 PRALINA 1
MAÇÃ 17 MAÇÃ 15 QUEIJOS 1
MAÇÃS 6 REBUÇADO 12
ROSA 1
MALVAS 5 ROSAS 2
MAMÃO 1 TABACO 9 TABACO 27
MANGA 13 MANGA 4 TANGERINA 3
MANTEIGA 5 MANTEIGA 1 TÍLIA 1
MARACUJÁ 5 MARACUJÁ 8 TOMATE 3
MARMELADA 2 MARMELADA 5 TORANJA 7 GRAPEFRUIT 1
MARMELO 4 VERDURAS 1
MARMELOS 1 MARMELOS 2 VINAGRE 1
VIOLETA 28 VIOLETA 12
VIOLETAS 6 VIOLETAS 25
Table 4. Nouns describing tastes
The table reveals some aspects which, for me,
were rather surprising, starting from the curious
presence of terms one would not normally associate
with wine such as popcorn, gun powder and baby
powder (pipoca, pólvora and talco, respectively).
Fruit or dishes traditional to one country are
expectedly only represented in one of the varieties,
as in the case of EP’s sour grape (ginja) and BP’s
jabuticaba (a fruit native to Brazil). In order to
describe tastes, we seem to try and link them to basic
tastes which are already known to us. Even if the
wine does taste like jabuticaba, someone who has
never savored one would not be able to recall the
fruit and thus probably link the wine to something
else. This seems to indicate that wine tasting can
hardly ever present similar results when conducted
interculturally.
The “élite” aspect of the texts is revealed in
the use of foreign terms, most notably in French, to
describe tastes that do have a translation in the
language. Thus “abricot” is used when the term
damasco is available and “confeiture” (sic) is used
to replace geleia. Uncertainty in spelling does not
seem to be a barrier in the use of a foreign language:
“crème brûlé” instead of “crème brûlée” occurs in
both varieties. English influence is only detected in
BP, which prefers the terms curry and grapefruit to
the vernacular terms toranja and caril found in the
EP corpus.
EP appears to make more use of synonyms
indistinctively. Thus ananás and abacaxi
(pineapple), alperce and damasco (apricot), and
pimento and pimentão (bell pepper) show up in the
EP corpus. The word mirtilho, appearing 5 times,
although not present in any dictionary, seems to be a
preferred form in EP to mirtilo (myrtles).
Finally, the most striking difference between
varieties which can be inferred from the table is
BP’s tendency to use plural forms. Many terms
appear in their plural forms only in BP. In other
cases, when plural is verified in both varieties, the
ratio is significantly higher in BP. Further study is
necessary to confirm this hypothesis, but the results
of this study point to the fact that an EP speaker is
most likely to say a certain wine tastes like “cherry”
while a BP speaker tends to say it tastes like
“cherries”.
4 COCLUSIOS
When contrasting their corpus of EP and
BP, Tagnin & Teixeira totaled 24 occurrences of
absolute contrasts. In their study, EP presented18
positive and 6 negative keywords.
In this study, having arrived at a total of 16
absolute contrasts, I found the differences, as
expected, to be fewer, probably due to the higher
level of formality in texts. EP still has more positive
keywords, even though the ratio has been rather
reduced to 11 positive keywords in EP and 7
negative. These differences are mainly lexical.
BP’s tendency to use plural nouns in
constructions such as “it tastes like cherries”, where
EP would prefer the singular form “cherry”, is
suggested by the analysis of the present corpus.
Further studies should be conducted to confirm such
hypothesis.
The lack of more complete dictionaries
contrasting EP and BP or general ones containing
information concerning the different usage of terms
in each of the varieties is still an obstacle to the
research, and there is an urgent need for such
corpus-based dictionaries in Portuguese.
The corpus formed for this article, which I
have made available online, can still be further
exploited and its analysis could provide quite
revealing facts regarding the contrast between both
varieties.
REFERECES
Lehrer, Adrienne, 2009. Wine and Conversation. New
York, Oxford University Press.
Tagnin, S. E. O. and E. D. Teixeira, 2004. British vs.
American English, Brazilian vs. European
Portuguese - how close or how far apart? A
corpus-driven study. In Lewandowska-
Tomaszczyk, B. (ed.), Lodz Studies in Language
vol. 9: Practical Applications in Language and
Computers - PALC 2003. 193-208. Frankfurt am
Main: Peter Lang. [Available at:
www.fflch.usp.br/dlm/comet/]
Wittmann, L.H., Pêgo, T.R. and D. Santos, 1995.
Português Brasileiro e Português de Portugal:
algumas observações . XI Encontro %acional da
APL. Lisbon, 2-4 October.
Webgraphy
Wordsmith Tools: .Scott, Mike. 2008.
www.lexically.net/wordsmith/version5/
Revista Adega: revistaadega.uol.com.br/
Revista de Vinhos: www.revistadevinhos.iol.pt/
Revista Gula: www.gula.edicaoeletronica.com.br/
Revista Wine: www.essenciadovinho.com/