January 30 is Dia da Saudade. Saudade is a type of nostalgia, a longing for something you once had but have no more. It is also used to express being homesick, missing someone dear or feeling blue. Saudade comes from the latin solitate, meaning solitude and as demonstrated by the sentences above, it is a difficult expression to translate using a single word, or even one phrase.
The word saudade is said to have originated from the deep longing that African slaves felt for their native countries, former way of life, and the people they had to leave behind.
There are, of course, words in other languages with that express the same feeling, but saudade acquired the aura of a unique word when bossa nova composers, like Tom Jobim, João Gilberto and Vinicius de Moraes, created a myth by celebrating all the feelings the term expresses and thus turning it into a kind of muse. It is currently the word most commonly found in poems and love songs in Portuguese.
But no song condenses the meaning of that word better than Tom Jobim’s Chega de Saudade, No More Blues. Watch the video and then continue reading below to practice using it in sentences.
The feminine noun, a saudade, can be used with several verbs, so let’s review some of them and then click on the link to listen and repeat the sentences for practice:
Ter (have) saudade:
Eu tenho saudade de casa. I’m homesick.
Você tem saudade da sua terra natal? Do you miss you native country?
Sentir (feel) saudade:
Desde saiu de casa, Felipe sente saudade da comida da sua mãe. Since leaving home, Felipe misses his mother’s cooking.
Os velhos amigos sentem saudade da juventude. The old friends long to be young again.
Estar (be) com saudade. / Estar morrendo de saudade:
Ela está morrendo de saudade. She’s feeling blue.
Eu estou com muita saudade de você. I miss you a lot.
