Dança do Quadrado

I try to stay on top of internet memes and viral sensations across all the Romance languages, but, of course, it's impossible to review them all. Among the ones I have missed, there is one from Brazil: Dança do Quadrado (Dance of the Square).

The premise of the skit is that the three dancers perform the actions the song calls for, all within the boundaries of their own squares — no seu quadrado are the recurring words. It is certainly a good tool for anyone studying Portuguese, as the song goes through a lot of vocabulary, repeated quite a few times, with everything followed by no seu quadrado (in your square). All the way from pretending to be a seagull (gaivota) and a little macaque (macaquinho) to pushing (empurra) and pedaling (pedala) all no seu quadrado. Even references to pop culture that English speakers can easily recognize such as being a cowboy and the matrix in — you guessed it — no seu quadrado.

The full lyrics can found on here.

3 comments:

stormboy said...

Interesting post. By the way, I think 'macaquinho' could be translated as 'little monkey', as 'macaco' is the normal word for monkey.

Filius Lunae said...

The top comment on the video's Youtube page:

Nossa meu braço é mais grosso q a coxa do cara de amarelo!
(Wow, my arm is thicker than the thigh of the guy in yellow!)

John Cowan said...

OT for this post: just calling your attention to this Latin translation of a rap from 2003. The link to the English lyrics has rotted, so here's another.

Naturally, you can't actually rap this. I do particularly like this bit: taedet me in diurnis legendi planas clunes gratiores iudicari. rogate quoslibet Aethiopes: responsum erit se libentius expletiores anteponere. Quite convincingly Plautine, I think.

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