Sunday 13 June 2010

Azulejos

In haste at half time between Germany and Australia, one of the biggest talking points of Dois Mil e Dez so far has been the vuluv ..., vezuluj ..., veluve ..., vevulejas ...?


I'm not joking, I just cannot my tongue round the word for these horns Africans blow at football matches which, when you're watching the games on the tellybox, sound like you've got a bluebottle buzzing in the window and everyone (except Africans and the manufacturers of vuzulu-whatsnames, presumably) is complaining about.

The only word anywhere near it I can bring to mind is azulejo which is the Portuguese word for a ceramic wall tile.

It's vevuzulu ... no, veluzeja. Definitely vulu-something ...

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

vol-o-vents!!! surely.

Kathie said...

"Vu-vu-ze-las" make me want to go take two aspirin before the game even starts!

Besides the sheer racket their wielders make, they aren't all tuned exactly to Bb, so those dissonant microtone differences are painful to the sensitive musical "ear." Personally, I think they should've been manufactured with more attention to intonation, and in equal quantities of Bb, D and F, for greater euphony.

Why hasn't there been more singing in the stands this time? Or will that come later in the tournament?

Vol-au-vents -- LOL! Is that you, Sarah? I used to eat those before I went veggie.

Kathie said...

Reaction to "vuving" may be quasi universal: the following commentary is by a Singapore-born, Aussie-raised journalist who's a naturalized US citizen (a one-man UN, huh?):
http://blogs.sites.post-gazette.com/index.php/opinion/reg-on-wry/18887-vuvuzela-time

FORÇA PORTUGAL!!!

Kathie said...

7 Portugal
0 North Korea

Woo-hoo!!!!

Have you ever gone to watch matches at the local café with "os tipos"?

I did this a lot in Angra during Euro2004 -- great fun, especially because the Selecção made it all the way to the finals (doubtless due to "home cooking").

Kathie said...

http://www.vuvuzela-time.co.uk/www.b3ta.com

(A public service, just in case you get saudades for the sound when there's not a match on, or you'd like to direct the noise toward a deserving victim.)

Luís Henriques said...

one of the problems with the vuvu-whatever and what makes them so annoying is that those crazy people blow them in different tunes at the same time so, playing several semitones at the same time, your hears go mad...

Greetings,