Don't be a parachuter or you'll pay the monkey!

There's been a steady flow of emails recently from Vitor, the inimitable president of the Ala of the Devoted in Império Serrano. As Carnaval draws nearer he's been on the warpath about making sure everybody KNOWS THE SAMBA. (the song.) This is so critically important that he said flat out: If you don't know the whole song, you will NOT parade with this ala.

Partway through one of these emails he said "We're not an ala of para-fallers" (para-quedistas) and "You don't want to be paying the monkey." Para-fallers? Paying the monkey? I gathered together my dwindling store of Portuguese neurons, and managed to compose an email in bad Portuguese to Vitor, asking if he might be willing to explain a few Portuguese phrases to me... especially, what does it mean to be a para-quedista, or to be paying the monkey?

Dear Vitor sent me a marvelously descriptive email right back, just a couple hours later. Here's an excerpt (translated by me, comments in brackets. Copied w/Vitor's permission. Portuguese version below for those who want to try reading it)

***
[Vitor says:]
A para-faller [para-quedista] is a person who jumps with a para-falls [para-quedas], one of those things that opens itself like a balloon and is used to break one's fall. It's used often in wars but is also a sport. [Aha! "Parachute"!] In Brazil, this expression means someone who is a stranger in that environment. Example: "Carlos, the manager of a store, fell by parachutes in the human resources meeting." This means that Carlos didn't understand what was going on in the meeting; it wasn't a meeting that he was prepared for. Ultimately, he shouldn't have been there. The contribution that he made was very small.

In Carnival, we use this phrase to refer to people who don't know the samba of an escola, and who end up participating in the parade without having prepared for it. It's used a lot to describe tourists who buy costumes that are sold with tourist packages and airfares. But it's not just the tourists. There are also parachuters in Leblon and even in Madureira.

"Paying the monkey" [pagar mico*] is used for many things - it's a versatile piece of slang. It can be used for any situation in which you have some reason to be ashamed. To go to a wedding reception wearing bermuda shorts would be to "pay a monkey". When a president makes an ill-advised remark, a prejudiced remark, he certainly has paid a monkey.
[end excerpt]
******
Me again. I must say Vitor's got a gift for explaining phrases like this - it's not easy to make these things clear to someone who doesn't know the language. The "parachuter" phrase makes sense now - and it's a perfect image, isn't it? A tourist who just parachuted down out of the sky, landed in the Sambodromo and hasn't the faintest idea what he's doing.

The origin of the monkey-paying phrase is not as instantly obvious (why would you pay a monkey if you are ashamed?). Maybe it's like those cryptic Aesop's fables references we use in English. But at least now I get what it's supposed to mean.

So what I have learned is... if you are headed to Carnival... do NOT be a parachuter, or you will definitely pay the monkey!!!

*********************
[The original Portuguese from Vitor:]

>"Não somos ala de para-quedista" O que e uma para-quedista?

Caramba.....essas explicações são mais dificeis....rss.....(nos Eua se usa
também escrever "rs rs" para simbolizar pequenas risadas?)

Para-quedista é a pessoa que pula de para-quedas, aquele instrumento que se abre como um balão usado para amortecer a queda. É muito usado em guerras mas também é um esporte. No Brasil essa expressão significa que alguém é estranho naquele ambiente.

Exemplo: Carlos, o diretor geral da empresa, caiu de para-quedas na reunião do departamento de recursos humanos

Isso quer dizer que Carlos não entendeu o que se passou na reunião, não era uma reunião para a qual ele estivesse preparado. No fundo, ele não deveria estar lá. A contribuição dele para a reunião foi pequena.

Em carnaval nos referimos a pessoas que não conhecem o samba da escola e que acabam por participar do desfile sem ter se preparado para isso. É um termo muito usado para turista que compram fantasias que são vendidas junto com pacotes turísticos e passagens aéreas. Mas não é exclusividade de turistas. Também pode existir para-quedista no Leblon ou mesmo em Madureira.


>"pagando mico" ?? mico é um animal, né?
>Eu peguei o sentido geral ("canta, gente, canta!!" né?) más os detalhes
>não...


O sentido geral é esse mesmo. Eu quis explicar que na ala todo mundo canta o samba e que se alguém aparecer sem cantar será certamente notado e provavelmente se envergonhará disso.

Pagar mico é usado pra muitas coisas, é uma gíria muito ampla. Pode ser usado pra qualquer situação que você tenha motivo de se envergonhar. Ir a uma festa de casamento vestindo bermudas é "pagar mico". Quando um presidente dá um declaração infeliz, preconceituosa, certamente ele pagou um mico.

Mico é um pequeno macaco.
[end excerpt]
***********

* biological clarification: OK, actually it's "to pay a marmoset". "Mico" is the word for the tiny New World monkeys that we call marmosets or tamarins. They are common around Rio, and you can sometimes even see them scampering along phone lines right in the city. The word for monkeys in general is actually "macaco". Which actually they sometimes translate as "macaque", except, in English, it should be "monkey" because "macaque" in English is only used for a family of Old World tailless monkeys whose Latin genus name is Macaca, like fore example the Rhesus macaques, except some people call those Rhesus monkeys.... oh, never mind. Anyway, micos are the little ones.