• Peruvian_Skies@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    There’s an illegal gambling game that has been extremely popular for decades called the animal game (jogo do bicho), in which each number represents an animal. 24 is the deer (veado). There’s also a derogatory word for gay men, viado. The two words sound the same. So 24 is “the deer’s number” but it sounds like “the fag’s number”.

    Viado comes from desviado, which means someone who was driven off the proper path. It’s just a matter of homophony (and homophobia).

    • Lvxferre [he/him]@mander.xyz
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      9 hours ago

      Viado comes from desviado, which means someone who was driven off the proper path. It’s just a matter of homophony (and homophobia).

      I’ve seen people backtracking the etymology to desviado and transviado. I don’t buy it because clipping (truncamento) in Portuguese usually preserves the start of the word, even at the expense of the stressed syllable; e.g.

      • universidade university → uni
      • refrigerante fizz, soda, coke, pop → refri
      • depressivo depressed → deprê

      So following the same pattern for “desviado” the result would be *des or *desvi, not “viado”.

      • webp@mander.xyz
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        1 day ago

        This suggests widespread homophobia if enough of them could combine their brainpower to form these few thoughts

        • Lvxferre [he/him]@mander.xyz
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          9 hours ago

          This suggests widespread homophobia if enough of them could combine their brainpower to form these few thoughts

          Yup, that’s accurate. Welcome to Latin America and its macho culture. People don’t even get why those jokes are bad. Then when the LGBTQ+ community correctly points out that “a piada mata mais do que a bala” (the joke kills more often than the bullet), the default popular reaction is to claim “waaah they’re overreacting” (spoilers: they aren’t).