The vocabulary of door sounds

You’re watching a film at home. It’s not your first language but you’re picking up most of the dialogue and you’re following the plot.

You stroke the mouse down to the corner of the screen. You probably don’t need them, but even so, you click on closed captions.

With that click the world expands. All the noises made by objects in the film, all the sounds that are not spoken dialogue, are now pushed to the front of the screen. Each sound is hitched to its appropriate verb.

Most of these are verbs you've not had the opportunity to learn and certainly never to use. Doors have a particularly wide vocabulary. You recognise the phrase PORTA FECHA (meaning DOOR CLOSES) but PORTA RANGE only makes sense when you hear the creaking sound that coincides, more or less, with the words on screen.

PORTA APITA is even better because the verb apitar translates as beep in this context, but in other contexts translates as whistle. The assemblage of sounds that apitar takes responsibility for in Portuguese is different to the assemblage looked after by beep in English and the point where these two assemblages overlap is the door at the fictional service station as a customer enters.

With thanks to the RTP series Emília, directed by Filipa Amaro and starring Beatriz Maia and Catarina Rebelo.

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