Portugal to reform the language in favor of Brazil?

Guest   Fri Jun 27, 2008 2:34 am GMT
Spelling will not unify two versions of Portuguese.
Many spelling differences, like (''esôfago, Antônio, tênis, deságua, encontramos você ontem'' in Brazil vs ''esófago, António, ténis, desagua, encontrámo-lo ontem'' in Portugal) will remain intact, while new differences are introduced (after the agreement it will be spelled like this: ''infecção, aspecto, receção, contato/contacto, óptica/ótica'' in Brazil, and
''infeção, aspeto, recepção, contato, óptica'' in Portugal). The consonant is kept if pronounced, but in many cases a consonant is pronounced in Brazil, and not in Portugal (and vice versa), and therefore, differences.
Guest   Fri Jun 27, 2008 2:41 am GMT
The problem with Portuguese is that its speakers (in both Portugal and Brazil) bastardized the language so much, that it started to become less and less phonetic with the time, people in both countries were too lazy to pronounce all letters and that's why the pronunciations differed from each other and from the written form itself, now it's too late to change it, basically they're gonna have like 2 different forms of spelling the same words.
Guest   Fri Jun 27, 2008 2:45 am GMT
Galician is the only branch of the Lusitan family that pronounces words as they are writen. It sounds like Spanish, hence its clarity.
Guest   Fri Jun 27, 2008 2:49 am GMT
<<By the way I heard that Nuevo Leon wanted to follow example of Texas (split from Mexico and join the US) can anybody confirm that??? >>

If they want to join the US, they'll first have to convince two small US states to combine. That way, the number of senators will remain at 100, so percentages are still easy to compute.
zatsu   Fri Jun 27, 2008 3:44 am GMT
What's going to change (or not, that's not definitive yet) is not the language, but the orthography.

Basically it means all the letters not pronounced will disappear without regard for their Latin roots or whatnot. It also means that the way words are pronounced are not going to change, that's something very difficult to achieve even if someone wanted to impose that.
The differences will remain, and that's one of the many reasons why this agreement makes no sense.


<<The problem with Portuguese is that its speakers (in both Portugal and Brazil) bastardized the language so much, that it started to become less and less phonetic with the time, people in both countries were too lazy to pronounce all letters and that's why the pronunciations differed from each other and from the written form itself, now it's too late to change it, basically they're gonna have like 2 different forms of spelling the same words.>>

Portuguese IS a phonetic language.
Those letter sometimes are read, and sometimes punctuate. They're not useless. It's just that some people seem to think they're disposable, like what already happened with the "¨" in Portugal before.
Apparently people didn't change their pronunciation because of that (maybe some people are confused with "sequestro" though, lol)
Guest   Fri Jun 27, 2008 4:02 am GMT
Portuguese is NOT a phonetic language, its speakers do NOT pronounce everything the way it's written, with this reform the spelling will be change to the way people actually speak, however since words are pronounced different in different countries/regions, a hell lot of words will have two different spellings which is gonna separate the language even more since various words could be spelled in various ways.
zatsu   Fri Jun 27, 2008 4:13 am GMT
<<Portuguese is NOT a phonetic language, its speakers do NOT pronounce everything the way it's written, with this reform the spelling will be change to the way people actually speak, however since words are pronounced different in different countries/regions, a hell lot of words will have two different spellings which is gonna separate the language even more since various words could be spelled in various ways.>>

Did you ever read what I wrote before about punctuation and so on?
Also, do you care to share some examples?

I will also had, you don't have to pronounce 100% of what's written for a language to be considered phonetic, if that's the correct term for it.
Guest   Fri Jun 27, 2008 4:15 am GMT
I like the way that English spelling and pronunciation are so independent. It adds character to our language.
Guest   Fri Jun 27, 2008 4:50 am GMT
Portuguese is not phonetic, because you, most times, cannot say if the vowel is closed and open:


sede (closed e) = thirst
sede (open e) = seat, center

forma (open e) = shape, form
forma (closed e) = mold, (cake) tin

nego (open e) = I say no
nego (closed e) = dude, buddy
Guest   Fri Jun 27, 2008 4:52 am GMT
<<
forma (open e) = shape, form
forma (closed e) = mold, (cake) tin
>>

I'm sorry but I don't see any E's in either of those.
Guest   Fri Jun 27, 2008 6:26 pm GMT
Actually most of Mexico is considerably developed, except for the southern states (next to Central America) that are the ones that lower down the the country's indicators.

It's because the majority of Souther Mexico population is Indian or predominantly Indian. Since Mexico was a Spanish colony the Indians were not considered rational human beings and they were used as regulary slaves (the man) or used as sex objects (the woman) by the Spaniards. Currently Mexican elites (who are white or predominantly white) continue to marginalize the mestizos and the Indians, denying them basic human rights. For example in Mexican southern states educational levels match those found in Africa, while in northen states we found a high educational level where is possible to found some of the best universities in Latin America (both private and public) which are able to be highly competitive not only in LA but also in the rest of the Western world (Europe, US, Canada, Japan etc). It is possible to found Mexicans in the North, West Coast who are whiter or pure white and they don't like their southern Indian fellows who are brown skinned.


Check out this article:

Mexican Indians from Chiapas (Mexico's poorest and most Indian state) were arrested by Mexican offficers in Sonora (one state that is 58% European according to the Mexican gene map) and they were send to the border with Guatemala in an attempt to deported them as they were accused of being Guatemalans.

How Mexico Handles Illegals – Oops, Mexican Indians!

The detainees were from the state of Chiapas (which borders Guatemala). They had traveled by plane to Sonora (which borders Arizona) in order to work at a job they had already been contracted for. They were mistaken for Guatemalans by INM officials in the Hermosillo, Sonora airport.

http://www.vdare.com/awall/indians.htm

Mexican society is a very racist one, and the Mexican government does nothing to improve the life conditons in the southern states instead they prefer to throw the "unwanted" (mestizos and Indians) into the US while the Mexican white elites get even richer.

Check out this article:

America's Imported Caste System

Series on the Mexican racial hierarchy and its implications for America

Now, imagine a conquistador and his Indian woman have two sons in the 1520s. These two mestizo brothers grow up and go out in the world to seek their fortunes. One is smarter, and he strikes it rich. The other wasn't so lucky in the genetic lottery, and he becomes poor. The rich son has a wide variety of potential wives to choose from. Like most men, and like almost all Mexican men, he is more attracted to blonde women, and thus marries one. (If you aren't familiar with the depths of Mexico's blonde obsession, try watching Spanish-language TV shows. Almost all the women on Mexican TV look like Finns.) His impoverished brother, in contrast, cannot attract a blonde wife. So he marries an Indian girl.

Then, the brothers have children. On average, the smarter, richer brother's kids, who are 3/4 white, are smarter than their underprivileged 1/4 white cousins. They're smarter not because they are whiter, but because their father had more smartness genes than their uncle. This trend continues: in both families, the smartest, most energetic, and most ruthless sons marry the blondest wives, while the blondest daughters marry the husbands with the most Right Stuff. Repeat for another dozen and a half generations. By 2000, this pattern could lead to the most European-looking people being the most naturally formidable, even if they weren't when they arrived in 1519.

http://www.vdare.com/sailer/mexico_part3.htm

By the way I'm not American.


Despite the popular belief there's a considerable amount of white Mexican people here (more or less 10 % are pure white according to the CIA worldfactbook) so if there are 110 000 000 millions of Mexicans that means approximately 10 millions are pure white, also 60 millions are Mestizos (mixture of Europeans and Indigenous people) and the rest 40 millions are direct descentants of the Indigenous populations. From Mestizos we can take another 15 - 20 millions from the original 60 millions who are fair skinned or have a majority of European facial gestures if we add this number of fair skinned mestizos to the original 10 million who are pure white we have a total of 20 - 25 millions of Mexicans who are indeed white or fair skinned against 40 millions Indigenous Mexicans and 50 millions Mestizos who dark-skinned or have Indigenous facial gestures.

20 - 25 millions of whites - fair skinned in Mexico is a number higher than the avarage population of Quebec of 7 millions, Sweden of 9 millions, Norway of 4 millions, Denmark of 5 millions and Finland's population of 5 millions, amazing isn't it? but still less than 35 millions of whites in Argentina whose white population is more or less 90 % white. However Mexico is not considered a white country, why? because we have 50 million Mestizos and 40 million who are direct descendants of the Indigenous population, that makes 90 millon of non whites agains 20 - 25 millions of whites/fair-skinned.

The elites usually descendants from the conquerors were usually white or fair-skinned at the same time the working class or the “proletarian” were brown or dark-skinned. After several hundreds of years or intermarriage the elites get even whiter in contrast with the most dark looking- Amerindian people from lower classes. Over the generations (and still in the actuality) the descendants of the conquerors who were the most rich or the most interactive were allowed to marry white women (usually blondes) while the other men who weren’t successful enough had to marry an indigenous girl.

The elites clawed their way up out of the indigenous dark masses not only in a racial way, but in a social and economic way also. We can found one example of this in the Mexican soup operas, by the look of the actors. The maids, bus drivers, plumbers and other lesser jobs are all performed by dark-skinned people, while the white collar workers are all performed by white actors and for the look of their women (the majority blondes) people could think that Mexico is located in Scandinavia. One more recent example is the last Mexican presidential election; the right-wing candidate Felipe Calderon is white, while the leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is dark-skinned. The ethnic conflicts of Latin America, have found in Marxist- Populism (class struggle) a form of identification

So white women in general with some exceptions can be found usually in the elites in Mexico thus they have a higher economic (and social) level and they don't need to be in lesser or regular jobs (or they prefer to marry a rich man who will give them all the money they want at the horrible cost of having him around).
Guest2   Fri Jun 27, 2008 6:42 pm GMT
Guest Fri Jun 27, 2008 4:15 am GMT:

<<I like the way that English spelling and pronunciation are so independent. It adds character to our language.>>

I agree!

As the exemples given show, the reform disguises the latin origin of the language, making it more difficult to understand texts by non-native learners.
Guest   Fri Jun 27, 2008 7:23 pm GMT
<<
forma (open o) = shape, form
forma (closed o) = mold, (cake) tin
>>

I'm sorry but I don't see any E's in either of those.




forma / fôrma
Guest   Fri Jun 27, 2008 7:26 pm GMT
-Mexican society is a very racist one, and the Mexican government does nothing to improve the life conditons in the southern states instead they prefer to throw the "unwanted" (mestizos and Indians) into the US while the Mexican white elites get even richer.-

Same thing here in Brazil.We have a postcolonial society established by slave owners (Portuguese): slave owners became rich white elite, slaves become poor slums people and 10 % of population is a midd class made of nonPortuguese immigrants (Italian, Polish, Japanese, German, Arabic)
Invitado   Fri Jun 27, 2008 7:28 pm GMT
Let's see, as they mentioned before most of Mexico is considerably developed except the southern states, the ones next to Central America, here are some indicators:

HDI - Mexico itself has a high HDI but still you can check in the map the differences between north and south.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mexican_states_by_HDI

Life Expectancy - Mexico's average is 75 years, but still the southern states have the lowest expectancy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mexican_states_by_life_expectancy

Literacy Rate - infants under the age of 14 have a 97% of literacy rate, still the ones with the lowest are the southern states.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mexican_states_by_literacy_rate

In other words the southern states are the ones that send the immigrants to the states, the rest fo Mexico is more developed that a lot of eastern European countries.