Brazilian Portuguese - is it a hard language?

Scientist   Sun Oct 18, 2009 12:09 pm GMT
It's a bit foolish to have Brazilians writing texts in Portuguese claiming that they do not speak Portuguese.**

But Swiss linguists publish texts in high German too when they are describing Swiss '"German'' which is more different from Germany's German than Afrikaans is from Dutch.

Why is Afrikaans a different language at all?
Dutch companies have call centers in Cape Town, yet, no Portuguese companies have call centers in Brasília or Rio...
Joao   Wed Oct 21, 2009 1:59 am GMT
Afrikaans is a different language from Dutch because the official spelling of both languages is different in almost all the words.


This does not happen in the differences between Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese, where only a handful of words words have different spelling or are different. 90% por cent is the same.
Question   Thu Oct 22, 2009 2:03 am GMT
Could someone please tell me what the word "mairda" means in the following sentence: "Os Estados Unidos é bom, mas é uma mairda; O Brasil é uma mairda, mas é bom".
Evinória   Thu Oct 22, 2009 4:30 am GMT
Question

Não existe nenhuma palavra no PT BR chamada de MAIRDA. Creio que esse mairda é um tipo de gíria para "MERDA" (SHIT).
Joao   Fri Oct 23, 2009 9:29 am GMT
Which is Portuguese
Plato   Thu Nov 19, 2009 2:22 pm GMT
@Evinória, your pride is a little misplaced.

By virtue of being immersed in the language, you may overlook many aspects that look "natural" to you, but are evident to the observer, who, like Kelly, are proficient in syntactical analysis.

In fact, much of the linguistic research in the world was done by non-native speakers. This include English linguistics.

Please have some more pertinent linguistic arguments than some nationalistic cliches. I will be thrilled to read them.

@Joao, yes, it is slang, or just plain "bad" portuguese. But where do you draw the line between slang and a dialect? IMHO, when you can speak "proper" Portuguese (or any other language) without sounding foreign, then I would say it is slang. To any of the native BR speakers: can you honestly say you can speak "proper" PT without sounding foreign, even with the right accent?
Platão   Thu Nov 19, 2009 4:08 pm GMT
<< It's a bit foolish to have Brazilians writing texts in Portuguese claiming that they do not speak Portuguese. >>

The problem is that when Brazilians write texts, they write in Portuguese. Standard, formal, written language in Brazil is obviously Portuguese, no one is denying that. But when Brazilians are not writing, or in any formal situation, they switch to a language very similar to Portuguese, but with different rules.
Platão   Thu Nov 19, 2009 4:16 pm GMT
<< Que história é essa Kubanga (rsrsrs) de Chover?

Somente você fala assim né? >>

Then you must not be a "true Brazilian" after all. At least in my dialect "deixa <pronome reto> <infinitivo>" is the standard, and "deixa eu" is pronounced like '"xô":

Deixa eu ver --> xô vê
Deixa eu passar --> xô passá
Deixa eu tentar --> xô tentá
Deixa ele olhar --> xel'olhá
Mega3   Fri Nov 20, 2009 3:51 am GMT
<< It's a bit foolish to have Brazilians writing texts in Portuguese claiming that they do not speak Portuguese. >>

Making a conclusion by reading formal articles (or sometimes even newspapers) can be deceiving. Any person reading Swiss publications (from magazines to master thesis) could think Swiss people speak the same way German people speak which is not true. Yes, Swiss linguists write in Hochdeutsch about ''Schwyzerdütsch'', and but does not imply Hochdeutsch is normally used in speech of people from Basel, Zürich or Bern...


Hopefully, we will soon have two norms in Brazil, one that is more Brazilian (used in speech, songs, theater plays, and increasingly literature) and one more Lusitanian (the current one, used only in semiformal to formal writing): this could be compared to current Norwegean, it has two official forms, one that is more Norwegian (nynorsk) and one that is a copy of Danish (bökmal).
Mika   Fri Nov 20, 2009 5:26 am GMT
It's actually easier

English - Portugal - Brazil

I sing - eu canto - eu canto
you sing - tu cantas - você canta
she sings - ela canta - ela canta
we sing - nós cantamos - a gente canta
you (guys) sing - vós cantais - vocês canta(m)
they sing - eles cantam - eles canta(m)

So in Portugal they use six different endings, whereas in Brazil they're reduced to two: canto for eu, and the rest uses canta.
Ubirajara   Sat Nov 21, 2009 12:11 pm GMT
<< So in Portugal they use six different endings, whereas in Brazil they're reduced to two: canto for eu, and the rest uses canta. >>

Not everywhere in Brazil.

Around here it is:

Eu canto
Tu/você/ele/a gente canta
(tu) cantas (the second person conjugation *is* used when the pronoun is omitted, there's even the hyper-correction '(tu) cantasses' in the pretérito perfeito for '(tu) cantaste')
nós cantamo
eles/vocês cantam

You can also hear 'nós canta' and 'nós cantemo' but it's considered substantard, only illiterate people speak like that.

Also, I doubt they use 'vós cantais' in Portugal, even though they do use 'vosso' instead of 'seu' (which I think is quite nice and we should do the same).
Ubirajara   Sat Nov 21, 2009 12:21 pm GMT
Oh, and I wouldn't favor the development and enforcement of a Brazilian norm, because it would certainly be based on Southeastern dialects. I prefer to have Portuguese as national language than be forced to write and speak some crappy paulista, fluminense, or whatever (no offence to those who speak them, they just sounds awful to me). Or even worse: some horrible tv-globo like language. Things are ok the way they are.
hard is better   Sat Nov 21, 2009 3:04 pm GMT
Brazilian standard is the most simplified morphologically amongst all Romance languages.
Joao   Mon Nov 23, 2009 12:22 am GMT
«we sing - nós cantamos - a gente canta
you (guys) sing - vós cantais - vocês canta(m)
So in Portugal they use six different endings, whereas in Brazil they're reduced to two: canto for eu, and the rest uses canta.»


"A gente" - "we", litt: "the people" - is also commonly used in Portugal. I say that phrase a lot:
A gente vai lá (We go there). Agente não sabe (W do not know), etc. It's just kind of forbidden in formal speech. We cannot use it in business letters f. ex.

"Vós" as 2nd person, plural, is no longer used. I really do not know why it is still taught at school. 20 years ago, we could still hear people from the north of Portugal using that phrase (vós cantais), but it's no longer used anywhere. The common form here for the 2nd person plural, is just like in Brazil: "vocês cantam", vocês dizem, vocês sabem, etc.
Manaus   Mon Nov 23, 2009 5:42 am GMT
even though they do use 'vosso' instead of 'seu' (which I think is quite nice and we should do the same).


Vosso sounds ugly, and it's substandard (used by Mato Grosso house maids instead of ''seu, de você'':) A senhorita recebeu a carta de vosso pai?


LOL