Brasilian or Brasilian Portuguese ?

Jo   Sunday, May 22, 2005, 17:35 GMT
Portuguese people don't make themselves understood in Brazil

So you think the Portuguese like going on holiday to Brazil because nobody understands them?????
mjd   Sunday, May 22, 2005, 17:44 GMT
The Brazilians who are trying to argue this case are constantly dodging the questions. Do you think Scolari needs an interpretor when he's speaking with the Portuguese players? When he's interviewed on SIC or the RTP he certainly doesn't. Why could this be? Oh, I know, they speak Portuguese in Brazil and the Portuguese are used to their accents due to exposure.
Jo   Sunday, May 22, 2005, 17:59 GMT

Quite right mjd.
Does my head in though:
Why do some Brazilians feel the need to pose questions starting from false premises, coming to false conclusions and then dodge the questions?
mjd   Sunday, May 22, 2005, 18:13 GMT
Because there is no real argument to be made. We all know Portuguese is spoken in Brazil. If they were to listen to the recordings of the speakers on the Camões Institute Web site, do they mean to say that they wouldn't understand any of the speakers from the other Lusophone countries? I don't buy that for a minute.

If I as a foreigner can understand both variants of Portuguese, then they as native speakers should have no problem whatsoever after proper exposure.
Huchu   Sunday, May 22, 2005, 18:15 GMT
Jo, Mjd, Rui, etc. etc. Don't waste your time and efforts. For many brazilians hate is stronger than reason. I think you should close this topic.
Huchu   Sunday, May 22, 2005, 18:18 GMT
And as they say, let them be...
Jordi   Sunday, May 22, 2005, 18:28 GMT
I'm reading a Catalan translation of Paulo Coelho's last book. It means 12.000 books sold in the first month! Quite a lot for a language like Catalan with 8 million speakers. The Catalan version is called "onze minuts" and it says that the original "Portuguese" version is called "onze minutos". Compare that to French "onze minutes" or Spanish "once minutos".

Coelho mentions in his book, several times, that Brazilians speak Portuguese. He even has the main character, a poor Brazilian country girl who becomes a prostitute in Switzerland, saying she speaks Portuguese with other Brazilian girls.

There is, after all, a sense of the unity of the Portuguese language amongst the great literary Portuguese language tradition of Brazil and even amongst the Brazilian themselves.

Brazilians and Portuguese should be proud of sharing a common enriched heritage.

Although I have never studied Portuguese I have read quite a bit and I can even follow RTP television in Portuguese. As a Catalan cultivated speaker (also fluent in other Romance languages) it only took me a few days (hours, of course) to get used to the Lisbon accent.

It is a bit hard at first but if you forget about it, it will sound like Brazilian
to your ears. Differences aren't as big as some would want to make us believe.
mjd   Sunday, May 22, 2005, 18:34 GMT
I think the differences are cool and interesting. I also don't think the vocal anti-Portuguese Brazilians here on the forum speak for everyone in Brazil. Normally, when a Brazilian is asked what language he/she speaks, they say Portuguese...they don't go into a long-winded and futile explanation citing obscure linguists and going on about "eu te amo"/"eu amo-te."
Rui   Sunday, May 22, 2005, 18:49 GMT
Jo : I'm very sorry, I just remembered the fact after searching the chronicle all over "Actual" myself. I hope you did enjoy the rest of the newspaper, I think it's the best around; it's a very original mix of newspaper and revue (includes carnets "Única", for general itens, and "Actual" for cultural ones). They have a site but you must pay in order to read full texts (www.expresso.pt). Anyway you surely can find it at the nearest public library near you, free of charges.

I have a feeling this thread will not end until the last Brasilian Portuguese word and idiomatic expression are quoted here. As new Brasilian words and expressions seem to born every day, this thread might never end.
Huchu   Sunday, May 22, 2005, 19:01 GMT
I agree with you that Brazilian Portuguese is still Portuguese.But Portuguese from Lisbon doesn't sound like "Brazilian Portuguese" at all.
A proof that the language spoken in Brazilian nowadays is still Portuguese is rendered by the songs of so many popular singers, like .e.g. Daniela Mercury. In many of her songs (e.g. Pérola Negra, o amor ao ilê, bandidos da América,etc) there are a few words of african origin, but the lyrics are still written in grammatically correct portuguese. In some of her songs (e.g. Pérola Negra, o amor ao ilê) the pronoun tú is even used:
"Eu fiquei zangada nesse carnaval
Porque não te vi
Onde tu estavas menino
Onde tu estavas
Estava atrás do ilê, menina
Estava atrás do ilê
Estava atrás do ilê, menina
Do ilê ayê "
Mandy   Sunday, May 22, 2005, 19:41 GMT
TU is used in Brazil, but only regionally, archaicly and poetically, just like THOU in (British) English.
Mandy   Sunday, May 22, 2005, 19:59 GMT
Ivo Castro (Portuguese linguist) agrees that there is no Brazilian and/or Portuguese language but names like Brazilian Portuguese and Continental Portuguese go pretty close. Brazilians wouldn't accept a translation made in Continental Portuguese (Tv add or camera manual), but Portuguese people are often forced to do so (to accept Brazilian translations), since for many items/books/dvd-subtitles are available only in Brazilian Portuguese.

Many Portuguese people don't accept Brazilian cultivate language usage, calling it ''full of errors'' and they opt for original (English) items/books...Many Portuguese people don't see Brazilian Portuguese as equal to Continental Portuguese and call it ''brasileiro'' brazilian...(Não me apetece o brasileiro = I don't like Brazilian (portuguese) language)...

Even portuguese minister of culture once said: ''in Brazil they speak Brazilian'' So, I think. It's not Brazilians who claim they speak Brazilian, but it is Portuguese who call it ''Brazilian'' as they don't accept Brazilian cultivated language usage acceptable...

(Now we go back to Ivo Castro from Lisbon:

Clitics loss is part of Brazilian cultivated usage, since even upper class and/or educated Brazilians normally say things like: EU VI ELE (I saw him). DEIXE EU FALAR (Let me say). EU FALEI PRA ELA (I told her), EU FUI NA LOJA (I went to the store). VOCÊ CHEGOU EM CASA (You arrived home).

...in Portugal these forms would be considered vulgar. In Brazil they are fully accepted by speakers of all socioeconomical grounds,and make part of the cultivated language. Language teachers don't see them as errors. You can find it in movies, sitcoms, soap operas and literary dialogs.

Portuguese people refuse to accept this Brazilian usage saying: you must educate your pupils to evoid this structures.

I don't know why should Brazilians change their way of talking just for Portuguese people to accept their ''usage'' It does not make any sense.


According to Ivo Castro, Brazilian Portuguese and Continental Portuguese are pretty different. You may call it different usage, different dialect, different idiom, different language, it does not matter. Ivo Castro says: what is considered error/vulagar in Brazilian P. is part of cultivated usage in Continental P. and vice-versa. I think BP and CP are much distant than Serbian or Croatian (which are considered separate languages) but not as distant as Dutch and Afrikaans.

The BP and CP will becoming even distant, since there is a strong trend of ''colloquialization'' in Brazilian Portuguese: Brazilian spoken usage is not considered error anymore. Brazilian usage is departing from Continental norms and accepting its own vernacular/dialectal characteristics.

Until 50ies things like TE AMO, VI ELE, CHEGO EM CASA were considered an error in Brazil (since all the grammars were Continental Portuguese-based). With the expansion of linguistic studies, these forms are no longer stigmatized and native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese don't find it an error. Even TU FALOU is tolerated (in parts that use TU like Rio ou South of Brazil). No one bother to ''correct'' this usage since virtually everybody from a street urchin to a university professor talks like this.

Portuguese people don't like this trend and call Portuguese as spoken in Brazil: brasileiro (brezilâir, as Brazilians people hear it pronounced), as if it were a semi-creole, which is not.
Mandy   Sunday, May 22, 2005, 20:04 GMT
brasileiro

BR: brazilêro (or brazilêru)

PT: brezilâir(u)


português

BR: pohtugueiç

PT: purt(u)guêx


Continental Portuguese is very harsh.
Jo   Sunday, May 22, 2005, 22:09 GMT
«português

BR: pohtugueiç

PT: purt(u)guêx »

Você esta fazendo um bicho de sete cabeças:

BR do interior de São Paulo: PuRRRRRtugues.

Assim já arranjamos duas linguas para o Brasil.
Agora tá ficando baum, né?
Wheezer   Monday, May 23, 2005, 19:39 GMT
ninguém fala PURTUGUES no Brasil

é sempre com ô: Portugues.


No one uses u for first o in pronunciation of the word: português in Brasil.

There are some words in which pretonic o can be pronounced u in Brazil as well, but ''português'' is just not one of those words.

pretonic o as u is a regional variation found in some words only:

dormir /durmir or dormir/
bonito /bunito or bonito/


tomate /tomate; tumate (in Rio)/

remember the Kid Abelha song? tomate /too much/?