The 8 "imperial" Languages

Viri Amaoro   Wed Apr 12, 2006 4:18 pm GMT
Saudações, Marinheiro!

"Brazil is the major unit of the Portuguese colonial empire"? Vou falar em inglês para outros entenderem

Is? You mean was. The portuguese empire is dead and buried and Brazil must surely be the only country in the world that was part of an empire and became one himself after independence (de facto and de jure). Furthermore Brazil expandend its territory after 1822. It inherited most of its state from Portugal but expanded at the expenses of, at least, Paraguay (war spoils from the Triple Alliance War), Bolivia (República do Acre, brazilian infiltration and then annexation, just like the americans did in Texas!), Colombia etc.

Sure, Brazil was once the child of Portugal, but then it left his father's house early and grew by itself and became a very distinct country. But I think you still look at Brazil's face and say: "hey he looks like Mr. P, must be his son".
Javi   Thu Apr 13, 2006 1:56 am GMT
I wouldn't think of Brazil as an empire.
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Marinheiro   Thu Apr 13, 2006 3:10 am GMT
Amigo Viri

Brazil is the center of the language nowadays. Dom João VI changed for ever the center of the Portuguese World. Portugal is our spiritual and cultural cradle for ever. Brazil will be Brazil only if we keep our Brazilian Portuguese Culture expanding, assimilating and absorbing any other culture here. What we have been doing succesfuly in the last 506 years.

Abraço
Javi   Tue Apr 18, 2006 2:08 pm GMT
Go to google groups and check out the number of sites in Eu Portuguese compared to Brazilian Portuguese.

The son has outgrown the father.
Gringo   Tue Apr 18, 2006 2:30 pm GMT
Javi Tue Apr 18, 2006 2:08 pm GMT
««Go to google groups and check out the number of sites in Eu Portuguese compared to Brazilian Portuguese.

The son has outgrown the father.»»

Really Javi! Have you noticed that Portugal has 10 Million people and Brazil 190 Million people? I know, you guys think every Portuguese can do the work of 19 Brazilians, it is flattering though. Every time you compare Brazil and Portugal look at the map, then think, how could a small country like Portugal have done so much? If Brazil had accomplished as much as Portugal did, Brazilians would be already colonising Mars.
Gringo   Tue Apr 18, 2006 2:42 pm GMT
And yes, keep comparing all the time with Portugal, maybe some day in the future you will feel so proud of yourselves that you will no longer have the need to do this. I can understand, the son that wants to look bigger than the father.
Viri Amaoro   Tue Apr 18, 2006 4:23 pm GMT
Well, this "father and son" thing was just a metaphor, really, no need to overuse it.
suomalainen   Wed Apr 19, 2006 3:09 pm GMT
The languages of Inca and Aztec empires are still alive: the language of Incas was ketchua, and its variants are still spoken by at least 8 million people in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador. In Mexico there are about 1 million speakers of Nahuatl that was once the main language of the Aztec empire.
suomalainen   Fri Apr 21, 2006 4:13 pm GMT
Hopefully the process of assimilation of minorities by national languages could be somehow stopped, or at least slowed down. Nice to hear that Mexican immigrants have kept their Indian languages even in USA. Unfortunately there are many who think like Marinheiro that suppressing of indigenous cultures is a particular merit. It is like boasting of how many rare plant and animal species they have been able to destroy. How odd!
By the way, Brennus, do you live in Seattle area?
Älléæi   Sun Apr 23, 2006 9:33 am GMT
Hey, someone wrote that the official language of Kyrgizstan and Kazakhstan is Russian.Yes, it is, but the mostly official language of these countries is Turkish.Why don't count Turkish as their mother tongue?Imperialist Russians take their language into these countries and don't count Turkish as actual Turks' language.If the thing you are talking about, take it into consider that from Bulgaria to Siberia and Kamchatka Turkish is widespread, and it's a worldwide language, too.No one can ignore this!
Linguist   Mon Apr 24, 2006 9:00 am GMT
Imperialist Russians take their language into these countries and don't count Turkish as actual Turks' language.If the thing you are talking about, take it into consider that from Bulgaria to Siberia and Kamchatka Turkish is widespread, and it's a worldwide language, too.No one can ignore this!
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Countries where Turkish is spoken: Turkey, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Moldova, Greece, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Azerbaijan, Germany. Strange - no Russia in the list. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_language So wi'll continue to ignore you.

One more disappointment: official Russian science acknowleges that Turkish is a Turks language.
knewman   Wed May 17, 2006 10:03 am GMT
French 169 38%
English 165 37%
Spanish 162 36%
German 130 29%
Mandarin 66 15%
Japanese 64 14%
Russian 54 12%
Italian 52 12%
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/languages.asp?submenu=mostpopulartarget
Me   Mon Jun 12, 2006 3:23 pm GMT
Ok then, in the last ten years of the XX century was marked by a spirit of American triumph alimented by psychological propaganda. Being inspired from this “drunken victory” political circles from Washington have planed a military supremacy named “globalization”. In essence, Americans think of “globalization” as a relation between all of the countries of the world in which they detain control and eliminating cultures considered useless by them. These will be replaced by “liberal and democratic American values”. The strongest force fighting against “globalization” is “nationalism”. If small nations like Yugoslavia, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Romania, Bulgaria and others can be choked, bombed and in the end occupied, the same thing will not happen with the grater nations of the world, like Russia, China, India, Japan, France and Germany. Many American annalists like Paul Bracken, a professor of political science at Yale University, sustain this truth.
Well what I want to say it that which languages is and will be spoken depends on politics and economy.