the Portuguese are unhappy about their linguistic dethronement

[Jennifer Weiss]

Good evening, Portuguese-speaking foreros:

I'm reading a book called "Babel" by Gaston Dorren. One of the chapters is completely devoted to Portuguese. Even though I'm not new to linguistics and its neighboring disciplines, I do not know a huge ton about Portuguese and its history along with legacy. I would like to know your opinion on how far-fetched the infromation in the excerpt below is. I assume the author might have adorned his work to make the entire book more breath-taking by distorting some factual information and simplifying the real state of affairs. It's not a closely guarded secret that Brazilian Portuguese differs from its European elder brother more profoundly than Latin American Spanish from Castillano, though.

The excerpt:
“Among the Portuguese there is a widespread sentiment that, as the inventors of the language, they’re surely more entitled than their trans-Atlantic cousins to be the judges of what is proper and correct usage. The Brazilian variety has an impoverished grammar, or so many Portuguese people feel. They dislike the Brazilians’ indifference to the TU-VOCÊ distinction (for informal and formal ‘you’, like French TU and VOUS). They dislike the way the Brazilians move pronouns to positions where no pronouns ever ought to move, or omit some of them altogether. Some Portuguese even dislike that the Brazilians have done away with their pet archaism, a conditional mood with a pronoun placed smack bang in the middle of the word: in COMÊ-LO-IA (would eat it), COMERIA means ‘would eat’, with the object pronoun LO spliced in (erasing the r).
If the Portuguese are unhappy about their linguistic dethronement, the Brazilians are hardly aware of any such acrimony. They seem to look upon Portugal in much the same way that many people look upon their ageing parents: after the turmoil of adolescence and the economic struggles of early adulthood, a new, more distant fondness has set in.” (sic)

Excerpt From Babel by Gaston Dorren
This material may be protected by copyright.

I would like to hear your opinion on the excerpt or on the whole chapter if you are already familiar with the book.

With kind regards,
Jennifer

 

[Carfer]

I take a very poor view of that excerpt. I will not deny that there's a segment of the Portuguese opinion, although a small one, that may share such beliefs, largely made of people nostalgic of past imperial glories and imbued with nationalistic feelings, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that those sentiments are widespread. Actually, by the way of tv shows, lots of Brazilian words and expressions made their way into the variant of Portugal and are quite popular there. The arguments that Dorren appeals to are quite weak, indeed. What does he mean when he says that Brazilian move pronouns to positions where no pronouns ever ought to move? Brazilians show a marked preference for placing object pronouns at proclitic positions and the Portuguese at enclitic ones, but Dorren seems to forget that their placement doesn't obey to very strict rules in both variants and that the Portuguese could also be accused of similar faults, albeit, maybe, on a smaller scale. The 'tu-você' distinction is hardly a problem and what he calls a pet archaism is something that the Portuguese seldom use and, anyway, never in informal or current speech (by the way it's not only a conditional but also a future tense issue). I don't know Dorren's work so I will not say anything definite about its quality, but, by just looking at the fragment above, I wouldn't trust it a bit. He doesn't seem to know much about the language and, apparently, found his sources in the aforementioned current of opinion, which is mainly political, not linguistic.

 

[Ari RT]

I read Babel in Italian, a language I don’t master to the finest detail, so take my opinion with a LOT of salt. Didn’t look like a book on linguistics, despite the author’s credentials. More like a book that tries to be light and fancy, far from a strictly academic work. I saw Dorrens’ personal impressions when learning the languages and the ethnographic context that shape them as the hot spots. That’s what drew my attention. Actually, that is why I bought the book, so I took his remarks about Portuguese quite lightly.
Of course Portuguese and Brazilians disagree on a couple of things, we do speak in different ways, but to imply animosity based on that is not realistic.
If we shall call the variants like that, they are pretty close variants. I’ve never had any difficulties speaking to the Portuguese cousins, apart from the accents. On the other hand, I consider myself a competent speaker of Spanish (European variant) and it costs me a lot more to reach a good degree of understanding with American speakers. Of course, as Spanish is not my mother language, I may lack some extra resources that fill in the blanks when speaking / listening Portuguese.
In the end of the day, a “struggle” between two peoples for a language is good material for a book meant for amusement. We also find it funny when the choices of words give rise to misunderstandings. Just like within the English universe where some take the elevator, some take the lift, some wear pants, others wear trousers, some go to the movies, others go to the cinema.

 

[jazyk]

Esse Gaston Dorren é bem estranho. Li há uns anos o livro dele, mandei-lhe alguns comentários e objeções a respeito de vários aspectos que aborda em toda a obra e ele respondeu-me de forma bem irônica e mal fundamentada. Eu não lhe daria atenção.

 

[Espigueiro minhoto]

Hello Jennifer Weis,

As a native Portuguese speaker from Portugal who do not stick to politically correct opinions, I must confess that I pretty much agree with what you quoted in your post. I have never been to Brazil but I have family there, I have Brazilian friends who live in Portugal and I have Brazilian friends who live in Brazil, so I think I have a little knowledge of what Brazil and its language are. I have studied English for some 14 years, French for some seven years and Spanish for three years. My opinion is that differences between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese are far wider than the ones between British English and American English and the ones between European Spanish and Latin America's Spanish. In the case of Portuguese, differences could perhaps be compared to the ones between European French and Quebec's French or between British English and Indian English. I am not joking or being provocative. It is my sincere opinion.
We must bear in mind that standard Brazilian Portuguese seems to be nobody's language in Brazil. Not even the President of Brazil speaks standard Brazilian Portuguese. You won't listen to it in any "telenovela" nor in any movie. People actually speak a very different language, or very different languages. I can tell you that I can notice that I am reading a Brazilian text before I reach the end of the first sentence in more than 90% of the cases.
Personally, I think that Portuguese is quite an useless language as an international communication tool. Portuguese speakers do understand Brazilian speakers quite easily, or at least they think they do. I say that because many times I thought that I had understood my Brazilian friends to find out later that I had misunderstood them. On the other hand, if you speak European Portuguese and you go to Brazil, you will be getting an "oi?" answer all the time. That is what many Portuguese friends told me about their experiences in Brazil. I still remember the appalling face of a Portuguese colleague when she was telling me about one experience she had when she had to lecture a Brazilian audience about one professional subject, when she was working in Brazil. I think she became quite traumatized!
I could go on writing about the subject but I think the idea is already there.

 

[machadinho]

As a native Portuguese speaker from Portugal who do not stick to politically correct opinions, I must confess that I pretty much agree with what you quoted in your post. I have never been to Brazil but I have family there, I have Brazilian friends who live in Portugal and I have Brazilian friends who live in Brazil, so I think I have a little knowledge of what Brazil and its language are. I have studied English for some 14 years, French for some seven years and Spanish for three years. My opinion is that differences between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese are far wider than the ones between British English and American English and the ones between European Spanish and Latin America's Spanish. In the case of Portuguese, differences could perhaps be compared to the ones between European French and Quebec's French or between British English and Indian English. I am not joking or being provocative. It is my sincere opinion.
We must bear in mind that standard Brazilian Portuguese seems to be nobody's language in Brazil. Not even the President of Brazil speaks standard Brazilian Portuguese. You won't listen to it in any "telenovela" nor in any movie. People actually speak a very different language, or very different languages. I can tell you that I can notice that I am reading a Brazilian text before I reach the end of the first sentence in more than 90% of the cases.
Personally, I think that Portuguese is quite an useless language as an international communication tool. Portuguese speakers do understand Brazilian speakers quite easily, or at least they think they do. I say that because many times I thought that I had understood my Brazilian friends to find out later that I had misunderstood them. On the other hand, if you speak European Portuguese and you go to Brazil, you will be getting an "oi?" answer all the time. That is what many Portuguese friends told me about their experiences in Brazil. I still remember the appalling face of a Portuguese colleague when she was telling me about one experience she had when she had to lecture a Brazilian audience about one professional subject, when she was working in Brazil. I think she became quite traumatized!
I could go on writing about the subject but I think the idea is already there.

This may well be true as far as it goes, but it misses the point of Jenny's quote.

 

[Espigueiro minhoto]

This may well be true as far as it goes, but it misses the point of Jenny's quote.

I think that there are several points on Jennifer's quotation. I think that I should be more specific. Please see my comments below in italic.

“Among the Portuguese there is a widespread sentiment [I cannot have an opinion. Does the author have any statistics to underpin this statement or is he extrapolating the opinion of some people he might have talked with? Anyway, it is clear for me that this is an author's belief, ie, a speculative statement] that, as the inventors of the language, they’re surely more entitled than their trans-Atlantic cousins to be the judges of what is proper and correct usage [ I think that the point is that Brazilian is so different that many Portuguese may well look at it as an altogether different language.] . The Brazilian variety has an impoverished grammar, or so many Portuguese people feel [I totally agree with it]. They dislike the Brazilians’ indifference to the TU-VOCÊ distinction (for informal and formal ‘you’, like French TU and VOUS) [I have no statistics but I may well believe that it is not a question of liking or disliking, it is just another way in which Brazilians impoverished the language]. They dislike the way the Brazilians move pronouns to positions where no pronouns ever ought to move, or omit some of them altogether [I don't have statistics to back whether people dislike it or not, but I believe that for Portuguese people this is an aspect which makes Brazilian sound like a foreign language. In this aspect, Brazilian may be farther away from Portuguese than Spanish or French, for instance. As far as I know, Brazilian is the only romance language which places the pronoun in an enclitic position in imperative forms]. Some Portuguese even dislike that the Brazilians have done away with their pet archaism [I don't think this is an archaism, in Portugal], a conditional mood with a pronoun placed smack bang in the middle of the word: in COMÊ-LO-IA (would eat it), COMERIA means ‘would eat’, with the object pronoun LO spliced in (erasing the r).
If the Portuguese are unhappy about their linguistic dethronement, the Brazilians are hardly aware of any such acrimony [I totally agree with this.]. They seem to look upon Portugal in much the same way that many people look upon their ageing parents: after the turmoil of adolescence and the economic struggles of early adulthood, a new, more distant fondness has set in. [I agree with it, except when it comes to fondness, which I think never set in and probably never will].”

I think it is difficult to have a supported opinion on some of these subjects. However, if we take the time and go to YouTube, for instance, and read the comments Brazilian and Portuguese users send one another, I believe that we feel an hostility that cannot be found on the comments between Spaniards and Latin America's Spanish speakers or between the British and the Americans.

 

[Carfer]

Jenniffer titled this thread 'the Portuguese are unhappy about their linguistic dethronement'. That's the point of our discussion. Let me ask you a few questions, if I may, because I do not think that your comments are fully explanatory:
As a Portuguese, do you feel dethroned and on what grounds? Do you believe that the Portuguese are more entitled to be the judges of what is proper and correct usage of the language than the Brazilians (or the people of the former Portuguese colonies for that matter)? On what right? Do you feel that the Portuguese are the owners of the language and should be the ones that set the rules? Do you think that because the language was taken to Brazil by Portuguese settlers, no evolution should take place there and it should stuck and abide to the rules of European Portuguese grammar for ever? Do you think that languages are static? Do you think that the Portuguese should still speak Latin or return to the Gallician roots of our language? You are one of those Portuguese people that feel that BP has an impoverished grammar, so you say. On what grounds? Do you really look at BP as an altogether different language? What percentage of written and spoken BP you actually don't understand?
Are you aware that what you have written above is sheer prejudice?

 

[Ari RT]

Do you think that the Portuguese should still speak Latin or return to the Gallician roots of our language?

Galego, please! The latin cases are hard to learn.

 

[Vanda]

Well, never heard about the author, but my impression on the excerpt is that he wants to make a fuss. Of course I am not basing on anything but only on my impressions, and am not even trying to make a point. Just my feelings.

 

[Ari RT]

The book smells like pop science and it's not demeritorious. Asimov, Atkins, F. Capra, Arthur Clarke, do you remember Jacques Cousteau? All pop science authors. Richard Feynman, Dawkins, Carl Sagan, Y. N. Harari, Stephen Hawking, S.J. Gould... the list is enormous and full of great names who, in addition to making sound science, tried to extend a bridge between it and ordinary people.
Pop science is not loose science, it's more like a half breed between science and entertainment: it's got to be entertaining... too. Equations do not attract anybody's attention. Isoglosses and isographs... no chance. "Acrimony" between speakers of the same language, well, may be an overkill, but it's all for the sake of science.

 

[machadinho]

Most stars in constellation A claim that all stars in constellation B can't twinkle properly. Some stars in constellation A would go so far as to claim that the so-called stars in B aren't stars at all.

 

[Nonstar]

I think it is difficult to have a supported opinion on some of these subjects. However, if we take the time and go to YouTube, for instance, and read the comments Brazilian and Portuguese users send one another, I believe that we feel an hostility that cannot be found on the comments between Spaniards and Latin America's Spanish speakers or between the British and the Americans.

What does that prove?

 

[Jektor]

Interesting discussion - in faultless English!

 

[meencantesp]

I think it is difficult to have a supported opinion on some of these subjects. However, if we take the time and go to YouTube, for instance, and read the comments Brazilian and Portuguese users send one another, I believe that we feel an hostility that cannot be found on the comments between Spaniards and Latin America's Spanish speakers or between the British and the Americans.

I think I will join the conversation, although I feel intimidated because of my English. I will not take a position, but I think that such a hostility really exists on the Internet.

When I first started to read things like “you Portuguese, give our gold back” in social media I thought it was just an Internet teen joke, but I found out that many people really have bad thoughts about Portugal and the Portuguese. For me the lusophobia on the Internet is strong. There is a political feeling on that, it is good to say.

But in real life, in my region (Brazil is big) I am not used to this lusophobia, like… everyone here descend on the Portuguese, some even have a pure Portuguese ancestry. Because of this offending Portugal being a white Brazilian is kind of funny from my point of view. It seems like many Brazilians try to hide their Portuguese origin: the mixed-race mullatoes pretend to be pure Africans; the whites sometimes try to evidence their Italian or German origin rather than their Portuguese one. Some in Northeastern Brazil even aim to prove a Dutch origin, just to show they are less linked to their Iberian, native and black roots.

 

[Guigo]

I do love my Iberian, African and Native roots.

I can trace my genealogy back to Cunhambebe (died 1555), a great Tupi chief or morubixaba, who bragged to have eaten at least 30 Europeans, probably all of them were Portuguese. I told this history to some Portuguese people when I visited their beautiful land, last March, amid the pandemic. Well, instead of being appaled they were fascinated due to the fact that I am descended from a cannibal. Yummy!

Language transformation/evolution is a special type of cannibalism.

 

[machadinho]

It seems like many Brazilians try to hide their Portuguese origin: the mixed-race mullatoes pretend to be pure Africans; the whites sometimes try to evidence their Italian or German origin rather than their Portuguese one. Some in Northeastern Brazil even aim to prove a Dutch origin, just to show they are less linked to their Iberian, native and black roots.

(Most?) Brazilians who keep bragging about being of German or Italian or Dutch or whatever ancestry aren't trying to pass as non-Portuguese; they're trying to pass as non-Brazilian.

 

[meencantesp]

(Most?) Brazilians who keep bragging about being of German or Italian or Dutch or whatever ancestry aren't trying to pass as non-Portuguese; they're trying to pass as non-Brazilian.

To me being Portuguese is part of being Brazilian, the most important part of it. If one tries to pass as non-Brazilian, automatically it will be trying to pass as non-Portuguese. I do not see any incompatibily between what I have said and what you have said. Also in my comment I also mentioned the other Brazilian origins.

 

[machadinho]

Right. I was just trying to make explicit what I thought you were trying to convey.

 

[pfaa09]

Portugal is a small country. We speak with a different pronunciation every 80/100 miles. Besides the different pronunciation, we also use different words / terms for the same word or meaning. Imagine the comparison with Brazil.
What about cultural history, the previous language (before portuguese)??
How is it possible to apply a tag to an entire country (the book)?? We do not need a poll to be sure about this. it's ridiculous.
What is the aim of this book?

 

[Carfer]

Portugal is a small country. We speak with a different pronunciation every 80/100 miles. Besides the different pronunciation, we also use different words / terms for the same word or meaning. Imagine the comparison with Brazil

You are absolutely right, pfaa, but then, you see, we, the Portuguese, have a great grammar, really really great grammar, the best grammar there is. And we have good pronouns, very very good pronouns and we place them on the right spots, the only ones where they can be placed. And also the best youTube commentators, very very nice guys who even address those cannibals by 'Your Excellency' and the very best at teaching them how to improve their impoverished grammar, how to say 'tu' and how to place smack bang pronouns in the middle of the word in conditional mood. Did someone say that we have been dethroned? Fake news, pfaa, fake news, we are the greatest, we still seat on the damned throne! F...ck the bastards!

 

[guihenning]

Broadly speaking, I never thought the Portuguese really bothered about this. Brazil has its own literary non-profit society (Academia Brasileira de Letras) since the 19th century and never had the Portuguese something to say about this. On the beginning of the 20th century, they even went full on on a new orthographic reform without even asking Brazil if we wanted to join. I don't even think Brazilian Portuguese is a topic in Portugal. They just don't seem to care and don't normally act as the owners of the language, which they aren't anyway. Of course this can change on a more personal level, but since the aim of the topic is how the whole situation is broadly perceived, I wouldn't say it's a topic.

I've read Gaston Dorren in German and I liked the book "Sprachen". It just bugs me how a linguist would even use terms like "impoverished Grammar" and the like… I also don't understand the fuss about the "tu vs você" thing. Me, as a Brazilian, have always had a free pass with the Portuguese when it comes to it. How this would annoy them is a mystery to me.
I won't even start with the pronoun placement because we might go down that road that old Portuguese/Galician/whatever was much more similar to Brazilian Portuguese when it comes to pronoun placements and how the current placement in European Portuguese differs quite a bit from its predecessor.

 

[Carfer]

As Dorren himself says, he is a journalist, not a linguist Who I am. Of course, that doesn't prevent him from writing about languages, but it probably explains the lack of accuracy of, at least, this fragment.

 

[Vanda]

Ah! Great! I am not alone on my "estranhamento" on that author. Ainda bem. I think he meant to cause a fuss, just that.
Nota: Não sei exatamente como dizer esse estranhamento em inglês.

 

[Mister Draken]

Ah! Great! I am not alone on my "estranhamento" on that author. Ainda bem. I think he meant to cause a fuss, just that.
Nota: Não sei exatamente como dizer esse estranhamento em inglês.

Alienation?

 

[Jektor]

Nota: Não sei exatamente como dizer esse estranhamento em inglês.
.

Aversion, antipathy, dislike...
thesaurus.com - aversion

"I am not alone in my dislike of that author...
.

 

[Ari RT]

She doesn't mean that she dislikes it. She found it weird, like something doesn't fit in. Scruples? Misgivings?

 

[Jektor]

She doesn't mean that she dislikes it. She found it weird, like something doesn't fit in. Scruples? Misgivings?
.

Perhaps:
"I am not alone in having misgivings about that author.
or:
"I am not alone in feeling that there is something not quite right about that author...
etc.
.

 

[Vanda]

Misgivings it is. And also, I was really in doubt about that preposition. Obrigada.

 

[J. Bailica]

Hey. Ça vá?

Some Portuguese people do have that kind of prejudice against Brazilian Portuguese.
It's funny, "the average Portuguese" can both think Brazilian Portuguese is adorable and despise it. I'm exaggerating, in order to make a point. But not so much, in some cases.
It all depends: from individual to individual it's different, sometimes the same person has mix feelings, the great majority don't really think much about it (I think), you can also find some angry people in YouTube commentaries and things like that being like fascists about the language, sorry for my English, etc., etc.

 

[Carfer]

Ça va. Welcome back, J. Bailica.

 

[J. Bailica]

Ça va. Welcome back, J. Bailica.

Obrigado, Carfer. Tenho tido um pouco mais de tempo e deu-me uma saudade.
O meu inglês melhorou só ligeiramente.
O meu português melhorou e piorou em dias bons. Em dias maus apenas piorou.
O meu francês está agora a começar.

De resto espero que esteja tudo bem consigo.
Por isso, sorry for my English, etc., etc., and french, etc., etc.

 

[Carfer]

O meu francês está agora a começar.

Tudo bem, muito obrigado.
Já que está no início, repare que 'va' não tem acento em francês (os acentos no 'a' em francês resumem-se ao grave e ao circunflexo, não cabem os agudos).

 

[J. Bailica]

Tudo bem, muito obrigado.
Já que está no início, repare que 'va' não tem acento em francês (os acentos no 'a' em francês resumem-se ao grave e ao circunflexo, não cabem os agudos).

Sim, justamente tive essa dúvida.
Mas os meus objectivos são mais de compreensão oral. Entender um telejornal.
Daqui a dez anos.
Mas tudo é aprendizagem.

 

[Welsh_Sion]

No falo portugês, sorry, but thought I could just add, concurring with a few of the previous correspondents here.

Dorren, although he SPEAKS a good many languages is not a professional linguist. As a journalist, his instinct is for a good story. As an author, he is out to sell his book. The general tone of Babel is slightly mocking of ALL the languages he refers too, and I could easily take offence at his comments about my own language, Cymraeg/Welsh/galês. I suspect therefore that his aim is pseudo-scientific, give his readers a few wry smiles at our languages' expense and then for himself to chuckle all the way to the bank.

Sensationalism (and not necessarily veracity) has been the staple of journalists for centuries ...

Adeus.

 

[J. Bailica]

No falo portugês, sorry, but thought I could just add, concurring with a few of the previous correspondents here.

Dorren, although he SPEAKS a good many languages is not a professional linguist. As a journalist, his instinct is for a good story. As an author, he is out to sell his book. The general tone of Babel is slightly mocking of ALL the languages he refers too, and I could easily take offence at his comments about my own language, Cymraeg/Welsh/galês. I suspect therefore that his aim is pseudo-scientific, give his readers a few wry smiles at our languages' expense and then for himself to chuckle all the way to the bank.

Sensationalism (and not necessarily veracity) has been the staple of journalists for centuries ...

Adeus.

Yes, the author makes a lot of generalizations, exaggerations, and some cash with it.
Still, there's always some truth in any caricature.

 

[machadinho]

The general tone of Babel is slightly mocking of ALL the languages he refers too, and I could easily take offence at his comments about my own language, Cymraeg/Welsh/galês.

Right but what is annoying about this particular quote --- I didn't read the book --- is not just what he's saying about languages, but the wrongheaded picture he gives of people.

 

[Welsh_Sion]

Just as a post scriptum. I don't have Babel - but I do have Dorren's Lingo. This slightly mocking, semi-professional, journalistic style pervades that book, too.

 

[guihenning]

Just as a post scriptum. I don't have Babel - but I do have Dorren's Lingo. This slightly mocking, semi-professional, journalistic style pervades that book, too.

Kind of the same with the book "Sprachen" (German), but there he doesn't make assumptions about people or cultures, he strictly talks about languages, although, in Portuguese, he could only talk about the oddity of the verb "chegar" that has its origin in "plicare" and how odd the change PL (lat.) > CH (port.) is…