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Portuguese and Spanish are the closest Romance languages
{"latino" to speak about this imaginary specific "latin-american identity", when in fact "latin" relates to south Europe.}
Latino is just a word. It can easily be replaced with another one if you feel that it should only apply to Southern Europe, problem solved.
{The differences in latin america are huge.}
Not as big as the differences between France, Portugal, Italy etc, that's for sure.
" Not as big as the differences between France, Portugal, Italy etc, that's for sure. "
I'm sorry, but outside of latin languages, there almost nothing in commun between sao paolo, patagonia, andean regions or Haiti. different languages (spanish, portuguese, french creole, aymara, guarani...), different peoples (blacks, whites, native indians, mestizos, mulatos, asians...), completly different climates (and way of life linked to) : polar, tropical, mediterranean, high montain climate, temperate, rain forest, etc... so, completly different kind of foods ("cono sur" food has absolutly nothing in commun with central american food). completly different styles of music (andean traditional indian music, caribean rythms from Africa, European-kind of music...)
I like too much this region of the world and its diversity to accept of seen it artificially shaded by the so-called "latino" stereotype, wich is generally limited to caribean and mexican stereotypes.
{different languages (spanish, portuguese, french creole, aymara, guarani...), different peoples (blacks, whites, native indians, mestizos, mulatos, asians...), completly different climates (and way of life linked to) : polar, tropical, mediterranean, high montain climate, temperate, rain forest, etc... so, completly different kind of foods ("cono sur" food has absolutly nothing in commun with central american food).}
Obvioiusly we're talking about different things, whilst I'm talking about atitudes and the outlook in life in the general jovial amicable nature of Latin Americans you're refering to genetics, weather and what people put in their mouth these are things that even change within regions in the same country.
[I like too much this region of the world and its diversity to accept of seen it artificially shaded by the so-called "latino" stereotype, wich is generally limited to caribean and mexican stereotypes.]
Who are these anonymous people that hold these "limited" stereotypes and why should their views be held in such high regard? Stereotypes exist all over the world but who defines their life by what other people think of them? It is something we have no control over. A sane person certainly wouldn't, people can think whatever they want to think but I'm definitely not going to sleep over it. How others see you is not that important unless of course it matters to you that much that your life hinges on it and if that's the case good luck to you.
>>To Clarify to Huchu<<
I was born in Panama to a mother who was born in Brazil in which later her family migrated to Panama when she was young so my grandfather could take a professorship in Panama. My father is from Panama though his family migrated from Italy and Germany when the Panama Canal was being built. So to conclude I am multi ethnic with my both parents speaking Brazilian Portuguese and Spanish when I was growing up.
>>To answer Benard<<
Haven't you ever seen soap operas on the Spanish channels. All over Latin America you have the so called "True Latin Type" or mestizos or Indians etc. etc.. I myself would be called that stereotype and i'm not from Argentina. Latino is a cultural identity in such the case that we share similar interest and experiences that are unique to us. Thank God for Univision, Telemundo, T.V Globo for bringing us closer together as a people which OBVIOUSLY NO OTHER EUROPEANS UNDERSTAND!
By the way foods such as empanadas, ceviche, and arroz con pollo is common throughout all of Latin America including variants of the same foods in Brazil.
Si Bernard soy española. Where are you from, by the way?
Bernard
"I don't understand why the spanish people of today seem to show a complex or a identity problem, and want to justify themselves to be Europeans... Of course that Spain and Spanish are Europeans !... You don't have to justify yourself and saying "we are close to europeans...". You are not close to Europeans, you ARE Europeans"
I think that you have missunderstood here which doesnt surprise me because my english is crap. When i said "closer" in my post, i meant "emotionaly". I think that some people here might expect that just for the fact that im a Spaniard i might have an special link with latin americans (WHICH I ACTUALLY HAVE) but i just wanted to explain that this link is secondary to me compared to the link that i have with other europeans (like me). It all started with this statement by jgreco "Exactly you castilians will never understand us Latinos and our culture. That is why we feel much closer to the Brazilians than the Spanish in spain." I was trying to explain him that i greed with him and that i dont really understand or feel part of the "latino" culture.
"On the other hand, a lot of spanish people seems to reject their latinity, as if only the south americans were latins"
No way, no Spanish reject their latinity. I belong to a latin country inside the context of europe and i´m very proud of it. But i never talked about this in my last posts, we were talking about latin american culture (which is a different thing) and our links with it.
(well, at least myself was talking about this)
"I understand that you could consider some latin-americans as foregners, especially the one who emigrate to Spain because they are mostly peruanos and ecuadorianos who are from native indian background)"
Oh really? So those with an indian background should be more like a foreigner to me? I didnt know it! To be honest bernard, you sound like a very racist guy and please, dont try to say things that i never meant.
When i said that i considered latin americans as foreigners i meant ALL, from Argentina to wherever in Latin america, no matter their background. But hey! thats not bad, i also consider French people as not Spanish..is that bad?
To conclude, I feel that i belong to the same group as Spaniards, secondly to the same group as latin europeans, third to the same group as europeans in general. Finally, amongst all foreigners i have a link with latin americans which makes me feel closer to them than to, lets say, chinese, for instance.
Prezado Hucho,
Although the official language of Brazil is Portuguese, it is not the language we normally speak. The language we speak is called BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE and it had been influenced by:
1. archaic Continental Portuguese
2. native southernAmerican languages (Tupi, Guarani)
3. african languages (Kimbundo, Yoruba)
4. languages from immigrants (Italian, Spanish, Polish, German, Japanese)
Our normative grammar is based on 19century-Continental Portuguese yes, but this grammar is ''respected'' only in formal writing (commercial correspondence, laws, political magazines like Veja). In speech (in TV shows, movies, soap operas, dubbing foreign programs including cartoons) and literary dialogs in modern prose we do not follow the Luzitanizante grammar (that is: Continental Portuguese-wannabe Grammar) but we follow our unique grammar that has been described by many authors both from Brazil and from abroad.
(some great grammars describing Brazilian modern, spoken usage:
1. Grammar of Spoken Brazilian Portuguese by Earl W. Thomas
2. Modern Portuguese. A Reference Grammar by Mario Perini. Yale University Press).
We don't have to DE JURE declare our language Brazilian but DE FACTO it is the language we speak. Swiss people have the same thing. They write Hochdeutsch which is the official language, but they speak Swiss vernacular, and why on Earth should they declare they language Swiss language?
No Brazilian, no matter how posh he or she may be, says things like
AMO-TE (archaic, formal in Brazilian Portuguese) instead of TE AMO
(meaning I love you)
or
CHAMEM-NA (extremely formal in Brazilian Portuguese, I'd compare it to IT IS I in English) instead of CHAMEM ELA (meaning You (all) call (for) her!)
or
SE TU TE PREOCUPARES DEMAIS (extremely archaic) instead of SE VOCÊ SE PREOCUPAR DEMAIS or SE TU SE PREOCUPAR DEMAIS (the last example is from Rio-dialect) (meaning -If you worry to much-)
Brazilian speakers don't care if Portuguese people and ortodox Brazilian grammarians focused on Continental Portuguese usage consider their usage CORRECT or INCORRECT.
Things like EU VI ELE (I saw him) instead of VI-O; EU CHEGUEI EM CASA (I arrived home) instead of CHEGUEI A CASA; EU FUI NA CASA DE MARIA (I've been to Maria's (home)) instead of FUI À CASA DE MARIA, EU SENTEI NA JANELA (I sat down by the window) instead of SENTEI-ME À JANELA are not considered errors by NATIVE SPEAKERS OF BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE and they are tolerated in speech and writing (unless you are writing a very formal paper, but there you go...we have the same thing in English: WHOM DID YOU ENCOUNTER and IT IS WE... things that are used ONLY in EXTREMELY formal situation, but not normally in speech unless you are being very pedant and artificial-sounding).
It must hurt Portuguese people but 80 % of Portuguese-language speakers use the language in the Brazilian way and we don't care about the rules of Continental Portuguese.
We won't change our way of speaking by decrees.
Portuguese people say to us: ''Learn your childern to speak correctly. So the language spoken in Brazil will not be Portuguese with a bad-grammar''.
According to our linguists WE BRAZILIANS SPEAK THE LANGUAGE CORRECTLY! Why are ''errors'' like VI ELE, CHEGUEI EM CASA not ''corrected''? (''Errors'' here - in the minds of Portuguese people and
some conservative Brazilian grammarians who prefer the Continental Portuguese usage over the local variant). It's because all of us, even the Brazilian professors of Portuguese, speak like this.
Portuguese people, please grow up and let us be. British people would never say that Americans should write/say I'VE GOT MYSELF INTO A MESS instead of I'VE GOTTEN MYSELF INTO A MESS or IN THE STREET instead of ON THE STREET.
Portuguese people keep saying we Brazilians speak all wrong, and say to foreigners: ''Don't learn Brazilian Portuguese. They all speak sloppily. '' or ''If you want to learn educated Brazilian Portuguese try magazine VEJA'' (VEJA is a red-wing political magazine, full of archaisms and formal constructions which can be compared to English forms like: IT IS I, WHOM DID YOU SEE, FASTER THAN I, WE SHAN'T... It is an extremelly formal register of the WRITTEN language and it is definitely not a variant we've spoken for 100 years or more).
If you want to learn REAL brazilian portuguese, try waching Brazilian movies (Central do Brasil is great), Brazilian soap operas (Clone is ok, Rei do Gado as well) or try listening to our music (great bands like KID ABELHA, TRIBALISTAS, BABADO NOVO or singers like BEBEL GILBERTO, IVETE SANGALO, DANIELA MERCURY, MARISA MONTE, DJAVAN)...
Peace and Love
PAZ E AMOR
[paizja'moh] (in IPA)
Um baita abraço tupiniquim
(meaning: a great hug from Brazil)
4Huchu wrote: "Although the official language of Brazil is Portuguese"...
I see we are agreed. Therefore I can only say: A fault confessed ist half redressed.
But Daniela Mercury is super!
she has a great voice and sings so clear that many of her songs could even be understood by Castilian-speaking people.
4Huchu : why do you refer to European Portuguese as Continental Portuguese ? Isn't Brazil located on a continent too ?
"Why on Earth should they declare they language Swiss language?"
Well they souldn't, because there's nothing like a Swiss language. There are 4 languages in Switzerland : 1 Germanic and 3 Latin.
"she has a great voice and sings so clear that many of her songs could even be understood by Castilian-speaking people"
Me as a castilian-speaking person i understand Brazilian Portugues better than Portuguse from Portugal. I really dont know why as i dont know how to speak any of both..but i supose that it must have more elements or structures from the spanish or something. I just know that it sounds somehow more familiar.
About you, i sense like it annoys you when an spaniard says that s/he cant understand Portuguese from Portugal easily. You have kept insisting that "I have to understand", "i should", "I MUST understand"...well, i dont understand that attitude of yours. You can get as much annoyed as you wish but anyway if you put a Portuguese in front of me and ask him to talk to me, i wont understand too much (he´d have to help me using sings) Believe me, i used to work in a shop where we used to have many Portuguese turists, and call me silly if you want but I COULDNT understand them and it was not that i didnt want to understand them. I DID want to, but i just couldnt (well, i could understand some but i dont see Portuguese as being so easy) Can you accept it? or you´re going to keep insisting that thats IMPOSSIBLE. Well, i dont know, maybe other Spanish speaking people can understand Portuguese from Portugal but im just giving my point of view and i know im talking for most Spaniards when i say this. Just bear it, it´s not so bad, there are worst things in life.
By the way, i love Tribalistas and Bebel Gilberto.
"About you, i sense like it annoys you when an spaniard says that s/he cant understand Portuguese from Portugal easily. You have kept insisting that "I have to understand", "i should", "I MUST understand".
eh?!
I cite my posting sent to you three days ago (page 3 of this thread):
"But OK I accept your opinion that you do not understand european Portuguese. It exhibits a multitude of closed and voiceless vowels which do not exist in Castilian."
Furthermore european portuguese has many other characteristics like e.g. nasalized vowels and dipthongs, other consonants, etc., which do not exist in Castilian. In other words european Portuguese has a very complex phonetic system as compared to Castilian. Another romance language with a complex phonetics is French (and please don't think now that I mean that French and Portuguese are the closest romance languages!). I've never said you should understand european Portuguese and let alone Portuguese from Lisbon. I would never expect that a Spaniard should understand it. Please remain objective with your statements and I hope you don't get me wrong this time.
"Oh really? So those with an indian background should be more like a foreigner to me? I didnt know it! To be honest bernard, you sound like a very racist guy and please, dont try to say things that i never meant."
Me racist ? I'm sorry, but I'm not "completly white" myself (I have a mulato mother from French west indies) and I absolutly don't believe in the concept of "races"... But I know how people react. You cannot deny that most peruanos doesn't look like most native spanish (that doesn't mean that one is superior to the other... I never said such a thing!)
You cannot deny that a black would be seen as first look, as a foreigner, especially in Spain wich is a country not yet used to have black nationals. (in France it is a bit different, even if there is unfortunally a lot of racist people, there is french black for few generations now)
Yourself, if you go to Japan you'll be seen firstly as a foreigner, even if you would speak fluently japanese... It doesn't mean that they think to be superior to you, but when they see your face they would think "this person is not coming from japan". I know spain enough to know that your country is not yet as multiracial as some other european countries.
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