Portuguese, the most successfull language in the world!

"Many speakers from Madrid or Barcelona would consider incorrect this use since USTEDES is formal and cannot be informal, VOSOTROS is the only correct way to say it informally. and what about LO/LE? Loismo Leismo? Should arentinians stick to Madrid's rules? What is correct and incorrect is very relative. "
Why do you think Portugal is saying Brazil is using incorrectly the portuguese language? Portugal doesnt care about that, in fact, come here and see how much the brazilian portuguese is rooted in Portuguese society nowadays, from music to Tv shows.

''If you really want to start using a so-called Brazilian language, better to adopt Tupi language instead and call it your own. '''

In fact Brazilian Portuguese has 10 000 (if not more) words of Tupy origin; not only names of cities (like Ubatuba) but many normal words as well. Our slang is 90% Amerindian and African influenced.

BRAZILIAN LANGUAGE discussed here:

http://cienciaecultura.bvs.br/pdf/cic/v57n2/a16v57n2.pdf

All the children's literature which was available in Brazil when Lobato began writing was written in the Portuguese of Portugal, and the desire to provide stories his own and other Brazilian children could read stimulated Lobato to write texts for his own and all other Brazilian children. Lobato believed in developing the Brazilian language, and that after 400 years of subservience to Portugal, it was now time to definitively break away from Lisbon and develop a separate Brazilian language.

amazon.com user reviews:

''This is a Brazilian Portuguese book
As the book title says it's a Brazilian phrasebook, and for those who said that most pages have multiple errors in spelling and grammatical errors, all I can say is that it's so not true. As a Brazilian born and native Brazilian Portuguese speaker, I can guarantee that. But you must remeber that Brazilian Portuguese and Portugal Portuguese are almost two different languages, so you can't use this book to survive in Portugal.

The right perspective
As one reader put it, this book has nothing to do with Portuguese. In fact it is on Brazilian language, which is becoming a distant dialect from the latter. So if you want to learn Portuguese, avoid this book, but if you want to learn Brazilian, that is your choice. ... ''

''a new grammatical system call it a Brazilian grammar or a dialect of Portuguese with its own grammatical configuration since this is strictly speaking an ideological issue, emerged in late 19th century, establishing a new pattern rather different from and opposed to European Portuguese. (1992:02) '' (Fernando Tarallo, linguist)

what others have said:


Assim como o Português saiu do Latim, pela corrupção popular desta língua, o Brasileiro esta saindo do Português. O processo formador é o mesmo: corrupção da língua mãe.

(Monteiro Lobato 1922, in: Pinto 1981:5 )


A separação estrutural entre a língua de Portugal e do Brasil é um fenômeno lento e de águas profundas, que é fácil, e, a muitos, desejável não observar.

(Ivo Castro, Universidade de Lisboa 2001: 24).
(Mais línguas, mais Europa. Lisboa: Colibri. p. 23-25.)

>You are so lame, Brazilian usage follows classical usage (inherited from Latin). IR NA CIDADE = IN URBEM IRE

ir em (spoken Brazilian and classical Portuguese) = IRE IN (latin) = go to (English)

Yes Keyra. I know where does that come from. I was citing the examples showed in my post, and if you tell me that this form is valid in today's Portuguese grammar, then the Brazilian researcher who wrote this "as the bad Portuguese version which is struggling for being acknowledged", does not have a command of what he is analizing.

As for Switzerland. Well, I speak German quite well, and believe me, Swiss don't have a problem if you address to them in Hochdeutsch. The fact that among them they never use it, is another history. But they are not claiming the Swiss language, and there the differences are really huge with respect to the German grammar, far away from the differences in grammar and phonetics between BRPT and EP, and being much fewer people than Brazilians!!!. But this is a very good example. Let's see the Germans. They still have a lot of dialects, and the older people speak them yet. But they have no problem in writing and having a command of the standard grammar: Hochdeutsch. I think, no ofense, that this is a matter of discipline. Well, let's stick to the Portuguese language.

>We can say the same for Spanish speakers.
Why do they use USTEDES instead of VOSOTROS. Many speakers from Madrid or Barcelona would consider incorrect this use since USTEDES is formal and cannot be informal, VOSOTROS is the only correct way to say it informally.

Because of a simple, historical reason: the first rulers forced the rest of subdites to address to them in the formal, polite form, so that the familiar form fell in disuse. But we don't have this feeling of our language lacking or missing something, just because the use of a personal pronoun. I have discused this matter with many Latinamericans, and they had the same opinion.

>and what about LO/LE? Loismo Leismo? Should arentinians stick to Madrid's rules? What is correct and incorrect is very relative.
Keyra, good point. Just I have to tell you something. Loísmo and Leísmo are certainly a mess, not a Madrid rule. There are rules for the use of LE and LO, and once again, based on my own experience in Spain, this is a problem of Spain, normally not of us. Interesting point, however.

>For us brazilians 'thing like ''Amo-te'' or '"Viram-na'' are very strange-sounding, awfull-sounding, ugly, therefore, we never use them in speach, we say '' Te amo'' or ''Lhe amo'' ou ''Amo você'', e ''Viram ela''. It's our usage and we won't change our language usage by decreets.
I agree with you, but first, please clarify me something, before we go further with this matter. Do Portugueses also use the form ''Amo-te'' in the spoken language? if so, I agree that it is more difficult, but non necessarily ugglier than the Brazilian version, closer to Spanish by the way. If not, why wouldn't you nonetheless keep it in the written language as Portugueses do? I insist on the grammar being kept as a reference point, a common ground.

>or '"Viram-na''
This is the contrary case. For my ears, it sounds much better than "Viram ela". But this is just my opinion. Don't take it like an attack.

Well, I love the Portuguese language, it is so elegant, expressful and enriched with the thousands of Brazilian words, and Brazil has always been a fascinating land, with fascinating people and culture (I love Bossanova but just when sung in Portuguese), and my comments are more of one outsider.

It is a difficult matter though... I still have this feeling of BRPT being a rather twisted, deteriorated version of Portuguese.

''I still have this feeling of BRPT being a rather twisted, deteriorated version of Portuguese.''

Well, many Portuguese say the same but they keep watching Brazilian soap operas and listening to our music. So they like it deteriorated.

kkkkk

''If not, why wouldn't you nonetheless keep it in the written language as Portugueses do?'''

well, no AMO-TE is dated here in Brazil; it's not used in formal writing
you say/write either TE AMO or LHE AMO or AMO VOCÊ or AMO TU informally; or AMO VOCÊ, O SENHOR, A SENHORA, A SENHORITA, O SINHOZINHO formally

EU AMO VOCÊ is preferred here in Brasília
I LOVE YOU :) is both formal and informal, like in English

Kendra,

Thank you for clarifying it to me. By the way, sorry I changed your name in my last post.

Do you think that Brazilian Portuguese have had a big influence from Spanish, from the Sp countries surrounding it?

By the way:
ERRATUM

<and my comments are more of one outsider. >
should read:

and my comments are rather the ones of an outsider

Kendra
I'm luso-brazilian, and im in Portugal for about 4 years now, and during my stay here, i never had any linguistic problem with Portuguese, and everyone that comes here says the same, so on come Portugal and Brazilian are 2 different languages. I dont understand when someone says Brazilian is similar to spanish or italian, just because of some similar words but say that Brazilian is not similar to portuguese.
By the way, there are many books here in Portugal from Brazil, and many of my university colleagues studied from them, and didnt failed.

''I'm luso-brazilian''

And I'm Anglo-american

Portuguese is not "the most successful language in the world". It doesn't matter how many speakers there are in relation to the population of Portugal. What matters is the amount of speakers in absolute terms. And under that definition, Mandarin and Cantonese are the most successful languages in the world.

I'm afraid you are wrong LAA. Portuguese is indeed the most successful language in the world. Success is measured in relative terms (%), not absolute terms (+).

The same goes for comparisons relative to wealth in the world. The richest country on earth is the United States (GDP about $12.5 trillion and $41.400 per capita) but the wealthiest, in relative terms, is Luxembourg ($32.2 billion but $69.800 per capita).

Americans can brag they have the largest load of money but a luxembourger is almost 70% richer than an american. That means the luxembourgers are more successful than americans in creating wealth, RELATIVE to their size. Get it?

Portuguese is, relative to its initial size, the MOST SUCCESSFUL LANGUAGE IN THE WORLD.

Well I suppose it depends on how you view things.

In the long run, I would say that according to the lines of the big picture, America's industrial might is far superior to that of little Luxembourg.

The success of a language does not have to be measure in relative terms. That's just silly. But you can measure success the way you want. I do understand what you're trying to say though.

You can say Luxembourg has the highest standard of living in the world. But it doesn't change the fact that America is the wealthiest country in the world. Do you see the flip side?