Portuguese language reform law goes global

Paul Dixon wrote:

The big problem with the recent spelling reforms is the elimination of accent marks to indicate pronunciation. There is no way of knowing that "queijo" and "cinquenta" have different pronunciations for the QU group, while the old spelling "cinqüenta" made the pronunciation clear. The same with "ideia" and "odeia" and countless other words. This is a devastating process that started back in 1971.
The best solution is to go back to Portuguese as it was between 1943 and 1971, when there were many more accents (called 'differential accents') to solve this kind of problem, so everyone would know that 'sede' (thirst) is pronounced with a closed E (as it was spelt 'sêde') while 'sede' meaning seat (of a company) has an open E.
Another example: a newspaper headline "Corredor de ônibus para a Radial Leste" could be interpreted as either "Bus lane for the Radial Leste" (with a neutral or positive bias) or "Bus lane stops the Radial Leste' (in the sense that it worsens traffic) and someone would have to read the whole article to find which is intended. (Radial Leste is a major traffic artery in SP and has serious traffic congestion problems)

José Henrique Lamensdorf wrote:
Yesterday I read some text explaining that Portugal, being a small country in Europe, caused its politicians to shift their spelling towards the Brazilian way, so they could add 200 million speakers/consumers to leverage the commercial importance of the PT language in the EC. This would explain why so many Portuguese "blame" Brazilians for the reform.

Indeed, the unwanted language havoc it created in Brazil was enough for Brazilians to blame the Portuguese for that. Yet we didn't. Overall, we are "ignorant" as a whole, and are deliberately preserved so, in order to enable the kind of politicians we have to get elected... the kind of politicians who bowed to and signed that reform agreement.

So the riddance of accents makes sense, when all that politicians (not linguists!) want is to make PT more palatable worldwide, no matter what.

Wh dn't th nv Hbrw? I mean, why don't they envy Hebrew? It uses dots and dashes for most vowels, and dots to differentiate B/V, T/S, P/F, O/U. These dots and dashes are present in school and prayer books for those who haven't mastered the language, however they are completely absent in all everyday text.

I've said the reason already. Literacy in dot/dash-free Hebrew requires having mastered the language. If the present (and many past) Brazilian politicians let our people master the PT language, we Brazilians - as a whole - would have access to information, get more educated, and never vote for these crooks again! It would be self-defeating.

It was a political decision, made as any decision like a "feudal" tax increase. Linguists didn't have a vote. Therefore if the Portuguese want to blame Brazilians for that, they are right! However they should blame Brazilian politicians, and not the Brazilian people altogether.