Does it ever bother you when someone corrects your grammar or spelling? Or do you do it to other people?
If so, spare a thought for this ‘OFFICIAL ORDER TO MIND YOUR LANGUAGE!’
Portuguese has new rules in place since Wednesday 13th May, 2015.
The rules are supposed to apply to all the countries where Portuguese is the official language. Added up, that is approximately 261,000 million people, although Brazil has nearly 80% of the world’s Portuguese speakers.
The Portuguese Language Orthographic Agreement (Portuguese abbreviation: NaO)
was signed in 1990 and began being implemented in 2009.After an initial transition period, official documents from public institutions started to be written exclusively according to the new rules in May 2012. In schools the new rules have been phased in since 2011.
The NaO agreement’s main goal is to standardise the sixth most spoken language in the world. (The most spoken is Mandarin, then come Spanish, English, Hindi and Arabic.)
The Portuguese written word is being brought closer to the spoken word, creating a unified spelling to be used in all Portuguese-speaking countries.
NaO was signed by official representatives of Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique,Portugal and São Tomé and Príncipe. Timor-Leste signed in 2004. Angola and Mozambique have not yet ratified it. More.
See: euronews
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Чили
Local time: 18:59
Член ProZ.com c 2005
испанский => английский
[Edited at 2015-05-20 20:44 GMT] ▲ Collapse
Испания
Local time: 22:59
Член ProZ.com c 2005
английский => испанский
+ ...
The rules are agreed by all official academies or institutes of Spanish, who hold regular meetings to decide together upon the main rules. It is sensible, practical, and a benefit that keeps a language community alive and promotes cult... See more
The rules are agreed by all official academies or institutes of Spanish, who hold regular meetings to decide together upon the main rules. It is sensible, practical, and a benefit that keeps a language community alive and promotes cultural interchange.
Of course any change in something as sensitive and intimately personal as language brings some confusion for some time, but once the new conventions sink in, the benefits are enormous. To me, the same process should happen with English. ▲ Collapse
Германия
Local time: 22:59
английский => немецкий
+ ...
I don't see why the Portuguese language has to be unified globally. What is the practical use of that? The English speaking world has AE, BE, and countless local varieties - it works just fine. I just can imagine what British or American citizens would say if someone was to "unify" their language...
Best regards,
Anna ▲ Collapse
Великобритания
Local time: 21:59
португальский => английский
Бразилия
Local time: 18:59
английский => португальский
+ ...
1. Hard copy book publishers (and printers too) lost some considerable revenue to e-books. The reform imposed recycling myriad tons of books in stock at bookstores and in public libraries for paper, to replace them. Some chicken flight for these ailing businesses.
2. Software developers had twice the expense in developing spell checkers for Portuguese, as two of them we... See more
1. Hard copy book publishers (and printers too) lost some considerable revenue to e-books. The reform imposed recycling myriad tons of books in stock at bookstores and in public libraries for paper, to replace them. Some chicken flight for these ailing businesses.
2. Software developers had twice the expense in developing spell checkers for Portuguese, as two of them were required. After the reform, they'll have the expense of developing only one spell checker for all PT variants, and the same income from selling it to all users.
3. Globalized companies had twice the expense to translate their web sites, product literature, etc. into each of the two PT variants. After the reform, they expected to have only one version for Portuguese.
4. An effect similar to #2 above would be expected by the movie/TV dubbing/subtitling industry as well: keeping the income stable, while halving the expense.
And the list could go on and on.
The reform in itself was devised, promoted, and effected by usually money-driven politicians. No, albeit likely, they are not always necessarily corrupt. The more profit any company has, the more taxes they can levy, the more funds available for the empowered ones to manipulate according to their intent while in office.
The big question: Is the unification from the reform workable? I don't think so.
Let's try to illustrate, by comparing Portuguese and Spanish. While most educated Brazilians can understand spoken Spanish to some extent, the reverse is not necessarily true: Spanish speakers have a hard time to get used to understanding BR Portuguese.
It took me years wondering about it, until a fellow translator from Colombia, I think, gave me the answer: PT has many sounds that simply don't exist in ES. The most typical being "ão", "ões", and the "z". So, for a "virgin" ES speaker, these sounds are merely "noise", they can't assemble them within words.
Talking about it with a JP-born Japanese language teacher, he acknowledged the phenomenon, by saying that he wouldn't be able to repeat a phrase in Korean, in a way that a KO speaker would understand it. He wasn't equipped with the sounds to do that.
I learned to speak ES by pure osmosis, while organizing several large business events in Brazil. Attendees came from the most varied ES-speaking countries, they had the aforementioned issue with Portuguese, so I eventually learned to speak some sort of pan-Hispanic mix with such fluency that it scares me every time I do it. Of course, I remain illiterate in ES.
The final outcome is that I - as a Brazilian - understand and get understood much, much better in Spanish - without any formal study - than across Portuguese variant borders.
Evidence of this is that whenever I am in contact with fellow translators from across the Atlantic, by mutual decision, we communicate in English! ... though according to both BR and PT Constitutions our national languages are one and the same.
So it is possible to draw the conclusion that this reform was imposed upon all PT speakers by politicians, exclusively for economic reasons.
Before the reform, I had put together a few of the most striking differences between PT and BR. After the reform, ALL of these - and many others - remain valid, especially the deadly #6 on that page.
So, what's the point? As they say, what's done is done. The reform has become irreversible now, thanks to language professionals having no political clout anywhere. We'll have to cope with this reform forever, hoping that in the future we'll elect more sensible and less money-driven politicians for our governments. ▲ Collapse
Германия
Local time: 22:59
английский => немецкий
+ ...
1. Hard copy book publishers (and printers too) lost some considerable revenue to e-books. The reform imposed recycling myriad tons of books in stock at bookstores and in public libraries for paper, to replace them. Some chicken flight for these ailing businesses.
2. Software developers had twice the expense in developing spell checkers for Portuguese, as two of them were required. After the reform, they'll have the expense of developing only one spell checker for all PT variants, and the same income from selling it to all users.
3. Globalized companies had twice the expense to translate their web sites, product literature, etc. into each of the two PT variants. After the reform, they expected to have only one version for Portuguese.
4. An effect similar to #2 above would be expected by the movie/TV dubbing/subtitling industry as well: keeping the income stable, while halving the expense.
Or so they think - but for me (and many others who are used to read and listen to European Portuguese) an expression like "Estou escrevendo essa carta..." will continue to make me cringe because it just sounds wrong to me (no offense intended!). Anyone truly wanting to communicate with audiences from different Portuguese speaking countries will still have to continue to offer localized versions of their contents. No orthography adjustment is going to fix that.
Бразилия
Local time: 18:59
английский => португальский
+ ...
Or so they think - but for me (and many others who are used to read and listen to European Portuguese) an expression like "Estou escrevendo essa carta..." will continue to make me cringe because it just sounds wrong to me (no offense intended!). Anyone truly wanting to communicate with audiences from different Portuguese speaking countries will still have to continue to offer localized versions of their contents. No orthography adjustment is going to fix that.
The worse is that I recently read about some study predicting that in 200 years (why should we care?), BR and PT variants will be so far apart that speakers of one won't understand ANY of the other.
I had the idea that Rede Globo "novelas" would be disseminating PT-BR in Portugal, perhaps as an additional "language", so people there would not feel so strange about it.
Yet the "logic" barrier seems unsurmountable.
A polite Brazilian would ask:
"O Sr. pode me dizer as horas?" (Can you tell me what time it is?)
While another Brazilian would give them the expected answer, a Portuguese would candidly say:
"Certamente, pois tenho um relógio!" (Of course, since I have a watch!)
I am still on the lookout for any sensible explanation on how this difference in reason ever came to be. It's not language-related, but obviously cultural, and it failed to cross the Atlantic. As I put it, "in Portugal, words are taken strictly for their face value". To this regard, maybe I'll remain puzzled forever.
[Edited at 2015-05-21 12:18 GMT]
Португалия
Local time: 21:59
английский => португальский
+ ...
The whole concept behind it is wrong from the onset.
How can you possibly justify that two colours, pink and orange that were written "cor-de-rosa" and "cor-de-laranja" are now written differently, but only in the case of orange, i.e. "cor-de-rosa" and "cor de laranja"? Where is the logic in this? How can people in general and those who use Portuguese as a tool, in p... See more
The whole concept behind it is wrong from the onset.
How can you possibly justify that two colours, pink and orange that were written "cor-de-rosa" and "cor-de-laranja" are now written differently, but only in the case of orange, i.e. "cor-de-rosa" and "cor de laranja"? Where is the logic in this? How can people in general and those who use Portuguese as a tool, in particular, agree with such nonsense? This is only a simple example, but we could be here all day talking about how "pára" (stop) is now "para" (to); April now becomes april; and, of course, letters went missing (such as "c" and "p") from words that we now don't know how to read properly. ▲ Collapse
Португалия
Local time: 21:59
литовский => португальский
+ ...
Some people are going to continue spelling the old way out of ignorance and others out of habit.
Why such narrowing of the reasoning? I live in Portugal and have not yet met a single person who would be in favor of the new rules. Portuguese disagree not because of ignorance or habit but mostly because this arrangement is wrong - for its motives, for the way it was done and for it being wrong in its essence. Portuguese take this arrangement as profanation of their old and rich language.
They even have a new term: they ask if a document has to be written in "português" or "acordês".
Having Brazilian and Portuguese so many diferences between the two, I would allow their natural individual development rather than artificially trying to bring them together.
Португалия
Local time: 21:59
Член ProZ.com c 2007
английский => португальский
+ ...
What I find disturbing is that the Portuguese language reform removes the latin roots of many words - it feels like leaving the language orphaned somehow. It introduces lots of silly homonyms (pato, fato etc.) and, as any language reform, just confuses the hell out of people. I really hate language reforms - they never seem to reduce problems, they just complicate life for everyone. I remember the German language reform - it was supposed to make the written language more "intuitive" - the hell it did.
I don't see why the Portuguese language has to be unified globally. What is the practical use of that? The English speaking world has AE, BE, and countless local varieties - it works just fine. I just can imagine what British or American citizens would say if someone was to "unify" their language...
Best regards,
Anna
As far as I know the words "facto" and "pacto" are maintained as are "fato" and "pato". There is no change whatsoever regarding these words...
Бразилия
Local time: 18:59
английский => португальский
+ ...
Personally I think it is an excellent project. In our case in Spanish, we never value enough the benefit of having a unified Spanish all over the world. We can communicate easily and correctly with any other speaker, and that is a benefit for all users.
The rules are agreed by all official academies or institutes of Spanish, who hold regular meetings to decide together upon the main rules. It is sensible, practical, and a benefit that keeps a language community alive and promotes cultural interchange.
Of course any change in something as sensitive and intimately personal as language brings some confusion for some time, but once the new conventions sink in, the benefits are enormous. To me, the same process should happen with English.
Tomás, I see you translate from Portuguese, so please watch this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_wIluG3yRs
ENTREVISTA-DENÚNCIA com o Lexicógrafo-Chefe da Academia Brasileira de Letras (ABL) na época da reforma ortográfica da língua portuguesa: Sergio De Carvalho Pachá.
Everybody else is invited too, of course.
There is a sidetracking issue involving BLAME.
I often see the Portuguese blaming Brazilians for that blasted reform, alleging that in view of population figures, Brazil championed that.
For the record, as a Brazilian, I'd like to state that I don't approve any of it at all, however I am forced to bow and assent, like any other unwanted government-imposed decree, something pretty common since the days of feudalism, like an increase in taxes.
Бразилия
немецкий => португальский
+ ...
I am totally against orthographic reforms as they usually try to force language into artificial molds. As for the differences between pt-pt and pt-br I regard them as positive. At least in its language Brazil has become an independent country. And in a world where languages become increasingly globalized and similar, language differences are welcome as long as they relate to particular verbal roots, traditions and developments and are not the result of artificial rules.
It doesn´t matter if we say "Estou a dizer..." or "Estou dizendo", as long as we understand each other and don´t start a war about it.:)
Pronto, falei! ▲ Collapse
Португалия
Local time: 21:59
литовский => португальский
+ ...
"Diretiva", "perspetiva" is only for those trying to be "modern" or when forced to write this weird way. It often happens that I send a disabled translat... See more
"Diretiva", "perspetiva" is only for those trying to be "modern" or when forced to write this weird way. It often happens that I send a disabled translation along with a cover letter in usual Portuguese. ▲ Collapse
Германия
Local time: 22:59
английский => немецкий
+ ...
As far as I know the words "facto" and "pacto" are maintained as are "fato" and "pato". There is no change whatsoever regarding these words...
Oh, I see. You are correct, my mistake.
Бразилия
Local time: 18:59
португальский => английский
+ ...
The best solution is to go back to Portuguese as it was between 1943 and 1971, when there were ... See more
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) ▲ Collapse
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