Portuguese spelling reforms accepted by Brazil, Portugal not so happy
Sunday, January 04, 2009
Blogger in 1703: "Over my deade body! I'll never write crabb as crab, or camell as camel! 'Tis unnatural and twixt the twain I'd rather choose death!"(Yes, my arthaic English impression is probably a bit off)
Globalvoices.com has a pretty detailed writeup on the current situation here, how some bloggers and sites (I see BBC Portuguese will be using the new orthography soon) are switching to the new orthography but some are completely opposed. There's also a small thread on Reddit here.
I'm not really sure what to think - the new orthography is good on one hand in providing a unified way to write Portuguese for African countries which are always torn between using one system or another, and on the other hand it makes Portuguese a bit harder to understand at first sight for those of us that know other languages. That's mostly a selfish reason though and probably isn't all that important in the big picture.
Of course, we IAL advocates know that small concerns such as orthography really pale in comparison to larger concerns such as regularity, rational derivation, and everything else that makes IALs so much easier to learn than natural languages. Maybe I'll just use this opportunity to compare Portuguese with Occidental then (English translation of this and the others can be found on the globalvoices.com link)
One blogger:
Um país não é um hino ou um desenho numa bandeira. Um país é a sua língua e é a sua cultura. | Un pais ne es un himne o un flagga-dessine. Un pais es su lingue e su cultura. |
E se um conjunto de políticos se arroga o direito de interferir na língua que é minha, contra aquilo que caracteriza a cultura dos cidadãos dum país, servindo interesses que não os dos portugueses, então repudio-os, porque já não são mais políticos de Portugal. | E si un gruppe de politicos postula li jure de interferar a un lingue quel es li mi, contra to quo caracterisa li cultura del citeanes de un pais, serviente interesses de altres quam li portugeses, alor yo rejecte les, pro que ili ne plu es politicos de Portugal. |
2 comments:
I think the reform will be mostly beneficial to learners of Portuguese as a foreign language.
The alignment between graphemes and phonemes has improved a little bit, thus reducing the chance for the foreign student accidentally to have a "wrong" pronunciation of a word (from the point of view of a native speaker). No more mute letters, with the exception of initial "h".
Moreover, the ortographical uniformity between Brazil and Portugal will eliminate the risk of mixing two different ortographical systems in a same text (as often happens in English). The student will not have to worry about whether his target readers are Brazilian or Portuguese. The governments of both countries are particularly prone to reject documents just because they are written in the other country's spelling. (Yes, that is ridiculous, but the governmental bureaucracy in both Brazil and Portugal is fantastically stupid.)
Another advantage for the student is that he will not have to apply to two different official language tests -- one for Brazil and one for Portugal -- in order to obtain an official certificate recognized by all CPLP countries that declares he is fluent at the Portuguese language. Previously, if the student got the official Brazilian certificate, it would be valid only in Brazil but not in Portugal. After completing the reform transition, the CPLP countries intend to create standardized language tests that are automatically recognized by all those countries.
I think the reform will be mostly beneficial to learners of Portuguese as a foreign language.
The alignment between graphemes and phonemes has improved a little bit, thus reducing the chance for the foreign student accidentally to have a "wrong" pronunciation of a word (from the point of view of a native speaker). No more mute letters, with the exception of initial "h".
Moreover, the ortographical uniformity between Brazil and Portugal will eliminate the risk of mixing two different ortographical systems in a same text (as often happens in English). The student will not have to worry about whether his target readers are Brazilian or Portuguese. The governments of both countries are particularly prone to reject documents just because they are written in the other country's spelling. (Yes, that is ridiculous, but the governmental bureaucracy in both Brazil and Portugal is fantastically stupid.)
Another advantage for the student is that he will not have to apply to two different official language tests -- one for Brazil and one for Portugal -- in order to obtain an official certificate recognized by all CPLP countries that declares he is fluent at the Portuguese language. Previously, if the student got the official Brazilian certificate, it would be valid only in Brazil but not in Portugal. After completing the reform transition, the CPLP countries intend to create standardized language tests that are automatically recognized by all those countries.
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