Talk:Portuguese language/Archive 5

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Contents

Vowel chart

Peter, I still have the opinion the ɨ should be included. For very strong reasons: 1) there is not a single way to pronunciate a final e. 2) I doubt that the Portuguese linguists are wrong. 3) The use of a vowel chart from a middle class women does not reflect the standard pronunciation, who doesnt remember the Portuguese jet 7... and laugh at their way to talk.

I don't know which vowel chart is incorrect. And there are some issues in that section that makes you think... 1) one is the standard American English, that doesnt sound very good to me. 2) the l that you are talking is the ending L or all the l? ending l in Portuguese is like in milk in English. 3) "Brazil and its former colonies", weren't all Portugal former colonies? Colonies is a thing from the past, we shouldnt talk about countries as just former colonies, each has its own identity. You mean African Portuguese speaking countries, Macau and East Timor? 4) That same sentence isnt fully correct. Remember anônimo anónimo thing and the pronunciation of Northern Portugal. Don't say these are just dialects, dialects are correct pronunciations of the language.---Pedro 13:15, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

1,2,3) Cruz-Ferreira is a trained phonetician and explains that she speaks with a Lisbon accent. This seems quite representative to me even if no single speaker can ever be 100% representative of a single language. But then again, no one claims that she is. Why the pronunciation of a middle class woman (educated no less) would not be representative of standard pronunciation I don't know. You're welcome to explain that as well as what a "jet 7" is.
1, 2) /l/ is velarized in all occurances according to Ferreira and "milk" is pronounced [mɪɫk]. That's a velarized [l].
3) The former colonies excluding Brazil (which became independent much earlier) don't use Portuguese as a standardized national language that is used as a first language by the overwhelming majority of the population. At least not as far as I know. It's very reasonable to talk about the other former colonies as a seperate group in this context.
4) I don't know what paragraphs or statements you're refering to. Please elaborate.
Peter Isotalo 22:17, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Peter, I don't like the use of "former colonies" as you normally do with these countries, just that. Colonies are history, besides it is not NPOV, the former regime did not use the terre independent countriesm colonies, these were far sea provinces and Brazil in its finnal stage was a kingdom, and today these are independent countries, like any other.

There's a substantial problem with the pronunciation of final "e", because it is not universal (that why references use to different sounds, but never the sound that is in the article o.O), and I don't agree with some of the comments that were made, there's today a overwhelming tendency in the upper class to pronounce that reverted e. I'm not saying your source is a bad one. There were very interesting things that you wrote with that.

My reference is neutral and it is a much better source you can find it anywhere in its numerous editions, and it is pretty neutral. Why does the wikipedia article be different?! That ɯ CAN only occur in Lisbon Portuguese in situations as in pegar. The velarized l (for the common reader to understand is the medium sound between an l and a w) occurs only at the end, like in "Portugal" but never in "levar". That never occurs, you must read it again, you misinterpreted it. Portuguese is not like English, the spoken language reflects more or less the written language and vice versa.

In my source says that the l sound is an l but at the end of a syllable it has a velarized pronunciation. In fact, every source says the same and everybody knows that! Forget the Jet 7 thing then... its is a socialet. --Pedro 14:51, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

"Former colonies" is a completley NPOV statement and I've explained why it's perfectly reasonable to use the term in this context. Please mind your own POV on this issue.
The quote is "/l/ is velarized in all its occurances." It's confirmed by the statement "All vowels have lower and more retracted allophones before /l/...", which clearly hints that the tounge is retracted during the /l/, meaning that it's velarized. If you wish to criticize the finer points of Portuguese phonology, please cite sources and use references, and avoid pitting your own opinions against those of acknowledged experts.
Peter Isotalo 17:27, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
If I may interject, I disagree. Notice that the quote does not say that vowels have lower and more retracted allophones after /l/. I agree with Pedro on this: /l/ is only velar in EP when it ends a syllable. Notice also that this velar /l/ became [w] in Brazilian Portuguese, but the nonvelar /l/ did not change. P.S. Here's a source: http://ciberduvidas.sapo.pt/php/resposta.php?id=11557. Dec. 28 2005.

My own opinion is that your idea? End of conversation. I'll do it myself when I get some time. -Pedro 18:36, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

How am I suppose to tell the difference? You're not citing your sources, and you're only vaguely refering to a consensus in the Portuguese linguistic community (from which Cruz-Ferreira seems to be excluded).
Peter Isotalo 23:59, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Pedro, former colonies are just that, former colonies. The present-day African countries were in fact colonies of the European powers even though Portugal might have referred to them as oversea provinces. vogensen 0:18 16 December 2005

"As moça voltou ontem. lit. "The [plural] girl came back [singular] yesterday." Uh, isn't this wrong? shouldn't it be "As mocas voltaram ontem" ?

  • No, it's the correct translation for a DIALECTAL VERSION of Portuguese. This has alreayd been reverted once, please avoid it in the future. The point is not to show "standard portuguese" rather the changes going about in dialects. One of the natural progressions in languages is regualrisation and loss of inflection/declension and redundancies, which is what that quote is designed to show.

Cafuné

Cafune is depicted in the article as being of african origin, while I believe it is of tupi-guarani origin. LtDoc 17:24, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Hoauiss brings the following in the etymological field of its electronic edition (I haven't compared it to the paper edition, though I assume there'll be no differences): 'origem controversa; segundo Nei Lopes, do quimbundo kifune, singular de ifune "estalidos produzidos com os dedos na cabeça"; para Nascentes, do quimbundo kifunate "entorce, torcedura, torção"; segundo Antônio Geraldo da Cunha, do quimbundo kafu'ndu "cravar, enterrar"'. The three sources he quotes, therefore, seem to indicate an African origin of the word, although there's indeed some obscurity about it. Psi-Lord 10:23, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Dialect of Piauí closest to European Portuguese?

I hate to say it but this seems absurd. In what sense is it the closest? Sounds? Vocabulary? I have heard Piauenses speak and I have heard Portuguese speak and frankly I see no connection. What is the source for this statement? vogensen 14:35, 15 December 2005

  • The Brazilian Academy of Letters. And I've also heard that and I agree.--Pedro 18:33, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
  • If you were the one who wrote that you should cite the source as many might disagree. Is it from the Academy's site or from something that they published? Remember that the Brazilian Academy of Letters is not normally involved in linguistic studies. That is something usually done by USP, University of Brasilia, or Unicamp. It certainly does not seem logical but then in this world there are many surprises. Since I haven't done research in the area I can't prove or disprove the statement, but when I lived in Brasilia and had constant contact with Piauenses, who make up a large part of the working class of Brasilia, their accent certainly did not sound like Continental Portuguese. It sounded like other Nordestino accents, which was miles away from Continental Portuguese. Maybe your ear is better than mine. RVogensen
  • Consulting my Cunha/Cintra and the Internet, all the sites that refer to dialects have only one Nordestino dialect and do not break it up by state boundaries, which do not necessarily mean there are linguistic changes. Please see http://www.cin.ufpe.br/~rac2/portugues/dialebr.html What proof do you have that a Piauiense has a different dialect than a Pernambucano or a Rio Grande do Nortense? It all seems a bit in the world of imagination to me. The study of dialects or varieties in Brazil is still in the beginning phase as the following states:

Do conjunto de dados elencados acima, o que poderíamos dizer dos dialetos brasileiros? O projeto de um mapa dialetológico brasileiro só recentemente teve as suas primeiras iniciativas lançadas (5). O que temos são mapas regionais que apontam para a confirmação de pelo menos uma hipótese básica de Antenor Nascentes: a de que o Brasil seria dividido em duas grandes regiões dialetais – norte e sul.

If the Academia de Letras states in a document that the above is a fact then you should write "according to the Academia de Letras" and give the reference where the statement is found. rvogensen 11:55 16 December 2005

  • Many of the sources can be accessed, there's even a link to that academy and I believe they also have that online. Should we put all that's written acording to this and that?! What does this issue has to due with a dialect map in Brazil? So, you say, we need a map first and then we hear. And guess what, I believe that was said in early 20th century or mid-20th century, not sure. Do you really know this specific dialect? There are dialects maps of Brazil not good ones, but there are. Any answer see the links or references first. As many links were also references at least for what I've wrote. And BTW because of people questioned everything lots of info was removed from the article. For instance, the references for Galician misteriously disappered. Just great. So NPOV :\ -23:42, 16 December 2005 (UTC)~

The section on geographical distribution of Portuguese has two major errors in it. First: Portuguese is neither the first language in the African countries mentioned nor is the Portuguese spoken in these countries more similar to European Portuguese. In countries like Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau and São Tomé only about 20% of the population speaks Portuguese as the majority of the population either monolingual or bilingual in African languages. Moreover, some of the people included in these 20% actually speak Portuguese as a second language. While there is a long tradition in Portuguese linguistics to state that the Portuguese spoken in Africa is basically equal to the one spoken in Europe, this is simply not true. Portuguese in Africa is not only structurally different from European Portuguese but also closest to Brazilian Portuguese and some Portuguese-based creoles. I know this is terrible blow on the neo-colonial myth of the Lusofonia, but this is exactly how reality is.

I take it you didn't bother to look at the numbers. FilipeS 14:52, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Those figures are obviously wrong. No serious linguist would accept the notion that Portuguese is the native language of 60 % of the population in Angola, much less 20 % of the population of Namibia ! 200.177.7.72 00:47, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm also sure that 'no serious linguist' would dismiss a reputable source in exchange for no source at all. Get back to us when you have one. FilipeS 16:25, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

"A conversation between an Angolan, a Brazilian and a Portuguese from very rural areas flows very easily"

What is the source for this statement? Has anyone ever put them all together? I read this statement to a Brazilian and she had a good laugh. How would one know? Is there a machine for this sort of thing? An intelligibility meter? I would love to see the caboclos from Minas or Goiás trying to communicate with a Transmontano or a farmer from Angola,who is probably a first language speaker of a tribal language. This statement is not only POV but illogical. vogensen 14.39, 15 December 2005

I removed the quote along with the entire paragraph it belonged to. It consisted of mostly anecdotal or downright impressionistic fact statements.
Peter Isotalo 23:16, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Mr Ray, I know your objective in this article. Don't you think we are all dumb old man. About Peter... Not to offend but, before something, get informed. obviously we shouldnt say that a person from a dialect understands the other, but there are languages when that doesnt occur, even in Portuguese, some dialects are hard to understand. BTW this article was reviewed by thousands of people, not just by both of you. -Pedro 03:00, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
Pedro, even if it's one of the better language articles it is still in serious need of improvement and both vogensen and I have more than enough argumentation and sources to support it. That it became an FA back in May (seven months ago) largely thanks to your involvement doesn't mean that it's perfect and that you're the arbitrator of what constitutes a good edit here.
Please explain your reverts and edits like everyone else. The non-editing of "thousands of people" is not an argument to be conservative.
Peter Isotalo 11:51, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

what? what argumentations? Improvements or removal of information, or more seriously information that is being hidded? information is to be given not hidded with arguments and politically correct or incorrect ideas. About the colonies, if you live in the 15th century, that's YOUR problem. -Pedro 15:00, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm dividing this is into separate issues:
  • The article is in serious need of summarizing. This has been noted and supported by others than me and I removed a hyper-detailed table that is already in the dedicated sub-article geographic distribution of Portuguese. The dialect paragraph adds no information except some highly subjective notions about dialects and, frankly, a lot of repetition of what's already been covered.
  • There are plenty of pure peacock terms like Portuguese is a very rich language in terms of dialects, each with its particularity. For one thing, the statement is incorrect because the differences between dialects or Brazilian and European Portuguese are described as quite minor in The Phonology of Portguese and stating things like each with its particularity is really just fluff. All dialects have particularities, or they wouldn't be particularities. It's very distressing that you're refusing anyone else the right to even define the wording in the article.
  • Many of the reverts are obviously done without any regard to any actual improvements; it's all been pure reflex actions, and about the colonies issue, you're already in a minority about that one.
To sum it up, you're disrupting any attempts to improve this article unless you're in complete agreement with it. This is not constructive behavior, and I urge you to attempt to compromise before this turns into an RfC. You've done a lot of good to the article, Pedro, but it's time to let the guard down and let others work on it as well.
Peter Isotalo 22:58, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

Consonants chart

There's a paragraph in this article, after the consonants chart that makes few sense for me. José San Martin 23:54, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

  • /b, d, g/ are only pronounced as plosives when they occur at the beginning of the word. Following vowels, they are pronounced as the corresponding fricatives [β, ð, ɣ] a process which Portuguese shares with Catalan and Spanish. - I don't know about phonetics of European dialects, but I can assure that it does not happens in Brazilian Portuguese. They are always pronouced /b, d, g/. Moreover, it does not happens in American Spanish. José San Martin 23:54, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
  • /l/ is markedly velarized, [ɫ], which is very close to the standard American English /l/ in words such as "ball". - not in most parts of Brazil. It is normally spoken as /w/. I think is common in Portugal, isn't it? But it is just valid to the final <l>. José San Martin 23:54, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
  • In some Brazilian dialects, especially in the dialects spoken in Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais and Bahia, /d/ and /t/ tend to become affricated before the unstressed phoneme /i/. - it a little is timid. In most southern Brazil dialects (exception made to Curitiba), /t/ and /d/ are strongly pronouced as /tʃ/ and /dʒ/. Not tend to. José San Martin 23:54, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
The information is focused mostly on European Portuguese (EP) because the source is the IPA handbook which has a section on EP. You're welcome to point out the specifics of EP where it is appropriate, but try to make statements as general as possible and focus on the standard languages and of really major dialect groups. It's impossible to cover every nuance of every dialect here. I have access to The Phonology of Portuguese, which covers both EP and BP, but I haven't had time to sit down and try to sift through it and make additions.
As for the velarized /l/, please read the discussion "Vowel chart" above.
Peter Isotalo 00:09, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
So, it would be better say nothing about alophones and dilects variations, since it is all written in the Phonology article, isn't it? This paragraph could be deleted. José San Martin 01:59, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
Deviations belong here, just not overly detailed (some repetition is unavoidable). Describe dialect groups and general differences. For example, EP vs BP or either of those in contrast to various African or Asian forms of Portuguese. Choose the most distinguishing and recognizeable features is my recommendations.
Peter Isotalo 02:07, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

talkin' early

somebody might discuss the earliest period (c. 1200-1350) better. And it's nonsense to say that Galician-Portuguese was first used for poetry. What the writer meant is that the oldest datable texts (not MSS, but texts) are poetic (and even this is questioned). Also, I would want to see something like «Modern Portugese and Galician had a common root in the cluster of romance dialects spoken in the NW of the Iberian Peninsula. The poetry of the earliest poets from Galicia and from Portugal does not show any significant distinctions whatsoever that would allow us to see a separation as early as the 13th century.»

r.c.

"Portuguese is considered the most standardized Portuguese dialect"

This statement doesn't sound logical. Who considers this? How can Portuguese be a dialect of itself? Do you mean Brazilian Portuguese? European Portuguese? Surely there are dialects among these categories. rvogensen| 9:42 16 December 2005

vogensen, it's very good that you're reviewing the article and questioning illogical statements like this one, and I think you should take the liberty of removing or rewording them without taking up the really obvious ones here. Just provide reasonably detailed edit summaries and keep up the good work.
Peter Isotalo 09:46, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Thank you Peter. I didn't want to edit the article until others agreed or disagreed with my editing. In other words I wanted feedback before I committed what some might consider a dictatorial action.
rvogensen 12:03 16 December 2005
To hell with pre-editorial approval, vogensen. This is Wikipedia. Be bold with obvious mistakes. The careless certainly are, and this doesn't strike me as careless edits.
Peter Isotalo 12:07, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Duplicate info

Pedro, please motivate your constant reverts of the table removal. We have a very detailed sub-article for it and the main article is really ruined by it. It takes up huge amounts of space and screws up the image layout for the dialects. It seems a lot like a repetition of your reaction to Angr's attempt at cutting down on article size...

Peter Isotalo 12:13, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Unless someone provides a good motivation for keeping the very intrusive, hyper-detailed and duplicated table of statistics I will remove it. Just keeping up the auto-reverting is not prudent editorial behavior.
Peter Isotalo 17:02, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
I support the table removal. This article is overwhelming and is a misuse of hypertext. ≈ Ekevu talk contrib 16:25, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Where is Machado de Assis?

This is sad. No mention about the most notorious and internationally recognized writer of Portuguese language. —the preceding unsigned comment is by 201.29.52.3 (talk • contribs)

Please don't hesitate to include information about him, anon, but I suggest you do it at Portuguese literature. This article is intended to be about the nature of the language from a more strictly linguistic perspective.
Peter Isotalo 15:34, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Better map, without name

Map of a better quality, without country names.

Lower quality, with country names.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.244.80.175 (talk • contribs) 15:17, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Please improve the first one if you can. Yug 11:58, 23 January 2006 (UTC) (This comment posted by 147.210.245.2 (talk • contribs))

Lyhana8 (talk • contribs) 19:46, 23 January 2006 (UTC) deleted section with summary: "section deleted : a better map is now made (Image:Map-Lusophone World-en.png), this section ca be deleted." I'm putting it back in per Talk page guidelines. ≈ Ekevu (♥ • ★) 13:36, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

This section is not usefull now, the merge of the 2 map is done. Yug (talk) 00:27, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I have a question: Why is it that only Portugal and Brazil are painted in dark green while all the other portuguese speaking countries in light green? Qrfqr 07:06, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Because Portuguese is spoken as a first language only in Brazil and Portugal. Gameiro 14:55, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
Never been to Angola. But according to the information in this article, Portuguese is spoken as the first language by more than half of the Angolan people. Qrfqr 05:13, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
  • The colour of all countries should be at the same colour, the language has the same use in all these countries, so the previous map was good, I don't know with people keep changing it. --Pedro 15:18, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

"Portuguese is, with Spanish, the fastest growing western language"?

I just cleaned up some of the wording in the Geographic Distribution section, but I didn't quite know what to do about this. The sentence implies that they are the two fastest growing western languages, without saying which one actually is. I suspect that Spanish actually is, since otherwise it would probably not be mentioned at all, in which case it would be clearer to write "Portuguese is the second fastest growing western language (after Spanish)". If Portuguese is the fastest growing, just leave Spanish out of it. But a citation to the statistics that show this (verifiable content) would be needed, and I didn't find one. @alex 02:27, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

The lead

I reinstated most of the lead, but moved some of the more tedious lists which were already available elsewhere in the article and removed minor details. I must object to the shortening of the lead in general, since the suggested cap is set at about two or three paragraphs (see Wikipedia:Lead section, and an article that is around 50k can surely afford to have a lead that is more than a single paragraph in length. Simply moving most of it under a header called "The language" is exactly what Wikipedia:Guide to layout#Introductory material explains you should not do. A section called "The language" in an article about a language is in no way different from a section entitled "Introduction".

I also removed the table as per the talkpage comments.

Peter Isotalo 09:36, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

It's fine at its current length. The problem before was that on a default-sized browser, the lead filled up not just one but two screenfuls. This could lead the casual reader to think that the article was just a single mass of unorganized text. Seeing the table of contents on the first screen, or at the very least within the first scrolling boundary, is much more inviting for the reader, and gives a visual cue that the article has structure. --TreyHarris 09:41, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

IPA and soundbite in the lead

I had moved the IPAs and soundbite from the head line to a later paragraph, but it was moved back. The reason for my mode was that those items create a long break in the flow of the opening sentence without providing much value in return. They are of very little use to readers who are not Portuguese speakers (whereas the written autonym can be quite useful to a non-Portuguese reader, e.g. if he has to do bibliographic or google searches). Besides, there are many Portuguese dialects, some of them with substantial differences in pronunciation; if we are to provide an IPA and soundbyte for every one, as justice demands, the opening sentence will become just awful. I think that this sort of information would be more appropriate for the pronunciation/dialects section. All the best, Jorge Stolfi 20:06, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Espirito Santo - Fluminense?

I don't think people of Espirito Santo says in Fluminense-Rio style, this is a complete POV-pushing.

  • The table was simplefied, I'll see if it was a deletion or a transportantion to another article. It previously stated that there were differences.

Dialectal zones of Brazil: http://www.linguaportuguesa.ufrn.br/pt_3.3.b.php

You can see here more proper information: Portuguese dialects

There are another divisions for dialects.

It is not POV. Leia o link que lhe dei! -- Pedro 02:12, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

People from Espirito Santo are known as capixaba. -K

Napoleonic "dominion"

"The resemblances between Portuguese and French may have been reinforced by the Napoleonic dominion over Portugal in 1807-1812, and the great influence that France had in Portuguese culture since then."

AFAIK, the expression "Napoleonic dominion" is incorrect. There were several (3) napoleonic campaigns over Portugal, but none of them with any practical "domination" result.

Mea culpa. The statement is not mine (and I don't know whether it is true), but I introduced that expression while trying to clan it up. If you can think of a better (preferably short) expression, please fix... Thanks, Jorge Stolfi 12:25, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
The Napoleonic occupation of Portugal lasted only a couple of years. I think it's more likely that the French influences in Portuguese were due to the prestige that French had during the Enlightenment, and later. 13 February, 2006.

Asturian

I'd place Asturian language or Leonese language between Galician and Ladino. Leonese was one of the influences in Ladino. --Error 01:07, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Romanian

Isn't the Romanian întotdeaună? --Error 01:07, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Latin

its declension system — a feature which has no counterpart in any of its daughter languages.

Romanian (and Rumansh?) has genitives-datives. --Error 01:07, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Oops,thanks. Will fix. Jorge Stolfi 01:42, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Timing

European Portuguese is often described as a stress-timed language (consistent with the its loss of pre-stress vowels), while Brazilian Portuguese is syllable-timed.

Isn't there a similar distinction between Jamaican English and British or American English, and between Spain's Spanish language and Mexican Spanish? --Error 01:07, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Infinitives

Está na hora de irmos embora.

Is this the same as Spanish Es la hora de irnos? Then it is not so distinctive. I think there are other cases where Portuguese infinitives depart from Spanish. --Error 01:07, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

It's ab-so-lu-te-ly different! The "-nos", in Spanish, is a reflexive pronoun (forming a single phonological word with the verb), not a verb ending! The personal infintive is a very well-known difference between Portuguese and Spanish (I guess another difference is the future subjunctive). Please do not edit the article without being sure about what you're writing. Velho 18:46, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Ter

Portuguese (like its Iberian cousins) often uses ter ("to posess", from Latin tenere) as an auxiliary verb

Which Iberian cousins? Spanish and Catalan don't have tener as an auxiliary. --Error 01:07, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

My fault, sorry (as you can tell, I don't know much of spanish). But what about Galician? Jorge Stolfi 01:41, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
Galician language has a general lack of two-verb tenses. In the few cases they exist (reduced to juridic language and some other highly formal cases) the verb "ter" is also used as an auxiliar.

Present participle vs Gerund

I removed this sentence since it seems to be a question of grammatical classification that is impossible to explain in the limited space of this article:

There is no present or active participle in Portuguese, but many adjectives come from Latin present participles and carry more or less the same meaning. Some neologisms are created in the same pattern. Unlike English, these "present participles" are not identical in form with gerund.

This may make sense from the historical point of view, but as a description of the present reality is seems too convoluted. I bet that 99.99% of all Portuguese speakers who have studied grammar at school never understood the distinction betwen gerund and present participle. AFAIK, a simpler way of putting it is that the regular -ado form of almost any verb can be used both in compound tenses and as an adjective, while for some verbs these two uses have specific irregular forms. Would you agree with this summary description? Jorge Stolfi 01:41, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't -do an ending for the passive(or past) participle? The sentence refers to words which, in Latin, ended in -nte(m), like Modern Portuguese amante, vidente, pedinte, and contrasts it with Gerund forms, which ended in -ndu(m) — Modern Portuguese formando, vincendo, etc. In the modern language, the Active (Present) Participle disappeared as a verbal tense in the sense that -nte isn't a recognized verbal ending, but words can be coined appending it to a verbal theme in an ad hoc fashion. So I believe the original sentence was actually correct.

If you think clarification is needed, we could try something like this:

There is no present or active participle in Portuguese, but many adjectives come from Latin present participles and carry more or less the same meaning. Some neologisms are created in the same pattern. Unlike English, these "present participles" are not identical in form with gerund — the former end in -nte, and the latter in -ndo(a).

--Wtrmute 02:30, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, I misunderstood the original sentence --- I thought that it was referring to the pairs like aceito/aceitado (there are better examples but I can't think of any at the moment). Jorge Stolfi 09:55, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

The grammar is growing

The article is getting way over 50 Kb again and the grammar section is still growing. Please use the main article as a general summary. There's a sub-article at Portuguese grammar where you can go into more detail.

Peter Isotalo 19:17, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree! But Stolfi's editing really reduced it.Velho 19:28, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
I will try to move the gender section to the Grammar article, leaving only a short parag. Jorge Stolfi 21:57, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

There are too many subsections

especially in Grammar, there should be only a section and some subsctions, not sections, subsections and subsections of subsections. This article is now a complete chaos! -Pedro 21:12, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree that there is no point in having a section that is just one paragraph. We can take out some of the section headings later. But they are necessary to organize the material in a logical order and to avoid duplication. As for it being a chaos: perhaps, but to me it is still better than it was before... All ther best, Jorge Stolfi 15:41, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
Pedro, I trimmed some excess prose, moved some details to Portuguese grammar, and deleted some of the sub-subsection headers. I don't think it is a good idea to remove all of them, though, because the Grammar section is still too long to be just one section. But perhaps we can turn the subsubsections into pseudo-sections, such as
Peculiar verb tenses: Portuguese has a few peculiar tenses...
The good news for you 8-) is that I must put Wikipedia aside for a while now. The article is all yours again. Good work, and all the best, Jorge Stolfi 09:07, 6 February 2006 (UTC)


comparison with Latin

I have deleted the following:

Latin
Even though Portuguese is derived from Latin, there is arguably more distance between these two languages than between any two modern Romance languages. Portuguese speakers generally consider Latin a very difficult language to learn, because of its declension system. This essential feature of Latin, which allows great freedom in word order, has no counterpart in its daughter languages (except Romanian, which preserved three of Latin's seven cases).

If there is indeed 'arguably more distance between these two languages than between any two modern Romance languages', then that should be argued -- with evidence. I see none.

The second sentence is the argument for the first. The evidence for it is found in any Latin grammar. Jorge Stolfi 21:43, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
The second sentence does not prove the first, nor have I ever seen it in any Latin grammar, by the way. Latin is difficult to learn for any speaker of modern Romance languages. Feb. 10 2006.

That 'Portuguese speakers generally consider Latin a very difficult language to learn, because of its declension system' proves nothing. So do Spanish speakers, French speakers, Italian speakers, English speakers... 12 February, 2006.

Yes, precisely. Latin is difficult for all Romance speakers, in particular for Portuguese speakers. What is wrong with that statement?
In any case, I have rewritten the paragraph, I hope it is clear now. Jorge Stolfi 12:37, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
PS. An example would help here. Perhaps someone who knows Latin can translate the window/dinner sentence into it, too? That would be nice... Jorge Stolfi 02:39, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
Not at all. The second sentence could prove the first if it were accompanied by evidence that Latin is more difficult to learn for Portuguese speakers than for other Romance language speakers -- but there is no evidence of that. 12 February, 2006.
See above. Indeed, Latin is more difficult to learn than other Romance languages, for all Romance speakers. But, since this article is about Portuguese and not about Romance, it is natural to focus on Portuguese: i.e. Portuguese speakers find learning Latin is more difficult than Learning other Romance languages. This is simply a logical consequence of the general statement. If the text seems to~say something else, let's fix it. I hope I have done so already. Jorge Stolfi 12:38, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
I must admit that I had misinterpreted what you meant by the paragraph. In any case, the new version is clearer. I have just one comment about it: you equate the difference between Latin and Portuguese to the difference between Gothic and English. It would be more accurate to compare it to the difference between Old English and modern English, as Gothic was not a direct ancestor of English. 13 February, 2006.
The English/Gothic analogy was added by someone else; I have no idea whether it is valid or not. Jorge Stolfi 23:07, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
The discussed section is supposed to focus on explaining genetic relation and similarity with other languages, not the opinions of native speakers about individual languages. The current content is leaning very heavily towards the latter, which I find quite inappropriate.
Peter Isotalo 10:56, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
Learning difficulty is a fairly objective concept, that language techers are well aware of, and is not based on casual student opinions. It can be measured by how many hours of formal schooling the average person needs before being able to understand magazine-type articles or pass certain proficiency exams.
Learning difficulty is the best measure of language difference that I can think of. Genetic relations among Romance languages are quite uncertain, because of the extensive influence between languages, many normatization and purification efforts, re-borrowing from Latin, calques (like você/usted), and our almost complete ignorance about the nature of Vulgar Latin and the first 1000 years of Romance evolution. The comparaitive method for tree-making requires that one first choose a metric of language similarity, and different choices will give different trees; so that leaves us at ground zero.
All the best, Jorge Stolfi 12:37, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Comparison section

Someone had deleted the sections that compare Portuguese to other Romance languages and Latin. However that information should be much more interesting to general readers than, say, minor details about dialectal variation in pronunciation. Moreover, if we are to discuss the relationship between Portuguese, Galician, and Spanish, we must discuss the other Romance and Latin too. Finally, while mutual intelligibility may not be a good measure of genetic relatedness, in the case of Romance it is probably more meaningful than any other criterion, considering the problems faced by the comperative method here.
Jorge Stolfi 16:11, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

See above. Feb. 12 2006.

haver&ter

I was reading this article about my native language, Portuguese, and at one part I read, "(...) including the auxiliaries ser ("to be"), haver ("to have"), ter ("to possess"), ir ("to go"), and a few others." I think that such translations for the verbs haver and ter are not precise. Although haver may sometimes mean "to have", its correct translation to English should be "there to be". For it is used in Portuguese whenever one says in English "there is", "there are", etc.. As for ter, it's the one verb that means "to have"! Of course it may also mean "to possess", but for that particular meaning there's another specific equivalent verb, possuir. Regardless of the evolution from Latin tenere, I think that it doesn't make sense to translate ter as "to possess". Not nowadays. I would recommend that part of the article to be therefore changed.

In ancient Portuguese, haver did mean "to have". Furthermore, the point of that sentence is not to make a translation, but to compare the syntax of Portuguese with that of other languages. Given this, I don't think it's inappropriate to describe haver as an equivalent of "to have". I would, however, describe ter as an equivalent of "to hold", not "to possess".

Well, I do see the historical way to insert another meaning of ter in the article, but I still think that it would make the whole thing much more precise if an accurate, modern translation was placed instead. Ter may also mean "to hold" indeed, but why is everybody avoiding to translate it as "to have"? It's a plain, exact translation!

Yes, but it's also a plain translation of haver, and that's a problem, if you one wishes to compare Portuguese with other Romance languages, which use the equivalent of haver as the auxiliary of perfect tenses. See this paragraph, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_languages#To_have_and_to_hold
See also the discussion about ter = "to hold", below.

Gender in IE languages

Is there any Indo-European language, other than English, that has lost the concept of Grammatical gender? Jorge Stolfi 05:50, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Try Afrikaans.

Is ter = "to hold" in Portuguese?

A previous version of the Romance languages article claimed that all of them use the TENERE-derived verb (ter) for the sense of "to hold". That is correct in Italian and French, at least; but it seems incorrect for Portuguese.

Perhaps I need some caffeine, but I would swear that eu tenho o livro in current Portuguese means only "I have the book", never "I hold the book". I.e. "ter" = "to have (something)", not "to hold". That is certainly true in Brazil (formal register included, not just "in some varieties"). To say "I hold the book" one would have to use some other verb, e.g. eu seguro o livro.

Of course tenho o livro na mão can be translated as "to hold", but that is no different than tenho uma arvore no quintal which must be translated as "I have a tree in my yard"; so it is still an example of "to have (something)" rather than "to hold" (cf. Italian aveva il libro nella mano) Without the adverbial "na mão", ter loses the sense of "hold" and reduces to "to have".

My Aurélio gives "ter = segurar", but the example shown is Não conseguiu ter por muito tempo a avezinha capturada, which sounds quite archaic to my ears. Is that sense current in European Portuguese? Jorge Stolfi 19:18, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Avezinha does sound strange to my ears, although I don't think the sentece is archaic. However, even if that sentence has a certain meaning, I would't translate ter with segurar, but instead something close to hold. Segurar, to me, sounds like to be grabbing, which is of course not the case here. --Jotomicron | talk 21:26, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
I am not sure I understood your reply. Are you an European Portuguese speaker? The translation "ter" = "segurar" is what the Aurélio dictionary gives for that example. I am a Brazilian Portuguese speaker (or should be 8-), and to me "ter" never means "to hold", only "to have". Thus, "ele tem uma chave" heans "he has a key" (could be in his hand, but also in his pocket, on his head, at home, etc.). If I had to say "he holds a key", specifically in his hand, I would have to say "ele está segurando uma chave" or "ele tem uma chave na mão". So are you saying tha in EP "ter" also means "to hold", and "segurar" means something stronger than just "to hold"? All the best, Jorge Stolfi 04:52, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
Indeend, I'm an European Portuguese speaker. Now, I'd translate the sentence as you give it with something like He wasn't able to hold/keep the bird in captivity. Of course this sentence can also be Não conseguiu ter muito tempo a avezinha que tinha sido capturada previamente, in which case ter means possession and means to have (at first, I didn't realise this sentence could have this last meaning). So, I'd say that is some situations, "ter" = "to hold" is a valid meaning (and now, please, forget all my comments about segurar meaning only to grab, because that is just not the case.) --Jotomicron | talk 12:47, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

See the discussion above about haver & ter.

Is tem = "there is" in Portuguese?

A previous version of the Romance languages article claimed that tem means there is only in some variants of Brazilian portuguese. However, in BP the existential tem is only moderately informal, and in fact seems much more common than há, as suggested by the Google searches below. Note that some of the hits seem to be in European Portuguese sites (but that is not at all certain, of course).

"há horas que" "com.br" 226 hits
"tem horas que" "com.br" 38,100 hits
"há horas que" "com.pt" 29 hits
"tem horas que" "com.pt" 174 hits
"há horas em que" "com.br" 421 hits
"tem horas em que" "com.br" 889 hits
"há horas em que" "com.pt" 11 hits
"tem horas em que" "com.pt" 4 hits
"aqui sempre há" "com.br" 2,260 hits
"aqui sempre tem" "com.br" 493 hits
"aqui sempre há" "com.pt" 6 hits
"aqui sempre tem" "com.pt" 2 hits
"aqui há sempre" "com.br" 141 hits
"aqui tem sempre" "com.br" 711 hits
"aqui há sempre" "com.pt" 16 hits
"aqui tem sempre" "com.pt" 10 hits
"há sempre alguém que" "com.br" 988 hits
"tem sempre alguém que" "com.br" 643 hits
"há sempre alguém que" "com.pt" 355 hits
"tem sempre alguém que" "com.pt" 3 hits
"sempre há alguém que" "com.br" 281 hits
"sempre tem alguém que" "com.br" 733 hits
"sempre há alguém que" "com.pt" 4 hits
"sempre tem alguém que" "com.pt" 8 hits

(anonymous)

  • For Portugal use only .pt not .com.pt (those where introduced recently, and are not popular. These attempts to find differences in the popular use are extremelly ridicule. It is ok to say that Brazilians use você more than the Portuguese, and use more the geround more than the Portuguese, but a thing like that it is ridicule, at best. --Pedro 12:32, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

[β, ð, ɣ]

In the Consonants section, it is stated that

In European Portuguese, /b, d, g/ are only pronounced as plosives when they occur at the beginning of the word. Following vowels, they are pronounced as the corresponding fricatives [β, ð, ɣ]. In Brazilian Portuguese these consonants are always pronounced [b, d, g].

To what extent is this a correct statement? I am an European Portuguese speaker, and although I recognize that there might be dialects where this is true, I don't think I ever pronounced this voiced plosives as fricatives. It happens in Spanish (consider ciudad, ciu[ð]ad), so I'd say it is bond to happen in near-border villages, but not in main cities like Lisbon or Coimbra. --jοτομικρόν | talk 15:24, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

At any level, there are serious problems in the pronunciation of standard Portuguese in the article introduced by Peter (he says he has a book that statees that). I've read several, and none uses it! β and ɣ occurs in dialects, ð in socialets and it is very rare. I think it is time to clean the article.--Pedro 12:23, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
Two notes: First, yes I have seen serious books include those among the sounds of Portuguese, as allophones found in intervocalic position, just like in Spanish. (No, I can't give you a reference.) Second, I confess that I was surprised when I read that, as I do not use those sounds, myself. But my accent is not standard. Those allophones may be common in the dialect of Lisbon.
They're not common (or present at all that I'm aware of). Actually, I think I've never heard any Portuguese or Brazillian person pronouncing [ɣ]. As I said above, if it does heappen in Portugal, then it is in near Spain villages. --jοτομικρόν | talk 22:56, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
No, I've heard those sounds in the mouth of fado singers from Lisboa. For example, pay attention to the way Mariza pronounces "Foi de vós que recebi" in the song "Ó gente da minha terra". See also the analyses in the following website: http://rudhar.com/foneport/en/not2port.htm#Note19.
Oh God... You're right! And I've never realised that. There are indeed some Lis[β]oa in Mariza's lines. And speaking of Fado, I now remeber Amália Rodrigues thanking with really soft [oβɾiɣaðu]s. I guess those sounds do exist afterall in Portuguese. Anyway, I still don't think they can be considered common, because in everyday speech, I'd say someone pronoucing those sounds would either be a drunk or have received a mouth anaesthesia. --jοτομικρόν | talk 16:58, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, I get the impression that the linguists who list those allophones as 'standard' based their studies on erudite speech, which isn't always the most natural. Fado singers, for example, tend to deform some sounds in a peculiar way when they sing. I guess because their words sound 'softer' that way.
added without signature by user:193.136.232.3 17:18, 16 March 2006
No linguist has called it "standard", for crying out loud. You're reading the article way too literally instead of trying to simply rewrite the material or for that matter consult the sources cited. And why is this discussion still being conducted with out any specified sources? The only reasonable reference is Joto's post about the pronunciation fado singers. Everything is just the same old "I've read/seen/heard this and that" without a shred of evidence to back it up.
And I'm getting seriously bothered that you still haven't straightened up, Pedro. Despite having been around this article for a very long time, you consistently avoid citing almost any good sources while still having a lot of opinions on almost any material added to or removed from the article and handing out poorly motivated or even downright false criticism left and right. The only serious problem with this article as I see it is your constant meddling in everything and lack of respect for verifiability when good sources don't agree with your personal opinions.
Peter Isotalo 14:57, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
I am not Pedro. Sheesh! Talk about verifiability! As for sources, see above.
added without signature by user:193.136.232.3 23:33, 28 March 2006
I was refering to Pedro's post, which is above your's but part of the thread, in the second paragraph by addressing him by name. What sources, other than the Fago-reference which I have already acknowledged, are you refering to?
If you want to participate in discussions, anonymous user, you should sign your additions (just put ~~~~ after your posts). It's difficult to follow discussions where participants don't specify which posts they've actually written.
Peter Isotalo 18:19, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Number of speakers: source?

The table on this page currently says 410 million (after a recent edit by an anon IP), with no source cited, and with different information in the body of the article; but List of languages by number of native speakers says 213 million, and cites the 2005 World Almanac as its source. I also found several web references that tend to corroborate the lower figure. If someone wants to insert a higher figure into the article, please cite your source. --Russ Blau (talk) 22:18, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Fernando S. Aldado 04:55, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
Portuguese has no more than 196 million native speakers (a little less than 180 million in Brazil, plus 10 million in Portugal, and at most another 6 million or so elsewhere in Africa and in the Portuguese diaspora). The 220-million figure mentioned in the Wikipedia article is an obvious overestimation and should be corrected. 200.177.7.72 00:44, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

[ð] originated in São Paulo and Rio?!

I have deleted the following, which has two statements that I find doubtful:

"[ð] can occur in some European Portuguese socialects or sub-dialects, such as in cidade pronunced as [sidaðɨ]. (Interestingly enough, this began among the women of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro in the late 1940s and 1950s and soon spread among the general population (José Marquez da Cruz, Português Prático, Edições Melhoramentos: 1955).)"

Surely, the pronunciation would be [siðaðɨ], not [sidaðɨ]. I suspect that who wrote this was thinking of the affricate pronunciation [sidadʒi] in Brazilian Portuguese. In any case, these comments would best be put in the Portuguese phonology page. 193.136.232.3 19:38, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Language reform

"At first, the Agreement established that its entrance into practice would only occur when all the countries of the CPLP had ratified it. But the Portuguese-speaking African countries have not ratified, possibly due to problems in implementing it. In the CPLP’s summit of 26–27 July 2004, an adjustment will prompt implementation when just three countries ratify it. The agreement will eliminate most first 'c's in 'cc', 'cç' or 'ct'; and 'p's in 'pc', 'pç' or 'pt' from European/ African Portuguese, the dieresis and accent marks in words ending in "éia" in Brazil and add some new spelling rules. And it will allow either orthography for words like anónimo or anônimo, depending on the dialect of the author or person being transcribed. Late in October 2004, Brazil became the first to approve the adjustment and asked its ambassadors in Portugal and Cape Verde to promote the rapid implementation in those countries. The agreement will enter into practice in the first day of the next month when the third country ratifies it."

It would be interesting if anyone can update the article to provide an update on this. The last mention is Brazil having ratified it in 2004. What has happened since? Also, it'd be interesting to see what exactly the new spelling rules are. Dan1113 17:45, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

You'll find the full text of the agreement here: http://www.necco.ca/faq_acordo_ortografico.htm FilipeS 21:33, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Compound future tense

I am sorry to just barge into this specialists discussion (since my knowledge of my own language is, at best, just the average one), but i read through the whole article and saw no mention of the compound form of the future tense, which is so common (at least in Brazil)even to the point of completely replacing the regular simple one. Examples: Vou fazer (I will do/make), vou cantar (I will sing), ele vai ganhar (he`ll win/gain), etc. I suggest including it in the article. Best regards.

The grammar section is still a bit poor... It needs a lot of work. FilipeS 21:33, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Change of intervocalic [ʎ] to [ʒ]

The 'Other Romance Languages' section mentioned a "change of intervocalic [ʎ] to [ʒ]" as a difference between Portuguese and Spanish, but neither language went through such change. The editor must have meant something else. FilipeS 20:08, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Maybe they meant ʎ → j → ʒ/dʒ? In some regions of Spanish this did happen, although granted the common pronunciation of ll today is [j] ... and it wasn't just an intervocalic change, though, if anything the ʒ/dʒ is heard more at the beginning of stressed syllables, or following /s/. Hardly intervocalic …

I think what the editor meant to refer was a change of intervocalic [ʎ] to [ʒ], and then to [x], which I believe did occur in the evolution of Spanish. Cf. Port. filha [ʎ], Old Sp. hija [hiʒa], Modern Sp. hija [hixa], Port. trabalho [ʎ], Old Sp. trabajo [trabaʒo], Modern Sp. trabajo [trabaxo]. But I'm not sure if this is worth talking about in an article about Portuguese, which did not go through these sound changes. FilipeS 16:04, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I haven't focused much in the in history of Spanish linguistics (rather contemporary sociolinguistics) but Spanish [x] would actually require another step, which I'm not sure would have happened. While I can visualise [ʎ] → [ʒ], or [ʒ] → [x], I can't visualise (or rather, soundify) [ʒ] → [χ], which would be the missing chain: [ʎ] → [ʒ] ¿→? [χ] → [x]. Peninsular Spanish, and my heritage New Mexican dialect and probably some other isolated areas, still use [χ], which preceded [x]. But, in any case, I definitely agree that it doesn't have a place in the page. Honestly I think there's a little too much comparison stuff on Portuguese here. Perhaps we should move it (and similar sections on the French/Gallego/Spanish/Rumanian/Italian/etc pages into a Comparative Romance Languages Page? Guifa 18:41, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Reading that same sentence in every Romance language does get tiresome. :-) I think there's still a lot of room for improvement in this article, and particularly the 'Related languages' section. It should probably be expanded, but focus on the main differences between Portuguese and other Romance languages (and Latin), and the main differences between Portuguese and Spanish (since Spanish is the major R.L. closest to Portuguese). FilipeS 23:13, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, maybe not so much as expanded, but refocused. Maybe we could do something on conjunction with the other articles, and have one article that BOOM has every single relationship you'd want to know between the language (sort of like what the Portuguese section is starting to get to). Then within each individual article, just list the major differences, eg, for Portuguese, "Distinguishing characters of Portuguese against other Romance languages include nasalisation [example], palatisation [example], a lack of vowel-softening [example], elision of intervocalic /n/ and /l/ [example]." period. done. For more information with the cross language results, see the other article. Remeber, Wikipedia guidelines suggest breaking apart sections as an article gets too big. I agree though that some closer attention with Spanish can be given. The Spanish article does a good job (though they could still cut back just a little bit). Matthew Stuckwisch 23:36, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Spanish x Portuguese (Editing changes)

I copied part of the information on the main Spanish language article to the Spanish x Portuguese comparison section in the Portuguese language article, as I feel that is a more appropriate place for that particular discussion. On top of that, I did some minor editing of my own. I also made a few changes to the Portuguese x Other Romance Languages section. Please feel free to revert to the previous version if you think my editing was not appropriate.200.177.17.130 02:50, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I think it's a good idea to make a comparison between Portuguese and Spanish in that part of the article. FilipeS 15:50, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Sample text from The Lusiads

I have made some changes to the phonetic transcription. Some of them are simple corrections of sounds which were incorrectly transcribed. I also changed the notation of the diphthongs, writing the semivowels as "weak" vowels (see the discussion of notation at semivowel and diphthong). When the last and the first vowel of two consecutive words assimilate, either merging or turning into semivowels, I wrote the two words without any space between them:

Afeiçoada à gente Lusitana,
ɐfɐjsu̯ˈaða ˈʒẽtɨ luziˈtɐnɐ
Da antiga tão amada sua Romana;
dˈãtigɐ tɐ̃ũ ̯ ɐˈmaðɐ ˈsuɐ ʁuˈmɐnɐ
Nos fortes corações, na grande estrela,
nuʃ ˈfɔɾtɨʃ kuɾɐˈsõĩ ̯ʃ nɐ ˈgɾɐ̃dɨʃˈtɾelɐ

This is consistent with the literary spellings afeiçoad'à, d'antiga, na grand'estrela but feel free to change it, if it's not the standard practice. Further comments:

  • The transcription is based on the pronunciation of Lisbon. I suppose one could use phonemic transcription, but it's probably more interesting to write down the phones themselves, even if it is at the expense of having to choose a particular accent to be transcribed.
  • From the vowel table which is in the article, the phonemes /ɐ/ and /ɐ̃/ are actually pronounced [ə] and [ə̃] in the Portuguese of Lisbon, but I decided not to change their notation for now.
  • The translation of the verses into English is a bit poor. It should be improved. FilipeS 15:50, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

There is bias

This page seems to be biased to the viewpoint that Spanish is less advanced than Portuguese and that Galician is a dialect of Portuguese. If you read through it there is quite a bit of bias

What makes you say that? FilipeS 23:04, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree, I'm working on my masters of Spanish, and would probably admit to being Spanish-biased myself, but I don't see Spanish as being shunned here. I'm also a big supporter of minority languages (Scots, etc) and their right to call self-identify their dialectal/linguistic status. Some examples that I think contradict your supposed biased theory:

  • Re Galego
    • The closest language to Portuguese is Galician. (describe, don't proscribe. it's self described as separate).
    • The linguistic status … is controversial (descriptive NPOV).
    • The official position … is that Galician is an independent language (descriptive NPOV)
    • … reminiscent of the relations between Romanian and Moldovan, or between Catalan and Occitan. (both now are quite considered separate languages).
  • Re Spanish
    • common words are … very different in Portuguese and Spanish and have … evolved from different root words (descriptive NPOV)
    • loss of intervocalic /l/ and /n/, which does not occur in Spanish (descriptive NPOV, and if anything, "loss" implies Portuguese is inferior)
    • Latin consonant clusters also took very different routes (descriptive NPOV)
    • the diphthongization of short stressed vowels is … in Spanish … but absent in Portuguese (descriptive NPOV, again, if anything, "absent" creates a potential negative feel toward Portuguese)
    • peculiarities of the Portuguese language that set it apart not only from Spanish, but indeed from other Romance languages (descriptive NPOV, but if you strain to get a point of view, it's not singling out Spanish)
    • Portuguese's complex phonology compared to Spanish explains why spoken Portuguese is generally not intelligible to Spanish speakers (this is a fact, look at Spanish_Language and see there are a total of 5 vowels and 21 consonant phonemes, and no dialect uses them all. Portuguese in comparison just from the chart in Portuguese_Language has 28 phonemes, and especially in Brasilian, there's a high level of palatisation and other kinds of morphs that would be confusing initially to a Spanish speaker (and leads to more phonemes).

Can you please direct us to statements you consider to be biased? If anything I can only possibly strain to find biased in the other direction, but not in the ways you've proposed. Matthew Stuckwisch 00:02, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Galician and Portuguese relationships or the neverending story

I have made some minor changes to the Galician section as I think it has a very strong orientation to the position called 'reintegrationism'. I beg to everyone that want to change it again first discuss here the point in order to avoid futile edition wars. The statements I have changed are the following ones:

-'Galician language academy tries to remove Portuguese words that are called 'lusismos. First of all it must be said that Galician language academy's criteria are roughly to search a Galician word and, if there´s no one appropiat, search in Portuguese as the closest genetically language to Galician. Lusismos can be classified in three ways: accepted ones (when Galician word is completely substituted by a clearly Spanish word, such as 'abuelo' when 'ue' dipthong is practically inexistent in Galician), those what exist in some part of Galician but are negligible in population terms (e.g. is known in Pedrafita the pronunciation 'cuatro' (four) coincident with Portuguese 'quatro' but negligible to global-Galician 'catro') and those that replace a Galician own word (perhaps the most famous example, 'embora' for 'malia'). I consider that such explanation must be given if the above statement goes in the text, as it is a more neutral description than 'GLA wants to remove Portuguese words'. However I removed the phrase as it would remain too long.

-'Some authors, such as Lindley Cintra, consider that they are still dialects of a common language, in spite of superficial differences in phonology and vocabulary. Other authors such as Vázquez Cuesta argue that they have become separate languages' I removed the nationality of the aouthors since it has the only aim to make the reader think that it is a Spain-against-Portugal battle. There are Spanish philologists that affirm they are the same language and Portuguese philologists that affirm they must be considered separate languages, and Portuguese institutions have never shown intentions to include Galician as a variant of Portuguese since it is historically aberrant- Galician does not come from Portuguese as Brazilian does!

-I added that the most of Galician people consider Galician and Portuguese two separate languages. I think it´s a fact that must not be forgotten.

-I added the isolationist point of view about the ñ/nh and ll/lh topic.

-I added the 'linguistic' word to the comparation with Occitan/Catalan. The main differences between these two languages are spelling and phonetics, and phonetics do not change as much as they do between Galician and Portuguese -at least in languedocian Occitan.

-I added the political implications of this discussion.

"Lusismos can be classified in three ways: accepted ones (when Galician word is completely substituted by a clearly Spanish word, such as 'abuelo' when 'ue' dipthong is practically inexistent in Galician)" That should be an 'españolismo', if anything, not a 'lusismo'.
"I removed the nationality of the authors since it has the only aim to make the reader think that it is a Spain-against-Portugal battle." I strongly disagree. The political factors are important, and they should not be swept under the rug. Obviously, there is no "battle"; that's an abusive reading of yours. But there is indeed a controversy colored by politics. These are facts.
"I added that the most of Galician people consider Galician and Portuguese two separate languages." And on which polls do you base that statement?
"Portuguese institutions have never shown intentions to include Galician as a variant of Portuguese since it is historically aberrant" 'Historically aberrant'? What on Earth do you mean?! FilipeS 10:53, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
About the "lusismos", that´s exactly the point: the criterion is that only Portuguese words allowed are those believed to exist in Galician wich are totally substituted by a Spanish form. 'Abuelo' is a obvious example of this case, so 'avó' was taken from Portuguese. The same thing happened with words as 'orzamento' and 'estrada'. So it can be misleading to state that GLA wants to remove Portuguese words, and could be more accurate to say GLA wants to remove SOME Portuguese words to give a politically neutral point of view in case that this decission would be desired to figure in the text.
About the Spain-versus-Portugal battle, despite the obvious fact that the cause underlying is essentially a political one, these are not the actors. It is a problem that involves Galician cultural elites against Galician cultural elites since XIX century, and the fact is that neither Portugal nor Spain have had a substantially role in it. The fact is that the original text intended to suggest that Portuguese philologists are mostly for the classification as Portuguese and Spanish ones are mostly for the classification as a independent language - unless you are including Galician ones into the Spanish ones (what I didn´t want to suggest), philologists from the rest of Spain do not apply on Galician issues. There are "unionist" Galician philologists and "separatist" Portuguese philologists. The key here is that calling someone Spanish in Galicia can be a very effective form of destroying its reputation into nationalist movemen - and it is widely used against GAL, composed itself mainly by Galician nationalists.
About the fact that Galician and Portuguese are widely thought as to be separate languages I suggest you to simply go and ask Galician people. To make things clear, I will tell you that Portuguese-like spelling system has scarce use - e.g. only one extraparlamentary political party uses it officially and there is only one weekly newspaper using it for one weekly newspaper written mainly in GAL spelling system, one daily newspaper written in GAL spelling system and sections of Spanish-written daily newspapers written in GAL spelling system. It can be said that the only place that it is more than marginal is the Internet - wich is often used to propaganda purposes.
Last but not least, saying that Galician is a Portuguese dialect is as aberrant as saying that English is an German dialect. Many historical linguists view every speech form as a dialect of the older medium of communication from which it developed, as US English is derived from British English. History shows that both Galician and Portuguese come from the same medieval language, the Galician-Portuguese romance that evolved north Douro river and expanded to south, where modern Portuguese fixed its standard near Coimbra. So, altough they are forms of language genetically very close, it is incorrect to talk about them as dialects of something that is not original Galician-Portuguese. In fact, the historically correct statement would be 'Portuguese is a Galician dialect', as we can understand that Portuguese was the language that early Galician-speaking Portuguese carried with themselves to south during Portugal expansion. To avoid endless discusions around this point I think 'dialect' consideration does not apply at all for this case.

(anonymous)

  • I agree with Filipe, we should keep with the facts, but we shouldn't say Galician is a Portuguese dialect. Why that idea that Portuguese is a Galician dialect? As far as I know, Portuguese was standardized in the 13th century, Galician in the 19th. That's 600 years... Galician sub-section was very good, now it seems a battle ground. This is just an encyclopaedia article not a blog - the aim is to inform and not show one opinion Vs another. NPOV is not removed by adding more POV. No version is above the other, this is just about sounds and drawings that people make to communicate. You know pretty well that no Portuguese needs to learn nothing to speak with a Galician and the other way around, besides the "ohh you know that as ABZ!? I know it as ABC!!!" - notice they are communicating normally.

BTW the language comparison section is way too long, we should only keep a developed debate on Galician and Spanish, the remaining should be trimmed down or removed: info about Ladino, barranquenho, etc should be removed, or with just a small notice, not a hole subsection, they are not important, and not very informative. --Pedro 14:36, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

About the "lusismos", that´s exactly the point: the criterion is that only Portuguese words allowed are those believed to exist in Galician wich are totally substituted by a Spanish form. 'Abuelo' is a obvious example of this case, so 'avó' was taken from Portuguese. The same thing happened with words as 'orzamento' and 'estrada'. So it can be misleading to state that GLA wants to remove Portuguese words, and could be more accurate to say GLA wants to remove SOME Portuguese words to give a politically neutral point of view in case that this decission would be desired to figure in the text.

I'm sorry, but it's still not very clear to me what it is you are saying. Does the GLA condemn certain words for being too close to Portuguese? You're admitting that it does. That's precisely what the previous version of the article stated, so how could it have been biased?

About the Spain-versus-Portugal battle, despite the obvious fact that the cause underlying is essentially a political one, these are not the actors. It is a problem that involves Galician cultural elites against Galician cultural elites since XIX century, and the fact is that neither Portugal nor Spain have had a substantially role in it.

Galicia is in Spain, and a large portion of the Galician elite is of Castilian descent. Franco's regime outlawed Galician. It seems to me that Spain cannot help being involved.

The fact is that the original text intended to suggest that Portuguese philologists are mostly for the classification as Portuguese and Spanish ones are mostly for the classification as a independent language - unless you are including Galician ones into the Spanish ones (what I didn´t want to suggest), philologists from the rest of Spain do not apply on Galician issues.

Historically, there have been influential Spanish philologists and linguists who stated that Galician and Portuguese were separate languages. I don't think the article should cover up this fact.

About the fact that Galician and Portuguese are widely thought as to be separate languages I suggest you to simply go and ask Galician people.

Why don't you go and do that? Then you can come back here and include that statement in the article. Otherwise, it's just POV.

To make things clear, I will tell you that Portuguese-like spelling system has scarce use - e.g. only one extraparlamentary political party uses it officially and there is only one weekly newspaper using it for one weekly newspaper written mainly in GAL spelling system, one daily newspaper written in GAL spelling system and sections of Spanish-written daily newspapers written in GAL spelling system. It can be said that the only place that it is more than marginal is the Internet - wich is often used to propaganda purposes.

I don't see what that has to do with bias, or anything else concerning the article we're supposed to be discussing.

Last but not least, saying that Galician is a Portuguese dialect is as aberrant as saying that English is an German dialect.

The version of the article you complained about did not state that Galician was a dialect of Portuguese. It said that, according to some authors, Galician and Portuguese were dialects (plural) of a common language. FilipeS 17:18, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, we're approaching points of view. There are only small details that I think should be put in clear.

Does the GLA condemn certain words for being too close to Portuguese? The GLA does not normativize certain words that are close to Portuguese. The GLA does not condemn them for being too close to Portuguese but for being minoritary in Galician, as it doesn't normativize other minoritary language features that are not close to Portuguese. I hope that point remains clear as it is a neverending source of misleadings.

About the Spanish philologists I agree with you that some of them have stated that Galician and Portuguese are different languages, but I think it is no reliable at all as Spanish-Castillian (the language internationally known as Spanish)philology has served many times for national-building of the Spanish state - that´s why I have spoken about Galician philologists meaning Spanish-Galician. I fear that it is complex to explain to a foreigner the inner politics of Spain. Nevertheless, I agree with you in that this fact should not be covered into the article.

About Galician people thoughts about this topic feel free to remove the statement you talk about since I am not in Galicia nowadays and therefore I cannot search for sources - and I don't think there are much polls on it, the same as there are few polls in Norway asking people if they believe Norwegian and Sweddish are the same language. This is why I spoken about spelling systems, as it is the securest system to estimate it - it can be roughly said that those who write in Portuguese-like spelling consider the two languages as one. It is a long story to explain and I don't want to waste anyone's time, including mine, so I think it´s better to clear any reference until I get some verifiable source, clearing my contribution in this sense.

For the contributor who spoke about accumulation of POV I have to say that it is NOT my personal POV. There are two main points of view and I strongly think that this article did not present a neutral POV, favouring followers of language unity theory. I also believe the minor changes I made represent a more neutral article, balancing the accusations of literally 'taking advantage of the divergent features of the phonology of Galician to emphasize its differences from Portuguese' (yes, they are accusations as GLA have never assumed this statement) with some arguments from GLA defending the linguistic basis of their point of view. I think that if argumentations in this subject are admitted they should be both or neither - I will agree with any of both solutions.

I hope to have explained the changes I've made - please feel free to discuss any other point that remains not clear.

About the Spanish philologists I agree with you that some of them have stated that Galician and Portuguese are different languages, but I think it is no reliable at all as Spanish-Castillian (the language internationally known as Spanish)philology has served many times for national-building of the Spanish state - that´s why I have spoken about Galician philologists meaning Spanish-Galician. I fear that it is complex to explain to a foreigner the inner politics of Spain.

I does not matter where they are from. The fact remains that they were Spaniard scholars, and they supported the separation of Galician from Portuguese. I think this is relevant.

Nevertheless, I agree with you in that this fact should not be covered into the article.

You misunderstood the phrasal verb I used. I do not think that the point of view of Spanish scholars regarding the status of Galician should be obscured in the article.

This is why I spoken about spelling systems, as it is the securest system to estimate it - it can be roughly said that those who write in Portuguese-like spelling consider the two languages as one.

I don't think that's a good indicator at all, because official orthographies are not decided by popular vote. There are institutions, in this case the Galician Language Academy, which determine the standard. Most people will tend to follow the standard orthography, just because that's what they learn at school, and what they find in the media, or simply out of inertia. It doesn't mean that they would prefer that standard to any other, given a choice. If you want to make claims about how most Galicians feel regarding language issues, you need to make some careful polls. Until such surveys are made, speculation about their likely result is POV, and does not belong here.

I also believe the minor changes I made represent a more neutral article, balancing the accusations of literally 'taking advantage of the divergent features of the phonology of Galician to emphasize its differences from Portuguese' (yes, they are accusations as GLA have never assumed this statement)

They are observations, not accusations. The GLA does not need to "assume" what is plain to see.

I hope to have explained the changes I've made - please feel free to discuss any other point that remains not clear.

As a matter of fact, I would like to discuss a few of your rewrites:

"The standard orthography takes advantage of the divergent features of the phonology of Galician to emphasize its differences from Portuguese, insisting on strictly phonetic spelling, and rejecting Portuguese graphic conventions such as circumflex and grave accents, tildes on vowels, or graphemes like nh, lh, j, in favour of ñ, ll, x, etc, some of them reflecting also the ancient Galician consonant spelling system, wich does not match with modern, Occitan-influenced Portuguese ortography."

First of all, the "modern, Occitan-influenced" Portuguese orthography (Sheesh, borrow two digraphs, and suddenly you're Occitan's doormat!...) is some 800 years old. It's not modern; it's medieval. Secondly, the spelling of Galician-Portuguese in medieval texts was not uniform; for example, some authors wrote nn instead of ñ.

Most of all, though, you are missing the point. It doesn't matter how young or old a couple of digraphs are (incidentally, the GLA's spelling has some novelties of its own, such as using x for j). The point is that the language authorities of Galician had a choice between (a) adopting an orthography which was closer to the Portuguese spelling, and (b) adopting an orthography which was closer to the Spanish spelling, and they chose the latter. This is clearly a significant piece of information with respect to the language controversy.

"However it is a mostly polytically-bonded discussion as the main supporters of the unicity of both languages have a definite profile as Galician nationalists and it is clearly oriented to preserve Galician use in front a more powerful language as Spanish."

What do you mean by this? I honestly don't understand your sentence.

As a compromise, I propose the following rewrite for the paragraph:

The linguistic status of Galician with respect to Portuguese is controversial. Some authors, such as the Portuguese Lindley Cintra, consider that they are still dialects of a common language, in spite of superficial differences in phonology and vocabulary. Other authors, such as the Spanish Vázquez Cuesta, argue that they have become separate languages. The official position of the Galician Language Academy is that modern Galician and modern Portuguese should be considered independent languages due to major phonetic and vocabulary usage differences, and to a lesser extent, morphological and syntactical ones. The standard orthography takes advantage of the divergent features of the phonology of Galician to emphasize its differences from Portuguese, insisting on strictly phonetic spelling, and rejecting Portuguese graphic conventions such as circumflex and grave accents, tildes on vowels, or graphemes like nh, lh, j, in favour of ñ, ll, x, etc. The sociolinguistic situation is reminiscent of the relations between Romanian and Moldovan, or between Catalan and Occitan.

I've deleted the sentence about pruning the language of lusismos, since you say that's not what's been going on, and it needs to be verified, anyway. I've also deleted the claim about what "most Galicians" believe, since there's no evidence for it. FilipeS 20:00, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I mostly agree, but there are a few changes I would do to give a more neutral point of view:

First of all, I insist there are Portuguese/Brazilian philologists that claim they are separate languages (such as Ferreira da Cunha, I think it was it surname) and Spanish ones that claim they are the same (such as Joan Coromines). I propose to add them, as they are verifiable sources, to the authors' statement.
Second, there is a mistake in the graphic conventions statement. The Galician spellings 'ñ' and 'll' match Portuguese ones 'nh' and 'lh' phonemes, but Galician 'x' spelling does not math with Portuguese 'j' (IPA ʒ) - instead of it, it matches Portuguese 'ch' in 'chefe' or Portuguese 'x' in 'xarope' (IPA ʃ). I propose to remove it and include only ñ-nh and ll-lh as relevant spelling differences. Of course 'x' instead of 'j' is not an GLA invent and can be tracked down to XVI-XVII centuries where ʒ sound evolved into ʃ sound. (source: Freixeiro Mato, R.: 'Língua galega, normalidade e conflito').
Third and last, Occitan-origin 'nh' and 'lh' were not the first Galician spellings for IPA 'ɲ' and 'ʎ' as you seem to suggest. As you wrote in the last post, 'ɲ' was written as nh and nn/ñ but also ny as in Catalan and ancient Spanish, and 'ʎ' was written as lh and ll but also ly (source: Freixeiro Mato, R.: 'Língua galega, normalidade e conflito'). GAL DOES NOT use ñ and ll for create differences between Galician and Portuguese - GAL USES ñ and ll because these are the spellings found in the oldest texts written in Galicia in Galician language in first half of XIII century (long before Spanish was even heard in Galicia, so they're not caused by its influence as it's often said), so it claims that original Galician spellings are ñ and ll instead of nh and lh and therefore must be the way it is written. Source: visit, for example, www.consellodacultura.org/mediateca/pubs.pdf/doc_en_galego.pdf. So I believe that is misleading to write only that Galician spelling is made looking not close to Portuguese as it can be understood that it is the main/only reason to write ñ and ll, and I propose a statement that reflect this fact (it´s not a POV).

I wait for you opinion to make a compromise text.

I'm glad we seem to be nearing a consensus, although there are still some differences to be resolved, and some clarifications to make.

First of all, I insist there are Portuguese/Brazilian philologists that claim they are separate languages (such as Ferreira da Cunha, I think it was it surname) and Spanish ones that claim they are the same (such as Joan Coromines). I propose to add them, as they are verifiable sources, to the authors' statement.

There are always exceptions, of course, but the general pattern, to the best of my knowledge, is that prominent Portuguese scholars predominantly regard Portuguese and Galician as varieties of a common language, whereas prominent Spanish scholars predominantly regard them as separate languages. Needless to say, there are many on both sides who simply choose not pronounce themselves either way regarding the controversy. However, the imbalance of opinions on the two sides of the border seems like a relevant piece of data. As long as the article mentions this overall imbalance, I have no objection to adding to it the names of dissenting voices from both sides. By the way, I didn't quite understand whether Ferreira da Cunha is Portuguese, or Brazilian.

Second, there is a mistake in the graphic conventions statement. The Galician spellings 'ñ' and 'll' match Portuguese ones 'nh' and 'lh' phonemes, but Galician 'x' spelling does not math with Portuguese 'j' (IPA ʒ) - instead of it, it matches Portuguese 'ch' in 'chefe' or Portuguese 'x' in 'xarope' (IPA ʃ). I propose to remove it and include only ñ-nh and ll-lh as relevant spelling differences.

It's not a mistake, you have simply misunderstood the point being made. The sentence does not state that Portuguese j is interchangeable with Galician x, only that the Galician orthography has x [in some cases] where the Portuguese orthography has j. It's true that there are other cases where both orthographies have x, but that adds nothing to the point.

Of course 'x' instead of 'j' is not an GLA invent and can be tracked down to XVI-XVII centuries where ʒ sound evolved into ʃ sound. (source: Freixeiro Mato, R.: 'Língua galega, normalidade e conflito').

In your rewrite of the paragraph, you deprecated the Portuguese digraphs lh and nh, which date back to the 13th century, as "modern" additions. Now you're claiming that the replacement of j with x is legitimate because it began in the 16th century? You should be more consistent in your criteria. In any case, I repeat what I said above:

It is irrelevant which spellings are older. The point is that, given a choice between a spelling that was close to the one of Portuguese, and one that was farther from it (and, not coincidentally, closer to Spanish orthography), the GLA opted for the latter. This was not an innocent, irreflected, inevitable act. It was a conscious decision with the predictable consequence of creating a barrier between Galician and Portuguese.

I think this addresses the rest of your previous reply, with the exception of the following:

Third and last, Occitan-origin 'nh' and 'lh' were not the first Galician spellings for IPA 'ɲ' and 'ʎ' as you seem to suggest.

As a matter of fact, I never meant to suggest that they were the first spellings used in Galician. FilipeS 14:33, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm afraid that you misunderstood what I wanted to say about Occitan and 'nh', 'lh' digraphs. The point is that modern Portuguese ortography, as the medieval one, has the Occitan digraphs, not that these are a modern invention. So the remaining of the discussion is useless, and I'm not being inconsistent in what I say.
On the other hand it is illogical that you say that the general pattern, to the best of my knowledge, is that prominent Portuguese scholars predominantly regard Portuguese and Galician as varieties of a common language, whereas prominent Spanish scholars predominantly regard them as separate languages (I must ask this time to you if you have made a poll or something similar). It is also a fact that Galician GAL spelling is closer to Spanish than to Portuguese, but is simple POV to say it is not coincidentally (well, it's just the version that supports one of both sides of the conflict, is it also coincidentally?). I think simply that the two main POV on this conflict should be briefly explained - both or neither. It is also irrelevant that Galician spellings match with Spanish ones, if you go that way, the fact is that these were older ones and that's GAL criterion, as Catalan uses its oldest spelling system writing 'ny' and 'll' instead of Occitan 'nh' and 'lh' in despite of the fact that both languages were considered as the same one at medieval times and are even today by some linguists (search the Wikipedia for 'occitan', specially in the Catalan page, which is possible to understand if you speak Portuguese).
Concluding, I repeat that I consider two main colective points of view around this topic must be represented - both or neither, as are other political-based conflicts such as these involving Serbian and Croatian. That's the last correction I think should be made.

It has been said in this discussion that most people in Galicia regard Galician and Portuguese as separate languages. While this might be true (however, AFAIK there's no real data supporting neither point of view) there's a couple of things I'd like to point out:

1. First of all, if you ask a Galician whether his language is Portuguese or not, he'll probably say that they're different languages (among other things, because that's the official status). However, it's quite likely that he can't tell what the real differences are. Take a text in Galician from any book or newspaper and change the "Spanish" letters and digraphes ('ñ', 'll', '-n') by for its Portuguese counterparts ('nh', 'lh', '-m', 'ç', 'ã', ...) and I bet most people will tell you that the text is written in Portuguese. Many words that are nowadays accepted by most people as standard Galician ('estrada', 'liberdade', 'orzamento') were regarded some decades ago as blatant lusismos. For instance, the ILG (the institution that created the current Galician standard) published a series of books in the 70s (called "Galego 1", "Galego 2" and "Galego 3") where some of the words accepted by the current standard were stated as Portuguese words and should be avoided.

2. Second, a comparison of how many media and/or newspapers are written using either writing system is not fair. Most Galician people just write in Spanish. Other media and books are written in standard Galician because the government funds many of them in order to promote the language. Many people regarding Galician and Portuguese as the same language write in Spanish. Many even write in standard Galician. Even Manuel Fraga (the former Galician president) has said many times that Galician and Portuguese are the same language (check this and this).

I'm not trying to say that most people think that they're the same language. I just want to point out that the situation is not that simple. As an example, I wrote a Portuguese-to-Galician translator that basically changes Portuguese-only ortography for its Galician equivalents ('nh' -> 'ñ', 'ç' -> 'z', etc.). It's written in Perl and it's less than 2 KB. The results are amazing. You can check it here: Por2Gal web page. Just my 2 cents. --SugarKane 10:20, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Replying to the anonymous editor, if he's still around:

I'm afraid that you misunderstood what I wanted to say about Occitan and 'nh', 'lh' digraphs. The point is that modern Portuguese ortography, as the medieval one, has the Occitan digraphs, not that these are a modern invention.

That's not entirely true. Prior to the late 13th century, the digraphs lh and nh were not a part of the medieval orthography of Portuguese, either. Which is another reason why it's so pointless to discuss who-wrote-how-first, IMO.

On the other hand it is illogical that you say that the general pattern, to the best of my knowledge, is that prominent Portuguese scholars predominantly regard Portuguese and Galician as varieties of a common language, whereas prominent Spanish scholars predominantly regard them as separate languages (I must ask this time to you if you have made a poll or something similar).

What is illogical about it?

It is also a fact that Galician GAL spelling is closer to Spanish than to Portuguese, but is simple POV to say it is not coincidentally (well, it's just the version that supports one of both sides of the conflict, is it also coincidentally?). I think simply that the two main POV on this conflict should be briefly explained - both or neither. It is also irrelevant that Galician spellings match with Spanish ones [...]

Sorry. Definitely not irrelevant. Manipulating the orthography to exaggerate differences is typical of sociolinguistic situations such as this. E.g., Serbian language, Croatian language, Serbo-Croatian language. Or read the article here, for a worldwide overview of how language controversies impact orthography.

[...] if you go that way, the fact is that these were older ones and that's GAL criterion, as Catalan uses its oldest spelling system writing 'ny' and 'll' instead of Occitan 'nh' and 'lh' in despite of the fact that both languages were considered as the same one at medieval times and are even today by some linguists (search the Wikipedia for 'occitan', specially in the Catalan page, which is possible to understand if you speak Portuguese).

Again, it's irrelevant who-wrote-how-first. The point of the paragraph is not to explain why the GLI adopted the orthography that it did. That's a topic for the article on Galician, if anything; this is the article on Portuguese. The point is that, among the choices it had, the GLI chose the one which took the spelling of Galician the farthest away possible from Portuguese. This is a plain fact; there are no points of view to discuss here. On the other hand, I am open to the possibility that the current wording of this fact in the article may perhaps be misleading, and could be changed.

First of all, if you ask a Galician whether his language is Portuguese or not, he'll probably say that they're different languages (among other things, because that's the official status). However, it's quite likely that he can't tell what the real differences are.
There are however clear differences in phonology, vocabulary, and grammar. Many of differences I believe, especially in pronunciation and vocabulary, seem to reflect Spanish influence in a "de facto" bilingual environment where Castilian is the most prestiged language. There are differences however in grammar that may reflect either archaisms or simply divergent evolution of the language north and south of the border. For example, if I am not mistaken, medieval/early modern Portuguese had both stressed -ão, -am, and -om endings before they all merged into -ão, probably by the 16th century. The Galician AGAL (reintegrationist) norm preserves the medieval distinction as the merger did not occur in Galicia. The (official) ILG norm uses however Castilian endings like -ión, which I believe never occurred in old Galician-Portuguese (correct if I'm wrong!). Similarly, the unusual Galician -o endings in the preterite of irregular verbs (dixo, fixo, etc... vs Portuguese disse, fez, etc...) are not necessarily Castilianisms, as those older forms are found in some early Portuguese texts. The use however of podo/poda in lieu of Portuguese posso/possa is odd, as the now standard Portuguese forms were already quite common in most medieval texts I've seen (I'm not an expert on the topic though, so I may be wrong). 161.24.19.82 14:26, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Not to mention that the very quesion is loaded. If you ask "Is Galician really Portuguese?", that can be interpreted as "Should we abandon our language in exchange for Portuguese?", to which most Galicians will naturally reply "No". But the question that truly matters is "Are Galician and Portuguese the same language?", which implies similarity, but does not suggest that Galician should submit to Portuguese.

Many words that are nowadays accepted by most people as standard Galician ('estrada', 'liberdade', 'orzamento') were regarded some decades ago as blatant lusismos. For instance, the ILG (the institution that created the current Galician standard) published a series of books in the 70s (called "Galego 1", "Galego 2" and "Galego 3") where some of the words accepted by the current standard were stated as Portuguese words and should be avoided

Thank you very much for confirming that there have indeed been attempts to extirpate lusismos from Galician, SugarKane. I don't think we can delete that from the article, now. FilipeS 21:41, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Discussion continues below. FilipeS 21:45, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


Vowels versus monophthongs

Velho, I noticed that you have edited the Sound section of the article on the Portuguese language, changing:

There is a maximum of 9 oral vowels and 19 consonants, though some varieties of the language have fewer phonemes (Brazilian Portuguese has only 7 oral vowels). Five of the vowels have nasal allophones.

to

There is a maximum of 9 oral monophthongs and 19 consonants, though some varieties of the language have fewer phonemes (Brazilian Portuguese has only 7 oral vowels). Five of the vowels have nasal allophones. There are also 10 oral diphthongs, 5 nasal diphthongs and 2 double nasal diphthongs.

I disagree with this change. Here are my reasons:

Regards. FilipeS 11:17, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree that we put "vowels" instead of "monophthongs", but the diphthongs line (it is just one line) should be kept. Diphthongs, oral and nasal, are an important trait of Portuguese, making it phonologically "rich". Velho 13:57, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

I didn't want to scare away the readers. ;-)

O.K., it's a matter of opinion. Leave the diphthongs. FilipeS 14:35, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

I was personally kind of confused with the terminology "double nasal diphthongs". In fact, that phrase on a google search only pulled up the Wikipedia page. I think after having read into it more than it means no different than to say that Spanish can have double oral diphthongs /chi.wá.wa/, or to say that double oral monophthongs exist (which would be any two distinctly pronounced vowels, cf English /ko-érs/. It's not an important attribute if only because it happens in two separate syllables. If, however, we're trying to say that there are two semivowels and two full vowels within a single syllable, well, first I'm not sure you can have a tetraphthong, and if you could, double diphthong wouldn't be the way to describe because that implies (to me at least) two distinct syllables ... and since Portuguese doesn't have vowel harmony, or other such features (only some palatisation etc, in Brasilian dialects) based on surrounding sounds that would make the side-by-side diphthongs hard to exist, it's an inconsequential item to note. Mentioning the diversity of monopthongs and diphthongs, oral and nasal, seems fine to me, but it should be kept as a brief reference as it is now, allow the Phonology page to go in depth (listing diphs, etc) Matthew Stuckwisch 17:49, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Your analysis seems to correct to me. Although I was the first one to use the phrase "double nasal diphthong", I agree that there's nothing more extraordinary about a sequence of two nasal diphthongs than about a sequence of two oral monophthongs (i.e., a hiatus). I mentioned them in the phonology page because they are represented by graphemes which do not make clear how they are pronounced, and because they can be a challenge for those who learn Portuguese as a second language. FilipeS 18:18, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Is it correct to say that Brazilian Portuguese has only 7 oral vowels ? I believe e.g. that the first "a" in "cama" and the first "a" in "carro" are different vowels. Could you confirm this ?

As far as I know, the first vowel in cama is nasal in Brazilian Portuguese. The word is basically pronounced [kãma]. FilipeS 23:20, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

I would say it sounds more like [kʌma] as in American English "love".

Either way, in Brazilian Portuguese, that vowel you speak of is just an allophone of /a/. See Portuguese phonology. FilipeS 22:06, 17 June 2006 (UTC)


Classification and related languages: proposed rewrite

O.K., I have added a few paragraphs to this section, and reordered it a bit. A lot of the material in it, however, is too generic, and could very well be deleted, in my opinion:

"The West Iberian group
More specifically, Portuguese is a member of the West Iberian branch of Romance, which also includes Spanish, Galician, Asturo-Leonese, Aragonese, Ladino, and their dialects or codialects. By most linguistic criteria, these languages are significantly closer to each other than to any other living language — including Catalan, the other major language of the Iberian Peninsula.
Speakers of the West Iberian languages generally claim that they are all mutually intelligible to some extent. It is certainly true that a speaker of any of them can learn to read any other just by practicing, without formal study of the grammar. Bilingualism is quite common along the internal language boundaries of this group."

I see no point in talking about the West Iberian group, here. We don't need to be this minute. Portuguese is an Indo-European language, and a Romance language. That's enough. Anyone who is particularly interested in the subclassifications within Romance languages can dig deeper by himself. I would delete this.

"Latin and other Romance languages
Even though the Romance languages are all derived from Latin, they are arguably much closer to each other than to their common ancestor. The main difference is the noun declension system of Classical Latin, an essential feature which allows great freedom in its word order, and has no counterpart in any Romance language (except to some extent in Romanian, which preserved three of Latin's seven noun cases). In this regard, the distance between Portuguese and Latin is comparable to that between English and Anglo-Saxon. Indeed, while Portuguese speakers can quickly learn to see through the spelling changes and thus recognize many Latin words, they will often fail to understand the meaning of Latin sentences.
Even though Portuguese has obvious lexical and grammatical similarities with all the other Romance languages outside of the West Iberian branch, it is not intelligible with them to any practical extent. Portuguese speakers will usually need some formal study of basic grammar and vocabulary, before being able to understand even the simplest sentences in those languages (and vice-versa):
Ela fecha sempre a janela antes de jantar. (Portuguese)
Elle ferme toujours la fenêtre avant de diner. (French)
Lei chiude sempre la finestra prima di cenare. (Italian)
Ea închide întodeauna fereastra înainte de a cina. (Romanian)
Note that some of the lexical divergence above actually comes from different Romance languages using the same root word with different semantic values. Portuguese for example has the word fresta, which is a cognate of French fenêtre or Italian finestra, but now means "slit" as opposed to "window". Likewise, Portuguese also has the word cear, which is a cognate of Italian cenare or Spanish cenar. Cear is used however in Portuguese to refer only to late night dinners (for example on Christmas or New Year's eve), while the most frequent word meaning "to dine" is actually jantar."

These are generalities which apply to all Romance languages. They have little to do with Portuguese, specifically, so they don't have to be here. Delete.

"Spanish
Although Spanish is very close to Portuguese in terms of vocabulary, Portuguese is nonetheless phonetically closer to Catalan and (occasionally) French in some respects, such as the occurrence of nasalization (shared with French), diphthongization of low-mid stressed vowels (absent both from Catalan and Portuguese), aspiration of /f/ (unique to Spanish), reduction of unstressed vowels, and devoicing of sibilants. Compare e.g. Portuguese bom ("good") with French or Catalan bon and Spanish bueno; or Portuguese filha with French fille, Catalan filla, and Spanish hija.

Already mentioned in the new paragraphs. Delete.

"Portuguese differs from Spanish not only in orthography or spelling conventions, but even more so in phonology, grammar and vocabulary. It is often claimed that Portuguese's complex phonology compared to Spanish explains why spoken Portuguese is generally not intelligible to Spanish speakers despite the strong lexical similarity between the two languages (see the main article on Portuguese phonology for a detailed discussion). In terms of grammar, some of the peculiarities of the Portuguese language that set it apart not only from Spanish, but indeed from other Romance languages, are the synthetic pluperfect tense, the future subjunctive tense, and the so-called inflected infinitive i.e. the inflection of the infinitive form of a verb for person. Another unique feature of European Portuguese in particular is mesoclisis, i.e. the the infixing of weak pronouns in some verbal forms (see the main article on Portuguese grammar for further information)."

This can be kept for now, but it needs to be fleshed out.

"In terms of vocabulary, many of the differences between Portuguese and Spanish can be explained by the different evolution of the two languages from Latin. For example, the diphthongization of short stressed vowels is common in Spanish as well as the other Romance languages, but absent in Portuguese, etc."

I have already made the most of this and the following in the new paragraphs. I think the rest should be deleted. Note that it was copied from the Spanish language article.

"Those few, but nonetheless common lexical differences, explain why certain simple sentences may actually be quite different in the two languages, for example:
Ela fecha sempre a janela antes de jantar. (Portuguese)
Ella cierra siempre la ventana antes de cenar. (Spanish)
"She always closes the window before having dinner."

This repeats previous material, and would be better for an article on Romance languages (or West-Iberian) in general. Delete. FilipeS 16:48, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

  • move to proper articles what's not useful, instead of deleting it. I th ink it is the best to do and gives you more freedom to delete and reorganize. there are articles for these subgroups in wikipedia... --Pedro 17:23, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
With respect to the paragraphs beginning with "In terms of vocabulary [...]", they have become redundant after the insertion of the new paragraphs by FilipeS. So, please feel free to delete them. Mbruno 21:11, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I see no point in this statement:

"Its most distant relative among the Romance languages is Romanian."

Can't the same be said about all Romance languages of Western Europe? It seems a little redundant. FilipeS 21:41, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm basically done with the rewrite. If I was too cruel, feel free to revert some of the changes. ;-) FilipeS 23:16, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

If there are no objections, I would like to move the following to Romance languages, after all.

Even though the Romance languages are all derived from Latin, they are arguably much closer to each other than to their common ancestor. The main difference is the noun declension system of Classical Latin, an essential feature which allowed great freedom of word order, and has no counterpart in any Romance language (except to some extent in Romanian, which preserved three of Latin's seven noun cases). In this regard, the distance between Portuguese and Latin is comparable to that between Modern English and Old English. Indeed, while Portuguese speakers can quickly learn to see through the spelling changes and thus recognize many Latin words, they will often fail to understand the meaning of Latin sentences.
In spite of the obvious lexical and grammatical similarities between Portuguese and other Romance languages outside of the West Iberian branch, it is not mutually intelligible with them to any practical extent. Portuguese speakers will usually need some formal study of basic grammar and vocabulary, before being able to understand even the simplest sentences in those languages (and vice-versa):
Ela fecha sempre a janela antes de jantar. (Portuguese)
Ella cierra siempre la ventana antes de cenar. (Spanish)
Lei chiude sempre la finestra prima di cenare. (Italian)
Elle ferme toujours la fenêtre avant de dîner. (French)
Ea închide întodeauna fereastra înainte de a cina. (Romanian)
She always closes the window before dining.
Note that some of the lexical divergence above actually comes from different Romance languages using the same root word with different semantic values. Portuguese for example has the word fresta, which is a cognate of French fenêtre or Italian finestra, but now means "slit" as opposed to "window". Likewise, Portuguese also has the word cear, a cognate of Italian cenare and Spanish cenar, but uses it in the sense of "to have a late supper" (for example on Christmas or New Year's eve), while the most frequent word meaning "to dine" is actually jantar.

In my opinion, while it's an interesting comparison, it's a little too general to be on the article on Portuguese. FilipeS 20:34, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with the statement that Portuguese is not mutually intelligible with any other language outside Iberian Peninsula. It is not at all difficult for a native Portuguese-speaker with no formal education in any other Romance Language to read Italian and Catalan, for exemple. I've visited Italian wikipedia, forums, etc., and it is quite easy to understand most of what is written, and Catalan is even easier to grasp.201.8.213.120 13:25, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
Mutual intelligibility concerns the spoken language, not the written one. FilipeS 21:14, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Percentage of vocabulary derived from Latin

Is there a reference for this?

Almost 90% of the Portuguese vocabulary is derived from Latin; needless to say, with substantial phonological and morphological changes which accumulated throughout its history. FilipeS 23:16, 16 May 2006 (UTC)


Galician II: the sequel

No consensus seems to have been reached above, but this paragraph needs to be cleaned up. Here is the current version, and the bits I think should be rewritten:

The linguistic status of Galician with respect to Portuguese is controversial. Some authors, such as Lindley Cintra, consider that they are still dialects of a common language, in spite of superficial differences in phonology and vocabulary. Other authors such as Vázquez Cuesta argue that they have become separate languages. The official position of the Galician Language Academy and of most of Galician people is that modern Galician and modern Portuguese should be considered independent languages due to major phonetic and vocabulary usage differences, and to a lesser extent, morphological and syntactical ones. The standard orthography takes advantage of the divergent features of the phonology of Galician to emphasize its differences from Portuguese, insisting on strictly phonetic spelling, and rejecting Portuguese graphic conventions such as circumflex and grave accents, tildes on vowels, or graphemes like nh, lh, j, in favour of ñ, ll, x, etc, some of them reflecting also the ancient Galician consonant spelling system, which does not match with modern, Occitan-influenced Portuguese ortography. The sociolinguistic and linguistic situation is reminiscent of the relations between Romanian and Moldovan, or between Catalan and Occitan. However it is a mostly politically-bonded discussion as the main supporters of the unicity of both languages have a definite profile as Galician nationalists and it is clearly oriented to preserve Galician use in front a more powerful language as Spanish.

Deletes:

  1. Reference to Vázquez Cuesta. Lindley Cintra's reference is ambiguous. It's not clear that she actively promoted the opinion that Portuguese and Galician are separate languages. It would be nice if someone could contribute with one or two authors who supported that position.
  2. Unsubstantiated claim about the opinion of "most of the Galician people".
  3. The redundant word "modern". "Old" Galician and Portuguese are known by the common name Galician-Portuguese.
  4. Reason for the GLI's position on the status of Galician. As the anonymous editor pointed out in the previous conversation, we cannot guess their motives (unless someone comes up with an official document of theirs that states it). I have, however, moved this argument to another part of the article (see below).
  5. Last sentence. I found it incomprehensible, asked the editor to clarify what he meant, but he never did. It doesn't seem to add anything which hadn't been already said in the paragraph, in any case.

Rewordings:

Reason for preferring ñ, ll, x to nh, lh, j, etc. See the previous conversation.

Here's the rewrite I suggest:

The linguistic status of Galician with respect to Portuguese is controversial. Some authors, such as Lindley Cintra, consider that they are still dialects of a common language, in spite of superficial differences in phonology and vocabulary. Other authors argue that they have become separate languages due to major differences in phonetics and vocabulary usage, and, to a lesser extent, morphology and syntax. The official position of the Galician Language Institute is that Galician and Portuguese should be considered independent languages. The standard orthography takes advantage of the divergent features of the phonology of Galician to emphasize its differences from Portuguese, insisting on strictly phonetic spelling, and rejecting Portuguese graphic conventions such as circumflex and grave accents, tildes on vowels, or graphemes like nh, lh, j, in favour of ñ, ll, x, etc., with the argument that the latter spellings are the oldest. The sociolinguistic and linguistic situation is reminiscent of the relations between Romanian and Moldovan, or between Catalan and Occitan.

I have taken pains to be as neutral as possible. The gory political details of the affair don't really concern an article on the Portuguese language (or the Portuguese version of the language); they are best left for Galician language itself, or perhaps for a specific article. Any objections?... FilipeS 21:44, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

One more change:

The standard orthography takes advantage of the divergent features of the phonology of Galician to emphasize its differences from Portuguese, insisting on strictly phonetic spelling, and rejecting Portuguese graphic conventions such as circumflex and grave accents, tildes on vowels, or graphemes like nh, lh, j, in favour of ñ, ll, x, etc., with the argument that the latter spellings are the oldest.

I had forgotten that this makes no sense, since the spelling x for j/g is not the oldest. I'm reverting this part to the earlier version. FilipeS 12:32, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Deletes in the History section

I have made the following significant deletes:

[...] however, Lusitania's language and culture were free to evolve on their own during the Early Middle Ages, due to the lack of Roman schools and administration, Lusitania's relative isolation from the rest of Europe, and changes in the political boundaries of the Iberian peninsula. These changes led to the formation of what is now called "Lusitanian Romance".

The same happened all over the rest of Western Europe. The former Lusitania was in no way exceptional in this regard. Furthermore, the term "Lusitanian Romance" is misleading. In this period, there was no political entity whose borders coincided with those of Roman or pre-Roman Lusitania.

However, the population continued to speak their Romance dialects so that when the Moors were overthrown, the influence that they had exerted on the language was small. Its main effect was in the lexicon.

This is misleading, since the Romance dialects spoken in the lands occupied by the Moors -- Mozarabic -- were not the ones which eventually developed into Portuguese. Galician-Portuguese was born in the Christians kingdoms of the north.

Trimming down Classification and Related Languages

I've been leaning towards the opinions expressed above, here and here, by Guifa, Matthew Stuckwisch, and Pedro: this section is currently too long. Too much of the article is spent talking about languages other than Portuguese. At the same time, I wouldn't like to see the material in it be lost.

I propose following Matthew's suggestion: starting a new article for a comparison of Spanish with Portuguese, and linking to it in the article. As for most of the other languages (Ladino, Mirandese, etc.), the paragraphs should be replaced with links to their pages. FilipeS 12:14, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Done. I'm also replacing the paragraphs on Mirandese and Ladino with links. See Talk: Mirandese and Talk: Ladino. FilipeS 17:31, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Table Comparing European Portuguese with Brazilian Portuguese

The more colloquial examples were "corrected" three times, now. It's likely to happen again. Perhaps it would be better to move the table to Brazilian Portuguese. Any objections or other ideas...? FilipeS 17:14, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

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