4 ms·

I'm Portuguese and I share this concern - PT-BR does have a lot of differences in vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation. Pronunciation bothers us the least act

by ginja 5y ago

I'm Portuguese and I share this concern - PT-BR does have a lot of differences in vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation. Pronunciation bothers us the least actually, but other things are weird and/or plain wrong for us: - Lots of weird words adapted from English like "time" (pronounced "tee-me") which means team in PT-BR. Portuguese has a fine word for that already - equipa ("equipe" in BR) - and most of us speak good English so "time" is beyond weird for us. - Wrong verb conjugations are used in informal conversation, e.g. "tu vai à praia?" (correct would be "tu vais à praia?" and generally we'd omit "tu" [you] because it adds no useful information) - Many Brazilians seemingly think "mas" (but) and "mais" (more) are the same word because they pronounce it similarly and thus end up using "mais" for everything, even in writing - Different usage of pronouns, e.g. "eu dou-lhe" in PT vs "eu lhe dou" in BR (or worse, "eu dou a você" - sounds like caveman language plus "você" is considered rude in PT) Vocabulary differences make for some really funny misunderstandings sometimes though. My Brazilian neighbor's kid was really confused and scared when she was told she needed to "levar uma pica" (get a shot, as in an injection/vaccine) - in Brazil this same sentence means "take a dick". I hadn't laughed that hard in a long time.

EL_Loco 5y ago
Sorry to ask you this, and please fell free to not respond. But I have wanted to move to Portugal with my wife and kids for quite some time, but the large number of Brazilians linving and moving there bum me out to an extent. Mostly, I don't know what is the general feeling towards Brazilians in Portugal (I went there a few times, and absolutely loved it, but it was travel, not living). I'm not a fan of Brazilian mainstream culture, mostly. We are outgoing, friendly and warm, sure, and those qualities I embrace and celebrate, however, there are many negatives to Brazilian culture that are widespread (anti-intellectualism, veiled prejudice, sexism etc). I don't know what most Brazilians in Portugal are like, and I know that it will vary greatly, but how much hostility is there towards Brazilians? Every person I met in Portugal was pretty nice, and some were downright great people, and I would love to live there, but I'm afraid my kids might have a bad experience from being Brazilian immigrants in school, etc.
- pcardoso 5y ago
  I’m not the original commenter, but I’m Portuguese living a small city and I’d say most Brazilians that live here can blend easily. My kids have some Brazilian friends at school at they get along well.
  - EL_Loco 5y ago
    Thank you too for your reply!
- ginja 5y ago
  In the 90s and early 00s there were a lot of lower class/uneducated Brazilian immigrants moving here and a small but significant part of them would cause all sorts of trouble, from bothering neighbors with loud parties in apartment buildings all the way to being involved in prostitution and violent crimes. This caused a significant amount of prejudice but that has mostly subsided since then as the next waves of Brazilian immigrants have been progressively higher class and more educated, and thus better integrated in our society. Nowadays there is still some prejudice but the vast majority of people does not have any issues with Brazilians and, unless you are unlucky enough to run into some asshole, you'll probably not notice it at all. Kids care even less about these things so your kids are very unlikely to be bullied in school or anything like that. In fact, my partner is originally from Brazil and her family moved here when she was 13. She always had friends, never really felt discriminated against, and is now sitting next to me working on her PhD thesis. The rest of her family loves it here too. So I would say if you want to move here, go for it! Boa sorte :)
  - EL_Loco 5y ago
    Thanks a lot for your reply!
wenc 5y ago
> - Many Brazilians seemingly think "mas" (but) and "mais" (more) are the same word because they pronounce it similarly and thus end up using "mais" for everything, even in writing In the Carioca accent, mas and mais have the same pronunciation (“maish” with the s chiado) so it’s easy to confuse one for the other. This has to do with the Carioca tendency to “change” (there’s a linguistic term but I forget) certain vowels. Nós is pronounced “noish”, gas “gaish” and Petrobras “Petrobraish”. I guess the mas/mais confusion carries over in writing albeit being incorrect. This does not happen in thr Paulista accent or most other accents I know.
rglullis 5y ago
In a way I agree with your concerns but I'd say that the main issue is with some evolutionary aspect of the language. My guess is that we see it happening in Brazil more due to sheer population size. Looking at your examples: - Brazilians borrows words from other languages a lot more easily than the Portuguese, especially when the foreign word is shorter. No wonder "time" gets more usage than "equipe". - "tu" is going to become extinct in Brazil within the next generation or two. People only use first- or third-person conjugation anyway. "Você" is going to be used for making the distinction between the actual subject of the sentence, and coloquially people just say "cê", which is just as short as "tu", so I don't see it surviving for long. - Disagree on "Mas/mais". Yes, it is true that a lot of people make this mistake or (worse) don't even know the distinction, but this type of error is equivalent to English "they're/their/there": there is no redundancy or efficiency, so I don't see why the language would change here. - "dou-lhe", "lhe dou": also going to be extinct due to the redundancy with propositions. You (and I) may not like the "caveman language", but it's undeniably more efficient to just throw verb + proposition + person than to deal with different pronouns.

by ginja 5y ago

EL_Loco 5y ago

Sorry to ask you this, and please fell free to not respond. But I have wanted to move to Portugal with my wife and kids for quite some time, but the large number of Brazilians linving and moving there bum me out to an extent. Mostly, I don't know what is the general feeling towards Brazilians in Portugal (I went there a few times, and absolutely loved it, but it was travel, not living). I'm not a fan of Brazilian mainstream culture, mostly. We are outgoing, friendly and warm, sure, and those qualities I embrace and celebrate, however, there are many negatives to Brazilian culture that are widespread (anti-intellectualism, veiled prejudice, sexism etc). I don't know what most Brazilians in Portugal are like, and I know that it will vary greatly, but how much hostility is there towards Brazilians? Every person I met in Portugal was pretty nice, and some were downright great people, and I would love to live there, but I'm afraid my kids might have a bad experience from being Brazilian immigrants in school, etc.

pcardoso 5y ago
I’m not the original commenter, but I’m Portuguese living a small city and I’d say most Brazilians that live here can blend easily. My kids have some Brazilian friends at school at they get along well.
- EL_Loco 5y ago
  Thank you too for your reply!
ginja 5y ago
In the 90s and early 00s there were a lot of lower class/uneducated Brazilian immigrants moving here and a small but significant part of them would cause all sorts of trouble, from bothering neighbors with loud parties in apartment buildings all the way to being involved in prostitution and violent crimes. This caused a significant amount of prejudice but that has mostly subsided since then as the next waves of Brazilian immigrants have been progressively higher class and more educated, and thus better integrated in our society. Nowadays there is still some prejudice but the vast majority of people does not have any issues with Brazilians and, unless you are unlucky enough to run into some asshole, you'll probably not notice it at all. Kids care even less about these things so your kids are very unlikely to be bullied in school or anything like that. In fact, my partner is originally from Brazil and her family moved here when she was 13. She always had friends, never really felt discriminated against, and is now sitting next to me working on her PhD thesis. The rest of her family loves it here too. So I would say if you want to move here, go for it! Boa sorte :)
- EL_Loco 5y ago
  Thanks a lot for your reply!

wenc 5y ago

> - Many Brazilians seemingly think "mas" (but) and "mais" (more) are the same word because they pronounce it similarly and thus end up using "mais" for everything, even in writing In the Carioca accent, mas and mais have the same pronunciation (“maish” with the s chiado) so it’s easy to confuse one for the other. This has to do with the Carioca tendency to “change” (there’s a linguistic term but I forget) certain vowels. Nós is pronounced “noish”, gas “gaish” and Petrobras “Petrobraish”. I guess the mas/mais confusion carries over in writing albeit being incorrect. This does not happen in thr Paulista accent or most other accents I know.

rglullis 5y ago

In a way I agree with your concerns but I'd say that the main issue is with some evolutionary aspect of the language. My guess is that we see it happening in Brazil more due to sheer population size. Looking at your examples: - Brazilians borrows words from other languages a lot more easily than the Portuguese, especially when the foreign word is shorter. No wonder "time" gets more usage than "equipe". - "tu" is going to become extinct in Brazil within the next generation or two. People only use first- or third-person conjugation anyway. "Você" is going to be used for making the distinction between the actual subject of the sentence, and coloquially people just say "cê", which is just as short as "tu", so I don't see it surviving for long. - Disagree on "Mas/mais". Yes, it is true that a lot of people make this mistake or (worse) don't even know the distinction, but this type of error is equivalent to English "they're/their/there": there is no redundancy or efficiency, so I don't see why the language would change here. - "dou-lhe", "lhe dou": also going to be extinct due to the redundancy with propositions. You (and I) may not like the "caveman language", but it's undeniably more efficient to just throw verb + proposition + person than to deal with different pronouns.