Actual doesn't mean atual, dammit. To Portuguese it can be translated as "real", "verdadeiro", but never as atual/actual, ie. "current".

Comment by Pedrovsk: You're partly wrong though. "actual"(used in European Portuguese)and "atual"(used in Brazilian Portuguese) are both translated to "current" in English. However when "actual" is used in English it does mean "real", "true"(verdadeiro).

I think Portuguese people should not edit Brazilian Portuguese page because they do not respect our language, they consider our language usage incorrect and want to impose they colonial language on us, afresh. Please back off. Que pena amor, cai fora!!!

It would be out of the question to say British people should not edit something about American English! I'm Portuguese and I love Brazilian Portuguese (which is also my language, just as European Portuguese is also Brazilian's language - the language is the same) and I do not feel Brazilian Portuguese variants are wrong. They are correct, just like color is correct in U.S.A. Brazilians and Portuguese people all speak the same language and this divisiveness from both sides only weakens both countries. Marco Neves 05:39, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Just a remark regarind colonial usage: Brazilians retained most forms used when Portuguese people arrived at Brazil. Colonial usages are those used in Brazil. European Portuguese underwent many changes during 19th century. Brazilian Portuguese is more conservative, linguistically speaking and Camões would understand better a Brazilian than a Portuguese (again, just like American English, where spoken language is closer to Shakespeare's than British English).

êI believe this article is extremely biased and inaccurate. We should stick to describing the particularities of the dialect, rather than just saying that the French linguists are wrong and putting words in the mouth of all Brazilians. Just as there are different articles for the English language dialects (eg British English, Australian English), we could have different articles for Portuguese. Discussing whether Brazilian Portuguese should be considered a different language or not would be out of the scope of this article. vbs

• I agree the article is biased and inaccurate, but for somewhat different reasons. Back when I was a student in the United States, I used to interact almost on a daily basis with native speakers of European Portuguese and I never had any problem understanding them (I'm Brazilian BTW). Now that I am back in Brazil, I sometimes watch RTP International or SIC (i.e. Portuguese TV) on cable and also have no major problem understanding it. It is true that unstressed vowels, particularly "e" and to a lesser extent "a", are pronounced quite differently in Brazil and in Portugal, but for educated Brazilians at least, I don't think that has ever been an obstacle to mutual intelligibility. In fact, it is probably more difficult for me to understand someone with a thick "caipira" or "nordestino" accent than it is to understand someone from Lisbon. Keep in mind that I say so even though my ethnic background is only marginally Portuguese: my father's family is mixed Italian and Spaniard; my mother's family is partially of "recent" Portuguese origin (arriving in Brazil in the early 20th century) and partially "old Brazilian" (tracing its roots in Brazil back to the 17th century).

I respectfully disagree. Brazilian Portuguese is really widely called simply Brésilien in the Francophonie, and regarded as a separate language; while Brazilians do laugh at the notion.

French people also say "Americain". That doesn't mean they think English is not a unified language.Marco Neves 05:39, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I've NPOV it. That about the French lunguists its obviously false, But I dont doubt that some French said that. Obviously that is not encyclopedic. I've eard many things in life. I'll add more info soon. I'll put more different lexicon. And I'll talk about what else is different between the two writing forms. Brazilians dont laugh at European Portuguese, they normally get excited because they eard it. And laught in the front of TV, but not because its odd, because they are very curious about it. I think leandro is reading a Xenophobic site on the internet writen in English about Portugal. Cheers Pedro 22:16, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

i tried to make the article a bit more neutral. both rio and sao paulo dialects are seen merely as regional dialects and do not actually have higher status in brazil, so i deleted that claim. i also made use of some interesting points that were previously added by 195.29.131.90 but which were as expected reverted by PedroPVZ (funnily enough, he took quite a while and had already made unrelated edits before deciding to revert these points claiming "vandalism"). Vbs 10:01, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

• Determining whether "paulistano" (not "paulista") or "carioca" have indeed a higher social status or not is quite tricky. Traditionally, sociolinguistics tend to identify the high-prestige dialects with those that are most often heard on TV, particularly newscasts. If that is the criterion, then "paulistano" and "carioca" have indeed higher status as they are the varieties of Brazilian Portuguese that dominate all major national TV news programs, most of which BTW are broadcast from either São Paulo or Rio. Incidentally, when visiting Fortaleza, it struck me that the local TV news anchors do not speak with a "nordestino"/"cearense" accent, but use instead some form of neutral accent closer to "paulistano". That seems to be similar to what happens (or used to happen at least) in the southern United States where local TV news also uses a neutral, sort of general/midwestern American English, as opposed to the more characteristic southern American English dialect.

i hadn't actually read the recent changes of the whole article but now that i did I AM TOTALLY SHOCKED!!

• "standard: Eu vou convosco (I'm going with you) Vernacular (Brazil): Eu vou com vocês Vernacular (Northern Portugal): Eu vou com vós"
  

PedroPVZ, you shouldn't even try to write about things you know nothing about!! that sentence is plain absurd, not even THE MOST PURIST brazilian would claim "Eu vou convosco" to be standard brazilian portuguese!!! you will only find that kind of thing IN THE BIBLE at best!! vernacular??!!! smell the coffee PedroPVZ! Vbs 08:53, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

• On top of what has already been said, "Eu vou com vocês" is standard Portuguese, accepted as correct by any school grammar. "Eu vou convosco" is on the other hand considered wrong, unless you address the people you are talking to by "vós". The use of 2nd person plural forms like "vosso" or "convosco" with "vocês" and the corresponding 3rd person verb forms is a non-standard characteristic of modern vernacular European Portuguese. Broadly speaking, the "vocês/vosso" combination in Portugal is somewhat analogous to the use in Brazil (e.g. in Rio and in the city of São Paulo) of "você" with "te" ("contigo" or "teu" with "você" is somewhat more rare in Brazil, but it is still heard, particularly in Rio). BTW, as someone said, "vós", "vosso", "convosco", in southeastern Brazil at least, are found only in the Bible and heard only in the Catholic mass. In the Northeast, I know that "vosso" is sometimes used in formal address (I've heard some Northeastern politicians use it occasionally).

discussions about the biases in this article and in the "Portuguese Language" article have been going on recently here and previously here.

PedroPVZ, you shouldn't insist on making claims about things you don't know about!! "band" is one of the 5 NATIONAL channels, the MOST IMPORTANT ones (less important are the various regional channels, MTV for example, is a regional channel in brazil) and it's not a small channel at all!! my own claim that "Most Portuguese movies and soap operas are only broadcast in Brazil after being subtitled or dubbed" is even a euphemism! the only portuguese soap operas ever broadcast in brazil were on band channel and they were all dubbed, and almost no portuguese stuff at all is broadcast in brazil! i have never known of anything else besides the soup operas on band. i only put "Most" because it's simply impossible to be 100% sure of everything that's on television. for instance, there is one channel called "cultura" (although not very popular is one of my favorites), which is a culture and education driven channel (as the name suggests). cultura is well known for the practice of broadcasting movies or even documentaries without dubbing (as opposed to all the other national channels which dub everything), and if a portuguese movie happened to be broadcast in that channel, it would probably only be subtitled. so theoretically it would be possible that a movie could be broadcast without being dubbed. the claim that rio de janeiro is the standard is simply wrong! you don't seem to notice that as brazil is such a huge country, claiming rio's dialect is the standard, is quite similar to claiming that british english is the standard and american english isn't. it just doesn't work like that!! PedroPVZ obviously likes to claim BP to be based on the rio de janeiro dialect because he wants to take advantage of the fact that rio's esses ("s") are pronounced like the portuguese esses (ie "sh"), and so claim more similarities between BP and EP. Vbs 12:05, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I think the info on this article should be moved to an article that deals with the differences between Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese as a whole. It's pretty clear there's much more info here than it pertains BP alone. – Kaonashi 22:37, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

i agree. people might be interested in brazilian portuguese but might have no knowledge or interest whatsoever in european portuguese, so this article would be no good for them. actually, that article about the differences used to exist but was moved here. the talk pages related to the previous names that the article had still exist here and here. i think if moved it should be called "Differences between Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese". as it has been shown in previous discussions, the uses of the terms "dialect" and "variety" are far from universally agreed (some people even get offended with one or the other) and therefore should be avoided as much as possible. they are simply not needed, anyway. although someone might do, most people wouldn't say "American English dialect" nor "American English variety". most people would just say "American English" and that also goes for "British English", etc. just have a look at the wikipedia articles related to the english language and you'll see what i mean. but i do think we should have an article about brazilian portuguese, and that would probably have to be a completely brand new one. and the article should be about brazilian portuguese AS IT IS, not how certain people WANT it to be. Vbs 08:45, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Contrary to what you wrote above, both Quebec French and Rioplatense Spanish are referred to in their respective Wikipedia articles as "dialects". American English on the other hand is referred to as the "distinct form" of the English language spoken in the United States. Personally, I have no objection to Brazilian Portuguese being called e.g. "the distinct variety of the Portuguese language used in Brazil". I would object however to the use of the reference "the dialect of Portuguese spoken in Brazil" not because I consider the word "dialect" pejorative, but rather because Brazilian Portuguese is actually a collection of several dialects ("paulistano", "carioca", "nordestino", "caipira", etc...).

I would like to make a few remarks:

1) The use of the gerund to indicate the progressive tenses (e.g. "eu estou escrevendo") is NOT gramatically incorrect. Quite the contrary, the gerund was the standard form used for the progressive tenses in classical Portuguese. Likewise, both medieval and classical Portuguese favored the placement of clitics before the verb (like BTW French and Spanish), in line with the current Brazilian standard.

2) The use in (southeastern) Brazil of "te"/"teu" with "você" is analogous to the use in Portugal of the possessive pronoun "vosso" with "vocês". In other words, if one labels the Brazilian "você/te" combination as gramatically "incorrect", by the same token, the same label must apply to European Portuguese use of the combination "vocês/vosso".

3) Other "gramatically incorrect" features of spoken European Portuguese include: (a) the improper use of the pronoun "si" in situations where "você" would be required in the standard language (e.g. "Esse presente é para si" instead of "Esse presente é para você"); and (b) the improper replacement of conditional verb forms with the imperfect (e.g. "Gostava de saber ..." instead of "Gostaria de saber..."). Note that, in the case (a), "si" can only be used in standard written Portuguese as a reflexive pronoun, e.g. "Joana guardou para si os biscoitos que a sua mãe preparara". "Si" CANNOT be used however to refer to someone other than the subject of the sentence.

I've just completed a major rewriting of much of this article. This article was obviously written by someone from Portugal, and much of the info was irrelevant, biased, out-of-date or wrong. This is what I've done:

• Fix a lot of unidiomatic English.
• Remove lots of redundant stuff.
• Rewrite the section on pronunciation.
• Remove references to things being "grammatically incorrect".
• Remove stuff specific to EP. I've stuck this on a new EP page, which needs work.
• Correct things I know to be incorrect.
• Add various other differences I've noticed between EP and BP.

I am not a native Brazilian, so I'd welcome one of them to go over and make sure what I've said is correct.

Benwing 02:58, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The first wave of Portuguese-speaking immigrants was settled in Brazil in the 15th Century

I corrected that to 16th Century. Brazil was only reached in the last year of the 15th Century (1500) and, even then, as I understand, Portugal only started settlement/colonization efforts in the 1530s.

Sorry about the confusion on the edits; my first edit mistakenly subtracted, not added, 1 from the century, and I even entered the wrong description for the edit.

About the pronunciation of rock/hockey: they do NOT sound the same in BP. Rock, spelled like the english word, ends abruptly (?) (róqui). Hockey, however, has been transformed to portuguese (aportuguesado) hóquei and ends smoothly (? too).

This statement is silly and should not be in the article. vogensen 14.44 15 December 2005

• Having waited a reasonable period of time for a correction I proceeded to cut the above. If you disagree please state your case as I wouldn't want to offend anyone. Maybe the statement can be worked on to improve it. rvogensen 9.19 16 December 2005

I took the liberty of editing the sentences that said in rather poor English that in Maranhão people spoke the most correct Portuguese. This has no scientific basis and is more a statement of popular myth than anything else. In linguistics there is no "more" correct way of speaking for a native speaker. That is a belief held in the classroom or by our social peers. In modern linguistics the speech of the caboclo in Minas or Goiás is just as "correct" as the speech of the President--which coincidentally or not in Brazil's case has many similarities (no offense intended) rvogensen 9:11 16 December 2005

The sentences below might be of interest to illustrate the most significant differences in grammar between (educated) colloquial Brazilian Portuguese (BP) and standard European Portuguese (EP) or standard written BP.

1) "Eu vi ele na praia ontem" vs Standard EP "Vi-o na praia ontem." or Standard (written) BP: "Eu o vi na praia ontem."

2) "Me dá um copo d'água" vs Standard BP/EP "Dá-me (Dê-me) um copo d'água".

3) "Não fala assim comigo, amor. O que eu fiz prá te magoar ?"

vs Standard EP "Não fales assim comigo, amor. O que fiz para magoar-te ? "

or modern standard BP "Não fale assim comigo, amor. O que eu fiz para magoar você/magoá-la ?"

4) "Não precisa ter ciúmes de mim, amor. Você sabe que eu te amo."

vs Standard EP "Não precisas ter ciúmes de mim, amor. Sabes que te amo (amo-te)."

or modern standard BP "Não precisa ter ciúmes de mim, amor. Você sabe que eu amo você/eu a amo. "

5) "Você achou o anel que te dei no Natal ? "

vs Standard EP: " Achaste o anel que te dei no Natal ?" or also standard BP " (Você) Achou o anel que lhe dei no Natal ?"

6) "Você vai me devolver o dinheiro ou vou ter que te denunciar para a polícia ?"

vs Standard written BP: "Você vai me devolver o dinheiro ou terei que denunciá-lo para a polícia ?"

or Colloquial EP: "Vais devolver-me o dinheiro ou vou ter (terei) que denunciar-te para a polícia ?"

or Standard EP: "Vai devolver-me o dinheiro ou terei que o denunciar para a polícia ?"

7) "Assisti o jogo ontem. " vs Standard BP/EP "Assisti ao jogo ontem".

8) "Crianças que não obedecem os pais não ganham presentes no Natal."

vs Standard BP/ EP "Crianças que não obedecem aos pais não ganham presentes no Natal".

9) "Ganhei um cãozinho novo e chamei ele de Phido."

vs Standard EP "Ganhei um cãozinho (?) novo e chamei-o Phido."

10) "Tem sempre muitos turistas no Rio no carnaval."

vs Standard EP/written BP "Há sempre muitos turistas no Rio no carnaval."

11) "Cheguei cansado em São Paulo depois de nove horas de vôo."

vs Standard EP/written BP "Cheguei cansado a São Paulo depois de nove horas de voo (vôo)."

Remark: The use of the object pronoun "te" in combination with the subject pronoun "você" is most common in Rio de Janeiro (and, to a lesser extent, in the city of São Paulo) and probably reflects residual European Portuguese influence. Elsewhere, e.g. in the São Paulo countryside or in the state of Minas Gerais, "você" is preferred over "te" as an object pronoun, e.g.,

"Não fale assim comigo, amor. O que eu fiz para magoar você ?" 

BTW, the sentence above is now considered "correct" by most Brazilian school grammars, whereas "Não fale assim comigo, amor. O que eu fiz para te magoar ?" would be condemned by prescriptive grammar because of the "fale (3rd person)/te (2nd person)" combination. Needless to say, the "new" second person informal Brazilian imperative ("não fala assim comigo, amor"), although very common in speech at least in the Southeast, is universally rejected as incorrect by all school grammars.

• Maybe due to the influence of TV soap operas ("telenovelas"), most of which feature "carioca" speech, it seems though that "te" is becoming increasingly more widespread in Brazil. Accordingly, the unusual "você/te" combination is often taught in "Brazilian Portuguese" classes in the US, although, ironically, it is not accepted yet by Brazilian school grammars.

• • It is interesting to note that unusual pronoun combinations also occur in other languages/dialects besides BP. For example, colloquial European Portuguese has the "vocês (subj.)/vosso (poss.)" combination (e.g. "Façam vossos pedidos" instead of standard "Façam os seus pedidos"). Rioplatense Spanish on the other hand features the combination of the archaic (2nd person sing.) subject pronoun "vos" and its corresponding nonstandard verb forms (e.g. "perdés" for "pierdes" or "amás" for "amas") with the standard Spanish (2nd person sing.) object pronoun "te". On the other hand, whereas BP uses standard subject pronouns (e.g. "ele"/"ela") as object pronouns, colloquial American English on the contrary seems to do the opposite (albeit in a much smaller scale), i.e. American speakers may occasionally use object pronouns as subjects, e.g. "Me and my girl went to the movies yesterday." (vs Standard English "My girl and I went to the movies yesterday."). Colloquial English also features the frequent use of object pronouns as predicates (e.g. "That's me" instead of "That's I").

• • • My favorite example is standard Afrikaans where "ons", which is normally an object pronoun in Dutch (like "us" in English or "uns" in German), has been also standardized as a subject pronoun replacing Dutch "wij/we", e.g. "Ons is boere", literally "Us is farmers", or "We are farmers" (cf German "Wir sind Bauern" and Dutch "Wij zijn boeren"). Note though that standard Afrikaans still retains some vestiges of case distinctions in pronouns, e.g. "ek(subj)/my(obj)", "hy(subj)/hom(obj)/sy(poss/reflex)", or "sy(subj)/haar(obj)".

I believe it is not quite correct to say that "BP maintains the five vowels /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/ and /u/ fairly consistently in pre-stressed positions". My impression is that, at least in southeastern Brazil, pre-stressed "e" and "o" are frequently raised, respectively to /i/ and /u/, when the stressed syllable contains a high vowel, e.g. "menino" is often pronounced /mininu/, "dormir" sounds like /durmix/, and "bonito" is pronounced /bunitu/. In fact, many Brazilians actually misspell certain 3rd conjugation verbs (e.g. "cubriu" instead of "cobriu"), precisely because of the way they pronounce them.

The claim in the article that the conditional is rare in spoken BP and is often replaced by the imperfect is not quite correct either. In fact, I tend to think the opposite is true. Brazilian speakers always say e.g. "Gostaria de saber quem quebrou o meu vaso!" whereas an European speaker in the same circumstances would say "Gostava de saber". In fact, I can't remember any example from the top of my head where the conditional is replaced by the imperfect in colloquial middle-class Rio/São Paulo speech. People would normally say for example "Acho que a situação seria bem diferente se o Serra tivesse sido eleito no lugar do Lula", or "Acho que não faria diferença já que todos os políticos são iguais". The only major exception I can think of is the conjugation of the verb "querer" where the imperfect "queria" has effectively replaced the conditional "quereria" in the spoken language. If no one replies to this comment showing evidence to the contrary, I will proceed to delete the claim of BP conditional demise from the main article.