In Brazil there is almost a total ignorance about the mother
nation. After a Portuguese rock group performed in Rio,
a Brazilian commented: "It was OK, but I couldn't understand
a word." A package of Portuguese films sent to celebrate Brazil's
500 years could only be shown to Brazilians with subtitles.

Ray Vogensen

As an American married to a Brazilian, with two Brazilian children, and with 17 years experience with Brazilian Portuguese (BP), coming to Portugal and trying to adapt to the Continental variety of Portuguese (CP) was not easy at first. I think that if I had not known any other variety of the language, in effect coming with a clean slate, the period of linguistic adaptation would have been smoother.

When we first arrived in Porto it was very difficult to understand the people. They could understand us but the opposite was not true. Now that we have been here for nine years, going on ten, the language presents less of a problem, and communication is not so labored. As in most language learning situations we tend to struggle with the less educated. This of course is because as teachers we have most of our contact with middle-class people with some schooling, who speak a standard form of the language.

Knowing Brazilian Portuguese was help and a hindrance when we arrived in Portugal. On the one hand, most of the arduous process of learning the local language was facilitated and we could communicate from the first day on. On the other hand, the knowledge of the other linguistic variety impeded the learning process in many ways. Prejudices about the supposed attractiveness and even superiority of Brazilian Portuguese made it harder to accept Continental Portuguese. Many Portuguese themselves say that the sounds of Brazilian Portuguese are more melodious and softer than Continental Portuguese.

Another problem is that the Brazilian Portuguese speaker has no, or almost no contact with Continental Portuguese. Outside the restricted world of the Portuguese colony in Rio and São Paulo, with its clubs and codfish dinners, Brazilians have no experience of what Continental Portuguese sounds like. Even the Portuguese who have lived in Brazil for a certain period of time soon lose their accent and do their best to blend in with the local culture. This rarely occurs with the Brazilian in Portugal.

Perhaps this blending in Brazil was because the Portuguese immigrants were looked upon as ignorant and backward, despite their economic success. The historical idea of what a Portuguese was like has never been a positive one in Brazil. In fact, most of the jokes told are about the Portuguese. The prejudice and ignorance can be shocking at times, if one is Portuguese. One student of mine was told he had such an interesting conversation that he didn't even seem to be Portuguese.

In a situation in which no cultural input from Portugal enters Brazil, there is almost a total ignorance about the mother nation. Portuguese singers have never even tried to penetrate the Brazilian market. Recently a Portuguese rock group performed live at a rock concert in Rio. The Portuguese television reporter interviewed several young people and asked them what they thought about the music. The first comment was that it sounded ok but they couldn't understand a word.

Only with Subtitles

Portuguese television and films have likewise never been shown in Brazil, outside a few art cinemas in Rio or São Paulo. A recent package of Portuguese films was sent to be shown during the celebrations commemorating the discovery of Brazil. It was decided that the films could only be shown with subtitles.

The Continental Portuguese language is almost never heard in Brazil, especially in the interior. A student of mine, when visiting a small town in Brazil, was asked if she was speaking Italian. Brazilian women who went to a women's congress in Moscow in the early sixties, before the revolution of 1964, said that when the delegates' words were being translated into Continental Portuguese on their headphones, they had to switch to a Spanish translation to understand. Surely the same would not happen with Spanish from Spain and Mexican Spanish, or even with American and British English—although dialects like Geordie or Scouse can be unintelligible for Americans. But they are dialects; here we are talking about standard varieties.

When the Brazilian arrives in Portugal he encounters two types of reactions to his Portuguese. There are those who think he has a "nice" accent and enjoy listening to it. There are also those who seem to resent the fact that a different type of Portuguese is being spoken, and more so in Brazil—a country that most people in the world today identify with the Portuguese language.

A Portuguese student of mine resented the fact that in Paris, on a sightseeing bus, the symbol for the Portuguese language was the Brazilian flag and the narration of the tour was in Brazilian Portuguese. Ironically this is in a city with close to half a million Portuguese immigrants. Obviously they don't go on sightseeing tours.

Children, adolescents, and simple working people, be they villagers or city folk, are very accepting of Brazilian Portuguese. They watch soap operas from Brazil, listen to Brazilian singers like Daniela Mercury, Gal Costa etc. and generally accept the different accent and vocabulary. The problem arises with more educated older people, usually those who have gone to university or are at university. We have seen that negative language attitudes towards Brazilian Portuguese come from the middle class.

Stop this Rebellion

The comments made about Brazilian Portuguese are always the same. The mother tongue is Continental Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese speakers should not persist in their linguistic rebellion. Centuries of separation from the mother country are not taken into consideration. Brazilian children who enter the Portuguese school system see their writing covered with red marks, with every Brazilian Portuguese word or spelling singled out for correction. They either learn the Portuguese way or fail. There is no such thing as linguistic diversity or multicultural education in Portugal. All immigrants must adapt to the standard or risk failure.

As most of the articles or books required for university studies are written in foreign languages—nine times out of ten in English—and not in Continental Portuguese (the market is too small for translation) the students either have to read in the foreign language, pay someone to translate it, or heaven forbid, read a translation made in Brazilian Portuguese. The negative reaction to the reading of these academic articles and books in Brazilian Portuguese is almost pathological. "The Brazilians don't know how to translate." "The Portuguese is all wrong." "We prefer to struggle with English than have to read in a Brazilian translation."

Ignorance? Yes, a lot of it does stem from total ignorance of linguistics. But there is also the possibility of nationalistic pride and that same inferiority complex that makes the Portuguese so negative about Spain. "Spanish food is terrible," or "the Spanish language is harsh and ugly." The fact that Brazilians have translated such articles and books, and the Portuguese haven't, wounds their nationalistic pride. They forget that the Brazilian market is so much larger—with hundreds of universities compared to Portugal's dozens—and it is logical that the publishers would have a translation in Brazilian Portuguese.

The solution for all of this is of course for Portugal to try to make Brazilians more aware of their modern culture, including the language. I don't think the two languages will come closer together in the near future though. Certainly it won't occur by way of government fiat. As long as Brazil remains so far away, with much more in common with its Latin American neighbors, and with the United States, Portugal and Brazil will not be close linguistically or culturally.

The force of Brazilian culture is much stronger because it comes with economic clout and the reality of having over one hundred and sixty million people versus ten million. In the future there will be much more infiltration of Brazilian Portuguese because of music, television, and immigration.

Perhaps with a strong Portuguese presence in the Brazilian economy—supermarkets, electricity, banks, and cellular telephones—there might be an accompanying cultural and linguistic input, but this is yet to be seen. The Portuguese companies that have acquired a position in the Brazilian economy will most likely do everything they can to blend in and appear to be Brazilian.

Ray Vogensen, the author of the article and the dictionary below, was born in the San Francisco Bay Area in California. He lived in Brazil for 17 years and then moved to Portugal where he has been living for 10 years. You can visit his Portuguese Culture Web site - http://www.portcult.com  - which includes several topics related to Portugal and the Portuguese language. He welcomes comments at portcult@hotmail.com 

A Portuguese Dictionary