José Henrique Lamensdorf wrote:
manuel seixo wrote:
I could not help noticing how there was a sort of ‘Erradication process’ going on – Portuguese against Brazilian as in a soccer match to put it blatant.
Manuel, I'd like to make things clear for the non-lusophone audience. There is
NO such erradication process anywhere. People in Brazil and Portugal coexist happily in full awareness of the difference, and neither one is trying to make their variant prevail.
The imminent agreement covers spelling (hence writing) only, and will not change either variant's way of speaking, nor of otherwise using the language.
manuel seixo wrote:
1. Of the last 18 finalists, judging from the language variant, 12 came from a Brazilian background.
Simply compare the population of Brazil with the sum of all other lusophone countries' and you'll realize that Brazil was probably under-represented, numerically. Maybe Proz stats, disregarding lusophones living elsewhere, will show that there are more PT translators
per inhabitant in Portugal than in Brazil.
manuel seixo wrote:
4. The context, I have no doubt, has gone against the minority in the group. Is this due to numbers? That I can’t answer.
Most likely. I'm guessing the figures, and might be grossly wrong, but I get the impression that 9 out of every 10 lusophones in the world speak Brazilian Portuguese. Nevertheless, European Portuguese is unwaveringly strong as always in the areas where it is spoken.
manuel seixo wrote:
6. This pattern is also clearly visible in proZ.com Kudoz. More Brazilians help with questions than Portuguese but I have to say that more Brazilians ask questions as well.
Again, it's a matter of proportion. Though it's a different phenomenon, UK English in no way is losing ground to US English.
manuel seixo wrote:
In conclusion, like José Henrique and Ligia Dias I also thought that Conventions existed between the two Countries; where Portuguese was One and the Only Language.
A minor confusion here, The convention, or agreement, is about spelling alone, as I said above.
What I meant by one and the same is:
The Brazilian Constitution says: Art. 13. A língua portuguesa é o idioma oficial da República Federativa do Brasil. The Portuguese language is the official language of the Federal Republic of Brazil.
The Portuguese Constitution says: Artigo 11.º §3. A língua oficial é o Português. The official language is Portuguese.
Neither mentions any variant.
manuel seixo wrote:
Well I found out already in 1983 that it isn’t the case; Here is a good exemple: I had to sit and pass my NAATI exams in Brazilian Portuguese. There wasn’t an European Portuguese variant with NAATI, then. Now there is. So yes, it is time to have two distinct groups at
www.proZ.com. I believe.
I wouldn't be so radical. I think PT-PT and PT-BR are one language as source, but should be treated as two languages as destination. So contest-wise there should be
two contest from any language into Portuguese, however only one contest
from Portuguese into any other language is perfectly possible. Of course there will be complaints if the text in Portuguese is too "typical" of either variant.