Portugal

General Off-Topic Discussion
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Well, it’s the same language (at its base, with a number of variations). Not geographically close, but Stephen Big was going by language. So I figured he was almost right in naming the “portuguese speaking country” as “brasil”.

I would be lying if I said that it didn’t bother me in the least that when people hear “portuguese” they may think more readily of “brasil” than “portugal”, but that’s the way it is. :slight_smile: It’s not like people who hear english as a spoken language will necessarily immediately think of the UK.

What's one positive/neutral thing that's happened today?
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Funnily enough, while I tend to think “American English” when I hear English in a non-specific language context and Mexican or Latin American Spanish when I hear Spanish in a non-specific language context, I’m pretty sure I default to Portuguese Portuguese* when I hear Portuguese in a non-specific language context. And I specify a non-specific language context because there are definitely language contexts that imply a different dialect even if not specified(e.g., if English is mentioned in a Harry Potter fanfic, it’s probably British English since Harry Potter is set primarily in the british Isles and most of the characters are British) and because thees words are also used as demonyms and proper adjectives, so not always referring to the language. Given Brazil’s size, there are probably more speakers of Brazilian Portuguese than Portuguese Portuguese, but perhaps defaulting to the latter is a mix of it being a language I’m less exposed to, probably being unable to distinguish it from Spanish if I did hear it, Portugal and Brazil being about equally distant in concept space(though, I just looked it up, and Portugal is actually closer to my home state than Brazil as the crow flies), A Mexican or other Latino being the most likely Spanish speaker I’m likely to meet and Spanish being spoken throughout most of Latin America so, there’s like, a dozen-and-a-half or two dozen nations other than Spain that speak spanish while I think Brazil and Portugal are the only Portuguese speaking nations, and while Brazil is huge, its still one of only two national exceptions I know of to “Latin America speaks Spanish”, the other being French Guiana

*Okay, I know Castelian is used to distinguish the Spanish spoken in Spain from other dialects so one doesn’t have to call it Spanish Spanish, but I have no clue if there’s a non-awkward way of specifying the Portuguese spoken in Portugal from other dialects.

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Personally, I think we should refer to spellings like “colour” as English (Traditional) and spellings like “color” as English (Simplified). It works well enough for Chinese!

In seriousness, the usual English term I’ve heard for the language spoken in Portugal is “European Portuguese”. Similarly “European Spanish” if someone doesn’t want to go as specific as “Castilian”. Oddly, though, I’ve never heard “European French” as the opposite of “African French”.

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That’s what I use among my coworkers. EU PT and BR PT, that’s how I type it.

Dr. Draconis-sensei, I don’t know how “colour” and such is spelled in Australia and New Zealand. Regardless of how it’s spelled, do you find that their spelling strengthens or weakens your proposition? :wink:

EDIT - Portuguese is also used in some African countries. I don’t know whether it’s the official language in Angola and Mozambique. It might be. There is also Cape Verdean Portuguese, but that is a sufficiently different dialect that it needs an interpreter specifically for it; if you only know "Portuguese”, speaking with a Cape Verdean Portuguese speaker will be a shock, because some words will be exactly as you expect them and others will be totally alien to you. Completely unknown, with no similarity to anything you’re expecting.

Interpretation-wise, it’s something we don’t really expect our clients to understand, because they don’t have to, but we do. BR PT and EU PT can understand each other, but there are differences in a number of nouns, so we must adapt. The languages also sound differently enough that a BR PT speaker who never had contact with EU PT may genuinely not understand at all; it’ll sound middle-eastern to them. So we must also, within reason, adapt a bit, make the vowels rounder. It also helps comprehension if we adopt certain traits of the common BR PT language patterns. Azorean and Madeira accents (the islands off the coast of portugal) can be tricky even for native EU PT; it can sound quite different, although it’s still the same language. Cape Verdean Creole is a whole other thing, a language which is sufficiently different from Portuguese that it just can’t be understood by someone who doesn’t know it. Angolan and Mozambiquen speakers can be fairly well understood, but there seem to be a couple of nuances that, though I’ve been doing this for many years, I haven’t quite completely mastered; for instance, I often can’t tell whether they are saying “ele” (him) or “ela” (her). My ear still hasn’t caught on to this subtleties.

So we kinda juggle with those things. :slight_smile:

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I didn’t know there were any French or Portuguese speaking groups in Africa… I knew South Africa is a sometimes forgotten member of the Anglosphere, and I understand Afrikaans is a relative of Dutch, but beyond that, I guess the linguistic legacy of colonialism on the African continent is a metaphorical blindspot(everything’s a literal blindspot for me) in my knowledge of the world.

Also, despite Canada being right next door and arguably my homeland’s good twin, I think France, not Quebec when I hear French.

Speaking of spiders, Black Widows actually made a list of best venomous pets one of my favorite biology related YouTubers posted recently…

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I don’t know about Portuguese, but tons of French! When it comes to African linguistics, my kinda-specialty is the Congo, which was shaped by the atrocities of Leopold II of Belgium (short version: these specific atrocities were why the phrase “crimes against humanity” was invented). One of the least-awful parts of his legacy is that French is very prominent in the region—at this point, just under 50% of the world’s French-speakers are in Africa.

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I wasn’t sure if “state” meant the whole state or a constituent state, to be honest. XD

And hey, your description of opera trench warfare could always be an IF premise, LMAO.

It’s kind of impressive how Brazil ended up far surpassing Portugal in population, isn’t it?

For me in general the worst part of playing percussion like bongos and whatnot is that my fingers end up hurting afterwards from how I hit it.

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Oh yeah, because Brazil has “states” and Portugal doesn’t! That actually completely slipped my radar, and it’s another thing which made your guess pretty good.

They do say “write about what you know”, and pretty much what I know is indeed that experience, but I lack the art to put it as well and as entertainingly as, say “Broken Legs”. I made an AGS port of LSL2, and I started making an IF version of “Phantasmagoria”; and after playing “A Lo Lejos, Un Faro”, I felt like I really wanted to translate it into English. (and I also once started programming a game for someone else, and then had to stop, for reasons I don’t remember. That person found another coder, and released the game, which is a relief for me, because I already feel guilty enough as it is)

Some of you guys are bona-fide creators, and I deeply respect y’all. I can’t do it; not the actual creation. But I do have fun sometimes adapting something from one form onto another. And even that usually doesn’t see the light of day.

Having said that, I do daydream sometimes about how I could use certain experiences in IF. But, since I no longer even read as much as I used to, I have truly moved on. I’m here exclusively to play, now. :smiley:

And overall wide-spread presence in the world, generally. I’m sure there’s a lot of reasons. I know for a fact that Portuguese don’t have as much of a go-getter attitude as Brazilians, the mindset of “I am just average, the next guy is surely much better than me” is culturally ingrained in us. We have amazing people, with little faith in themselves. It’s a cultural thing. I imagine this would be a relevant part of it.

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Maybe Portugal just needs to build a 40-meter-tall Jesus to inspire the populace and remind them of their potential for greatness?

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It IS true that ours is only 28-meter-tall!

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Or maybe a slightly smaller one like in Ohio, US:

Photo_of_the_statue,_King_of_Kings_in_Ohio
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That’s the second coming. The first one was literally struck by lightning and burned down!

It even inspired a wonderful song from Heywood Banks

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…I’d like to make a joke about divine intervention, but can’t think of anything that might not be offensive to believers, so I’ll just… dwindle out.

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I’m not sure if Portugal is part of the EU(I’d bet on yes, but I’m not certain), but considering Brazil is nearly twice the landmass of the EU while Portugal is small by European Nation standards(at least if we set aside the micronations), it would be rather impressive if Portugal managed to squeeze in more people…

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We is. :slight_smile: We’re a relatively small country, yeah. But I don’t think that’s why.

Brief example of why I think Brazil’s weight around the world is heavier: my generation grew up with cartoons dubbed in Brasilian (“versão brasileira Herbet Richers” is a line that is VERY familiar to everyone my age). While we watched those, the grown-ups were watching the Brazilian “telenovelas”, the soaps. Now, I don’t know, but I SERIOUSLY doubt that Brazil was watching any of OUR output, in soaps or dubbing. Mostly because we didn’t have any. When “The Lion king” was dubbed in Portugal, it was a huge, huge, huge thing. I don’t know whether it was the first major portuguese dubbing, but from all the hype, you’d think it was.

EDIT - Also, in practical terms, in the US, the vast majority of PT-speaking immigrants are Brasilians. So for an American, “PT” becomes quickly synonymous with “BR”.

And going back to the “soaps” thing, that’s the language being disseminated pretty well. And the written language, too, in subtitling. Our Marvel and DC comics were mostly brasilian-translated. And there was a brazilian comic book, “Turma da Mônica” (“Monica’s Gang”, I guess, or “Monica and Friends”) which was really popular. Also hugely popular was Quino’s “Mafalda”, which, being south american, I suppose is no surprise that we got the brasilian translation of.

…come to think of it, they pwned us. I am now wondering whether the Tintin, Asterix and Lucky Luke books I loved so much were brasilian or portuguese translations. :stuck_out_tongue:

EDIT - TL;DR:

If the children are watching the cartoons and the adults are watching the soaps, and everyone is laughing to your comedians (“Os Trapalhões”), you managed to stick it, and stick it good, to your former colonizers.

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I thought Mew was making a joke about the online meme that Portugal is secretly an Eastern European country that’s in the West, lol. Portugal suka blyat and all that. XD

I had a Portuguese classmate in school. I got from him the idea that Portuguese is supposed to be spoken like it’s through gritted teeth, lol. Gargle the vowels and grind the consonants.

So I was a bit surprised that Brazil had been famous for bossa nova, samba, that kinda stuff. I mean, bossa nova is a far more mellow and sexy genre of music than you’d expect from… well, the Portuguese my former classmate talked. XD

Now I’m friends with a married couple, an American and a Brazilian, and from them I learned that Brazilian Portuguese sounds much softer than the European one, at least judging from my former classmate.

Like, can you imagine Astrud Gilberto with a European Portuguese accent? “Garota da Ipanema” might have had a tougher time becoming a classic. :rofl:

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Haha! I hear that a lot - usually from Brazilians! And possibly Italians, who also have wonderfully open vowels.

Thing is, if you try to imagine Brazilian singers in EP accent, it’ll be just as ridiculous as EP artists doing BR accent. Here, have some of our immortal pop-rock and ballad classics:

Rui Veloso - A Paixão

Resistência - Não sou o único

Rio Grande - O Postal

Madredeus - O Pastor

Pedro Abrunhosa - Se Eu Fosse Um Dia O Teu Olhar

Our dear Zeca Afonso, symbol of the fight against fascism in Portugal:

Zeca Afonso - Vejam Bem

And there’s our fado, our wonderful Amália:

Gaivota

Barco negro (originally Brazilian - as the beat may give away)

…and I think we’ve new firmly entered “split the thread” territory, which we’d been threatening and which I think I finally tip over.

BTW, if you ask me whether I personally like the vocal performances of all of these people, not necessarily; but this music is in my DNA. I personally love something else, but these things will always resonate with me.

Even if I wish that some of them had healthier vocal techniques. Ah well.

EDIT - Thanks for splitting these, Hanon. I guess I’m giving you extra work! :grin:

EDIT - Bonus:

Amália Rodrigues - Aranjuez, in Portuguese

And, as great as Amália is, if you ask me how I prefer these things to be sung…

Grace Bumbry - Aranjuez (in Spanish). At 76.

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Well, I don’t know how (European) Portuguese music sounds, but isn’t Fado mellow and sexy?

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You will if you check the above links. :slight_smile:

Check out the last two links above, sung by Amália. :slight_smile: Though the second one is kind of a “fado version”, rather than an original fado. Mellow and sexy… I wouldn’t say so. Sometimes spry and light, often with a touch of longing, tragedy and resignation. There is some sexyness sometimes, but not of the “let’s get hot and sweaty” kind.

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I’ve never heard jokes about Portugal being an Eastern European country in Western Europe. I just don’t have perfect knowledge memorized for who’s in the EU, who’s in the Eurozone, who’s in Europe but not in the EU/Eurozone, who’s represented in Eurovision but not actually in Europe, etc.

Also, I doubt I could identify who’s who given samples of Mexican Spanish, Brazillian Portuguese, European Portuguese, and Castilian… Just checked with all the Eurovision entries for Spain and Portugal I have in my music collection, and assuming they’re in their country’s respective languages, they sound like the same language to my ears… Heck, even when it comes to English, I’d say I struggle to identify where in the anglosphere someone is from if they don’t just come out and say where they are from.

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I mostly thought of it as Portuguese blues, since I knew it was mostly about saudade. XD