Talk:Brazilian Portuguese

Infobox

I took out the language infobox from the article because i thought i was only for languages, but i read the documentation of that template, and i saw it is for dialects also. My action was reverted, so everything is fine. Cheers --Bluedenim ^(talk) 10:51, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Loss of certain plural marking traits as a typical phenomenon in the informal spoken register

In the description of the informal spoken register, there have been some attempts to change "os elevador" to "os elevadores" as if the lack of plural marker in nouns were uncommon or rare in informal spoken Brazilian Portuguese. Such phenomenon may even be stigmatized (as typical marks of informal spoken registers often are), but this does not mean it does not happen often. In fact, it is very common and widespread in Brazilian Portuguese. To back this affirmation, I added a citation from a reliable source to the article.

I can cite even more sources that reinforce that affirmation if you want. But do not change "os elevador" to "os elevadores" unless you are backed up by authoritative citations from reliable sources indicating that this is not a noteworthy characteristic of the informal spoken register of Brazilian Portuguese. --Antonielly (talk) 15:32, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Section "Tu and você" must be changed

This section has wrong information and is completely centered on what is common in the standard dialect of São Paulo. In most of Northeast, "tu" is the informal pronoun, "você" the semi-formal one and "o senhor/a senhora" the formal one. On the contrary of the text, "você" isn't preferred in any part of the Northeast, except for parts of Bahia and other smaller areas. The same happens in other parts of the country.

In the South, "tu" is entirely dominant, "você" is little used. The form "contigo" and "ti" is actually the most common one in many dialects of Brazil, especially in Northeast, South and North (but also parts of Southeast). So, it's time this section gets a little less "São Paulo-ish" and starts to consider all the dialects of Brazil when it's going to determine whether some form is or not the most common one. The pronunciation guide also leads one to believe [tSi] is THE form to be used in BP, while there are still quite a lot of dialects in Brazil that use [ti]. 189.13.30.6 (talk) 00:10, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Strange example of informal speech

The following example of informal speech is way too exaggerated, as if it intended to turn differences between formal BP and informal BP much larger than they are. It simply replaces a verb that is extremely common in informal BP (precisar) with a synonym that is also common (ter que). The fact is: there is nothing formal about "precisamos" and nothing informal in "tem que". Both are actually totally correct in formal BP and totally common in informal BP! Besides, the expression "faltar energia" is extremely common in informal BP, it has no sign of formality at all. It's true, Brazilians would also tend to say "vai faltar luz", but this expression isn't wrong at all in the standard BP. The analytic future conjugation "vai faltar" is totally accepted in formal Portuguese. So, it's informal, but it's also formal. "Vai faltar luz" is acceptable and correct for formal standards.

Therefore, the fact is: the difference between formal and informal BP isn't that big as it seems in this example. Actually, in many BP dialects where "nós" is still used commonly together with "a gente", it'd be perfectly possible to hear an informal frase this way (for example, in the Ceará dialect:

"Nós precisamo informar todo mundo que vai faltar energia nos elevador" [nOjs prisi'z3mu i~foh'ma todu mu~du ki vaj faw'ta eneh'Zi3 nuz ElEva'do]

On the other hand, it's perfectly possible to write in formal BP in this following way:

"Nós temos que falar para todos que vai faltar luz nos elevadores" (compare with the given informal example "A gente tem que falar pra todo o mundo que vai faltar luz nos elevador")

Is it clear??? :-)

P.S.: The correct form, even in informal BP, is "todo mundo" (everybody), NOT "todo o mundo" (all the world). 189.13.30.6 (talk) 00:35, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

---

I agree with you on most things. There are wide stylistical differences between formal and informal registers of BP (vocabulary selection ["preferred words" between a set of synonyms to represent an idea, definition of "neutral" lexical choices], preferred sentence organization patterns, prosody, phonological realization, etc.), but the grammatical and lexical differences between informal and formal BP is far from being so big as many people claim. Just some remarks:

• You do not need to mark in the orthography the difference between "precisamos" and "precisamo". It is just a phonological ellision that occurs on many Brazilian dialects, which does not need to be represented in spelling. The same thing happens with final "r" in infinitive verbs such as "cantar" ("cantá") and "beber" ("bebê"). There is a one-to-one alignment between graphemes ("s"/"r") and phonemes (the null phoneme) in these cases. The same cannot be said about the lack of plural agreement in nouns (as you have correctly observed).

• "Falar" can be, among other things, a synonym of "dizer" in informal BP, but AFAIK not in standard BP. Thus "falar algo p(a)ra alguém" is "dizer algo para alguém" in formal BP. But "falar inglês" is covered by both formal and informal BP.

• Both "todo mundo" and "todo o mundo" are correct in the sense of "everybody". See:
  • todo o mundo = toda a gente (lit. all the world = all the people) -- notice that the article is kept in both "todo O mundo" and "toda A gente".
  • todo mundo = toda pessoa (lit. every world = every person). "Todo mundo" = "todos os mundos (que existem)" = "todos".

So, in this case, I think it would be better to write "todo (o) mundo" in the example to indicate the optionality of the definite article.

Maybe the best solution for our Wikipedia article would be to have some examples instead of artificially coining just one sentence that includes every possible informal feature from BP. Some preliminary suggestions:

• Todos vocês são doidos!
• '(O)cês é tudo doido!

-

• Disseram-me que todos estão com medo de nós.
• Me falaram que todo (o) mundo 'tá com medo da gente.

-

• Não há troco.
• Tem troco não.

-

• Vocês foram ao banco hoje?
• '(O)cês foi (lá) no banco hoje?

-

• Você aí, pegue-a para mim!
• Você aí, pega ela pra mim!

-

• Deixa-me ver isto.
• Deixa eu ver isso (aqui).

-

• Ele a fez comer tudo.
• Ele fez ela comer tudo.

-

• Como que você pôde me abandonar?
• Como que 'ocê pôde abandonar eu?

-

• Ele disse para eu fazer isso.
• Ele falou pra mim fazer isso.

-

• Que coisas são essas?
• Ques coisa é essa?

-

• Vem a mim!
• Vem ne mim! ("ne" = "em", a back-formation of no and na when you remove the article present in the contraction. Remember the music "Pinga ni mim", where people write "ni" because non-standard words are popularly written with a greater compliance to actual pronunciation than to consistency with the standard ortographical system, where such non-standard word would be more properly written ne. See also the next example.)

-

• Eu confio em vocês."
• Eu confio n'ocês.

-

• Ele pegou o carro de vocês emprestado?
• Ele pegou o carro d'ocês emprestado?

-

• Isto é para vocês.
• Isso (aqui) é p'r'ocês.

-

• Vou com você.
• Vou co'cê.

There could also be some good example highlighting the mixture of "'(o)cê" and "te".

What do you think? --Antonielly (talk) 10:16, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

---

Thanks for your excellent remarks. The problem with emphasizing that that or that verb is preferred in formal speech is that, in the english Wikipedia, which will be read by English speakers and other foreigners, we mustn't convey false impressions about Portuguese. "Informar" isn't formal BP, it is Portuguese, period. Every Brazilian uses this verb, though not as often as "dizer" and "falar" (actually, the fact that "to speak" is more common than "to inform" is true in every language in the world).

Your examples are good, but then there's always a big problem with creating examples of informal BP: some informal usages are restricted to an area. The only forms of informal BP that do represent all the country's dialects are among others: lack of plural "s" when there is already an article or other reference before the noun/adjective (for example, informal BP will always say "Mulheres fazem isso toda hora", but always "As mulher faz(em) isso toda hora"; use of proclisis in all cases; lack of 2nd person conjugation (with the exception of parts of Pernambuco and South); lack of 3rd person object pronouns ("eu vi ele" and not "eu o vi"); and some others.

And the references in other specific sections MUST be corrected: the "tu/você" section says "contigo" is little used in Brazil, when in fact it IS the most frequent form in almost all Brazil.

In you examples, I can cite as regionalisms (mostly related to Minas or Goiás, am I right??):

1) VOCÊ: All the examples given in the article are with "você", when it's a fact that at least 1/3 of Brazilians prefer using "tu" in informal speech. That happens as a major usage in the Northeast, in the North, in the South and in poorer classes of Rio de Janeiro - a huge part of Brazil.

2) OCÊ: it's a regionalism, it doesn't represent informal BP. In other parts of Brazil, what predominates is "você" or "cê", but not "ocê" (and that when "tu" isn't by far the preferred form).

3) NE/NI MIM: it's used only in Center-West and Minas, as far as I know. In Northeast and other regions people never say that.

4) N'OCÊ, D'OCÊS: again, only in Center-West, Minas and nearer regions, but not in the rest of the country.

5) QUES COISA SÃO ESSA: again, only in Minas and nearer areas.

6) LACK OF PLURAL VERB CONJUGATION: it happens as a major usage in some parts, but in many parts of the country even among poor classes it's not that frequent as to let us say it "characterizes informal BP". In Ceará and, I suppose, in many parts of the country, most probably a poor person would say "Eles comero" or even the formal "Eles comeram".

So, my suggestion is: let's simply make a reference to the various usages of Brazilian dialects, perhaps including some typical examples (as "n'ocês" characterizes the Mineiro dialect, frequent change of /v/ into /h/ in Cearense dialect, etc.). As for informal BP itself, let's simply say the really important differences, not exaggerating the differences, because in fact informal BP is very, very similar to formal BP. I think the differences don't appear in even 5% of the grammar or vocabulary. 189.13.30.6 (talk) 20:49, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Oh my god, another exaggeration

Definite article before a possessive

The following section also has claims that don't correspond to reality:

In EP, a definite article normally accompanies a possessive when it comes before a noun: este é o meu gato 'this is my cat'. Notheastern BP dialects drop the definite article and leave the possessive alone: esse é meu gato. In Southeastern speech, especially in the standard dialects of the cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, the definite article is normally used as in Portugal. Formal written BP tends however to omit the definite article in accordance with prescriptive grammar rules derived from classical Portuguese.

I can't speak about the other regions, but what is said about Northeastern BP simply isn't true. Now, it's correct that Northeasterns tend to prefer dropping the definite article, but it's not a rule and, actually, saying "este é o meu gato" or "o meu gato é este" is very common, albeit perhaps not the preferred form. I think the same applies for every other region in Brazil: some form may be the most frequent, but in no way the other usage is dropped.

And, finally, there is no prescriptive grammar rule that requires the omition of the definite article. Both forms are entirely correct and are formal BP. However, the classical texts prefer to omit it, though the other form is also correct. It's a matter of preference, of status, I'd say.189.13.30.6 (talk) 21:08, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Reflexive pronoun - Wrong information

This affirmation is entirely wrong: Thus, for example, BP would often say ele lembra ("he remembers") instead of ele se lembra'. "Lembrar" can or not require a reflexive pronoun, there are two forms. Most of the cases in which BP drops the reflexive pronoun are just the same way: there are two accepted forms, which are entirely correct and traditional. Actually, BP sometimes does the opposite: the verb "casar", which originally doesn't require the reflexive pronoun "se", is almost always treated as "casar-se" ("ela se casou" instead of "ela casou"). As for the verb "deitar", it's not enough to justify the existence of that section, which I think should be deleted. I will do it. If you think it's necessary, please tell me. YgorCoelho (talk) 02:57, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

--- You offer no quotations. Milton Azevedo in his book Portuguese language - a Linguistic Introduction states:

7.3.2.4 The vanishing reflexive

...Some verbs are conjugated with a reflexive clitic that does not denote a truly reflexive action that has the subject as both actor and patient), e.g. levantar-se ‘to get up,’ sentar-se ‘to sit down,’ lembrar-se (de) ‘to remember,’ esquecer-se (de) ‘to forget,’ queixar-se ‘to complain’ (4.6). In BP such verbs occur without a clitic, as in 32a–32c. Omission of the clitic may be compensated for by a different construction, as in 32d, where the verb ficar combined with the participle stands for preocupar-se ‘to worry.’

(32) a. Não quer entrar e sentar? (st. se sentar). ‘Don’t you want to come in and sit down?’ // b. Eu esqueci de trazer a pastinha (st. me esqueci). ‘I forgot to bring the folder.’ // c. Eu não agüento, ela queixa demais (st. se queixa). ‘I can’t stand it, she complains too much.’ // d. Não precisa ficar preocupado com isso (st. se preocupar). ‘Don’t worry about that.’ //

Research has shown not only that reflexive clitics are rare in the vernacular, but also that speakers of this variety do not find it easy to understand clitics when they hear them (Veado 1982:45; Bortoni-Ricardo 1985:227). Loss of awareness of the function of the clitic accounts for the vernacular tendency to amalgamate the pronoun se with the infinitive, as in 33a. This feature, however, occurs more than just sporadically in colloquial educated speech, as in 33b. This vernacular feature also occurs in popular EP (Mota 2001:32).

partial quotation from, Portuguese language - a Linguistic Introduction written by Milton M. Azevedo (Cambridge University Press, 2004.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.0.227.26 (talk) 11:18, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Frankly, the fact this is an excerpt from a book doesn't matter if the information is clearly wrong for any Brazilian native speaker. Perhaps the phenomenon does exist, but the examples given are simply wrong. The fact is: millions of Brazilians everyday use "Eu me lembro", "Vixe, me esqueci do recado", "Ele ainda tá se queixando de dor nas costa", etc. The verbs "lembrar", "queixar" and "esquecer" are definitely used with "se" extensively, though the other forms, without clitic, are also common. Now "sentar" is a good example of the disuse of reflexive clitic "se" (and their counterparts), but "me sento" or "se senta" is still quite frequent nonetheless. Actually, I have never heard "queixar" instead of "queixar-se", I mean, never. "Eu queixo de dor de dente" instead of "Eu me queixo de dor de dente"? I'm sorry, but no linguists at all can convince me of something that I, a native speaker, never heard in the informal speech. The fact is reflexive clitics are still very common in BP, especially in the verbs "lembrar" and "esquecer", and the other forms have existed for centuries and are even considered "right" by the standard, traditional grammar, with minor differences (without the clitic it requires direct object, with that it requires the preposition "de").YgorCoelho (talk) 17:55, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Please remember that Brazil is a huge country and Brazilian Portuguese is not restricted only to your native dialect. I assure you that in Goiás people often speak without the clitic pronoun "se" when using verbs such as "lembrar" and "esquecer" (although they also use the "se" and its ommision in "free variation", i.e., it is optional in relaxed informal speech). As to various examples of the use of the verb "queixar" that (probably accidentally) have left orality marks in writing, see the following results found in a simple Google search (key expression: "estou queixando"): [1][2][3]. Moreover, remember that a core Wikipedia policy is Verifiability, not truth, so it does not matter if an editor thinks something is true or not, it only matters whether a piece of information (which is controversial or not) is verifiable in a reputable source. --Antonielly (talk) 22:30, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Right, but once my native dialect (actually, not only mine, since I have had close contact with both Cearense and Pernambucano dialects) uses clitics, then all the hypothesis about a disappearement of clitics is destroyed. The author themself was probably fooled by the fact that Brazil is so huge that nearly every phenomenon can't represent the whole ammount of dialects that form Brazilian Portuguese. Just remember what many authors, including some very reputable ones, say about "você": they say it's disappearing in Brazil and that "tu" is in disuse, especially because they're mostly from São Paulo-Rio, but it's very easy to verify that "tu" is still common - in fact, most common - in a huge part of the country inhabited by 70 million people or so. Wikipedia must have verifiable texts, but it cannot also ommit facts that are widespread and can be easily verified by someone who lives in a given country and were perhaps forgotten by a reknown but even so failable author.

As for "queixar", a search in Google (http://www.google.com.br/search?q=%22estou+queixando%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:pt-BR:official&client=firefox-a) shows that the overwhelming majority of the examples of "estou queixando" are actually accompanied by the clitic. The phenomenon does exist, but it can't be used as a sign of disappearence of the clitics. The same can be said about "lembrar": in Google "eu lembro" has 834,000 results (and several of them are actually part of "eu lembro-me", while "eu me lembro" has 1,130,000 results and "lembro-me" 1,260,000. Now "esquecer": "eu esqueço" gives us 87,800 results, while "eu me esqueço" has 32,300 results and "esqueço-me", 2,790; and, finally, "sentar": "eu sento" has 54,000 results and "eu me sento", 28,700. So, what we can see is a preference for not using the clitic, except for "lembrar", but in no way does it indicate that "reflexive clitics are rare in the vernacular" or that they are "vanishing". And remember that in Internet most Brazilians write in informal speech. There is, as you said, a FREE VARIATION: both use with and without the reflexive, and that seems to have happened for centuries in the Portuguese language, albeit nowadays without respecting the rule that with "se" the object must be indirect.

189.13.24.51 (talk) 03:02, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

British & American English = No Comparison

As a linguist who is fluent i Portuguese, English and other languages, I hae to state that the different between Brazilian Portuguese and Portuguese of Portugal is far more extreme or that of Great Britian and the United States. Some examples of English: Centre and Center - spelled different yet prounounced exactly the same. In Portuguese: Actor and Ator (meaning actor)- missing a complete consonant sounding! Brazil has many extremes like this compared to Portugal. Sister Makemore (talk) 18:44, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Bad example. In European Portuguese, the letter "c" in the word "actor" is mute, like "h" in "hospital". The presence/absence of that "c" is just a spelling difference between BP and EP, which is set to disappear as soon as the ortographic agreement of CPLP will be put into action. (By the way, the "a" in "a(c)tor" is open in Brazil and closed in Portugal, but both sounds are allophones in Portuguese and that is just a dialectal difference in the pronunciation of a given grapheme.) I lived in both countries, so I am personally acquainted with various dialects and regional variations in both countries. --Antonielly (talk) 01:47, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Almost two different languages?

Modern linguistics studies normally suggest that spoken Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese are deeply distinct when grammar is considered. In fact, spoken BP has deeply different syntatical system from EP, as discussed by Charlotte Galves, 2001. One of the most dramatical differences is that BP shows strong traits of topic-proeminent language whereas EP is a subject-proeminent language, as presented by Eunice Pontes, 1987. Moreover it's not a pro-drop language as EP and its pronoun system is quite different, having abolished most of the oblique pronouns.

Some authors (such as Mário Perini, 1997) tend to suggest the existence two separate languages - vernacular Brazilian versus European Portuguese. Standard written BP is a little closer to EP than to vernacular Brazilian, hiding most of the differences for a casual observer and thus suggesting a somewhat artificial unity.

I'm sure that it's not Wikipedia's job to raise polemics, but present the most accepted positions. Nevertheless, it would be a little more factual to present BP and EP as two different systems, with some distance in their grammatical systems, as it's widely recognized in academy.

José San Martin (talk) 14:31, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

It woldn't be "more factual", especially since the article has is already has to much on that given the scant or non-existent examples. All that there is are very vague (and highly technical) proposition that lacks any substantial support. If they are different languages I would like for someone to put some examples of it, ideally URLs to sound or video clips. Must be quite easy.

PS: I would have nothing against it BTW, it would even have some quite decent side-effects. But this is not about personal opinions.--213.58.131.130 (talk) 12:24, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree with the above comment. As it is the article already spends way to much time on this subject compared to the "weight" of it. Furthermore the issue isn't even about BP and EP: if the "two different languages" theory is to be considered then there are two different languages used in Brazil itself, given the very simple fact that every news report, every television show, every newspaper and pretty much everything that exists is in the "Brazilian EP", if one were to use the criteria of those authors. Those that agree can simply post relevant examples of it (which are, as the above comment indicates, conspicuously lacking...) It's a bit ridiculous to read an entire article or book about how the languages are different where every single sentence is correct Portuguese, or to hear an interview where every spoken word is correct

Portuguese.--85.138.209.64 (talk) 23:26, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

People seem to lack a certain context and sense of proportion, by both inflating differences that are hard or impossible for a regular speaker to understand (i.e. after two paragraphs of lengthy linguistics-jargon charged that read like something very serious the final example is something minuscule and more often than not not even consistently true when applied to the several different variants within Brazil and Portugal itself) and also by judging it to be something "quite different" from American and English (someone above made quite a fuss about this, only to use an example where both words are read the same). To put some perspective:

"...This doctrine, of course, is not supported by the known laws of language, nor has it prevented the large divergences that we shall presently examine, but all the same it has worked steadily toward a highly artificial formalism, and as steadily against the investigation of the actual national speech. Such grammar, so-called, as is taught in our schools and colleges, is a grammar standing four-legged upon the theorizings and false inferences of English Latinists of a past generation, 2 eager only to break the wild tongue of Shakespeare to a rule; and its frank aim is to create in us a high respect for a book language which few of us ever actually speak and not many of us even learn to write. That language, elaborately artificial though it may be, undoubtedly has merits. It shows a sonority and a stateliness that you must go to the Latin of the Golden Age to match; its “highly charged and heavy-shotted” periods, in Matthew Arnold’s phrase, serve admirably the obscurantist purposes of American pedagogy and of English parliamentary oratory and leader-writing; it is something for the literary artists of both countries to prove their skill upon by flouting it. But to the average American, bent upon expressing his ideas, not stupendously but merely clearly, it must always remain something vague and remote, like Greek history or the properties of the parabola, for he never speaks it or hears it spoken, and seldom encounters it in his everyday reading. If he learns to write it, which is not often, it is with a rather depressing sense of its artificiality. He may master it as a Korean, bred in the colloquial Onmun, may master the literary Korean-Chinese, but he never thinks in it or quite feels it."

[...]That, even to the lay Continental, American and English now differ considerably, is demonstrated by the fact that many of the popular German Sprachführer appear in separate editions, Amerikanisch and Englisch. This is true, for example, of the “Metoula-Sprachführer” 46 and of the “Polyglott Kuntze” books. 47 The American edition of the latter starts off with the doctrine that “Jeder, der nach Nord-Amerika oder Australien will, muss Englisch können,” but a great many of the words and phrases that appear in its examples would be unintelligible to most Englishmen[...]All the Continental Europeans who discuss the matter seem to take it for granted that American and English are now definitely separated. When I was in Germany as a correspondent, in 1917, I met many German officers who spoke English fluently. Some had learned it in England and some in America, and I noted that they were fully conscious of the difference between the two dialects, and often referred to it. M. Clemenceau, who acquired a very fluent and idiomatic English during his early days in New York, is always at pains to inform those who compliment him upon it that it is not English at all, but American. The new interest in American literature in France, growing out of the establishment of a chair of American Literature and Civilization at the Sorbonne, with Charles Cestre as incumbent, has brought forth several articles upon the peculiarities of American in the French reviews.

[Menken, The American Language].

Wow, talk about diglosia! Were have I read this before, complete with the "what they taught in school is a different language" and "foreigners already thing it's a different language"? Actually the rest of the book explores the same arguments I keep seeing being raised in this article, to an extent where occupy a ridiculous amount of the article length compared with the tiny influence and support that they have... and you want it to be even more expanded? As for the systems and "distance" of the grammatical structures, it's referenced in the article. Just like it is in other languages.--83.132.170.210 (talk) 01:05, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Clarify existential "ter"

The article says:

BP also uses ter in existential sense, whereas EP would use haver, hence "não tem dinheiro" ("it has no money") in addition to "não há dinheiro" ("there is no money").

The translations to English are too literal. I don't know Portuguese well (yet :) but i suppose that the proper English translation in both cases is "There is no money". Can someone please clarify it?

Thanks in advance. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 17:40, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

That's right. In both cases the meaning is "There is no money". I think the text should clarify that, literally, "ter" means "to have", but not in that situation. That sentence can't mean "it has no money", because in fact "não tem dinheiro" is a case of sentence without object, what happens in many cases in Portuguese, what is analogous to the non-existence of subject when using "haver". 189.13.71.177 (talk) 17:35, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

This is yet another "difference" that I fail to understand as such: both forms are used in EP. The sentences convey subtly different ideas, or at least different ways to express the same idea using different constructs: "Ele não tem dinheiro/Eu não tenho dinheiro" means "He has no money/I have no money", whereas "Não há dinheiro" is used for example in the following context: "Tive que deixar o ginásio... não há dinheiro", which could be translated has "I had to leave the gymn [membership]... there is no money". This isn't used in English, but it transmits a more general "lack of money" not directly attached to a subject except by context. In this example it could be substituted by "não tenho dinheiro", and more often than not it is. When an ATM machine doesn't have money the most common way of saying it is indeed "Não tem dinheiro" in EP. If no ATM machine in the city had money then "Não há dinheiro" would be used. Again, I fail to understand the difference in usage, and the example should either be corrected or the whole thing deleted, since it makes little sense. --85.138.209.64 (talk) 23:17, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

The examples you gave don't show the usage of the verb "haver" in expressions which indicate existence. When one says "Não tem dinheiro" in the same way you said, it's just a case of "sujeito oculto" (hidden subject), as Portuguese is a pro-drop language. The so called "haver" meaning existence is another thing: it's not a case of dropping the subject, but actually the nonexistent subject that happens in Portuguese in many situations. So, what is particular of Brazilian Portuguese is the use of "ter" replacing "haver" in expressions of existence, where there is no subject at all: "Não tem ninguém aqui" (There isn't anybody here). Let me clarify it: you may say "Não tem dinheiro" referring to a person you've mentioned before, so the real meaning in English is "He has no money"; AND you may say "Não tem dinheiro" as a Brazilian uses it, meaning simply "There is no money", without referring to anyone, and in Portuguese grammar it configures a nonexistent subject (notice that, if you use the subject in the plural, the verb remains the same in the singular: "Não tem pessoas aqui", for example) - and this form replaces the traditional "Não há dinheiro" (in Latin, "habere" also meant "to have").YgorCoelho (talk) 19:39, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

The MOST SERIOUS problem of this article

In my opinion, the most serious problem of this article is that it describes two things which should be in separate articles:

1. A characterization of Brazilian Portuguese;
2. A description of the differences between Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese.

The first one is the raison d'être of this article, therefore it should remain. But the second one should be transferred to a new article.

My suggestion is that it shall be entitled Differences between Brazilian and European Portuguese (on the model of Differences between Spanish and Portuguese or American and British English differences).

This article (Brazilian Portuguese), however, should keep describing the differences between informal Brazilian Portuguese and formal Brazilian Portuguese, since both belong to the sphere of "Brazilian Portuguese". But all the other content should be transferred to the Differences between Brazilian and European Portuguese article, which should be put under the Category:Language comparison (among other categories).

The currently giant length of this article and the lack of coherence ("bipolar disorder") in the text are in a great part caused by the conflation of those two different topics under a single article. Therefore, I strongly recommend a split. What do you think? --Antonielly (talk) 15:49, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Be careful! You may be opening the doors for pages such as Differences between Angolan and European Portuguese, Differences between Cape Verdean and Mozambican Portuguese, and so on. Ten Islands (talk) 12:56, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I am talking about standard dialects here. The two major standard dialects of Portuguese are Brazilian and European. Something similar happens in English: the two major standard dialects are American and British. Angolan Portuguese and Mozambican Portuguese, for instance, do not currently have prestigious standard dialects of their own; their written literary standards are rooted on standard European Portuguese. There is no significative literature of prescriptive treatises of "standard Indian English" either.

I would find it unlikely that someone would create an acceptable article about Differences between Jamaican English and South African English, especially because it would be difficult to find sources to support the article, and therefore the article could be removed on the basis of WP:OR. But there are a lot of references that describe differences between Standard American English and Standard British English, and there are a lot of references that describe differences between Standard Brazilian Portuguese and Standard European Portuguese, therefore the descriptions of those differences are notable subjects. --Antonielly (talk) 13:24, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

But there's a problem: many statements would have to be repeated. I mean, the sentences dedicated to the differences between BP and EP are mostly describing, at the same tipe, characteristics of BP. I don't think it's necessary to split the article, but rather to emphasize more, in this article, the characteristics of BP, and then only add "this has a different usage in EP" or "unlike BP". Or perhaps, if you see no problem, we would repeat a great part of the information of the article, for example, writing twice that there are two pronunciations of /ti/ and /ti/ in BP, one palatalized and the other not, and then repeating it again in the article about differences between BP and EP (i.e. "Many Brazilian dialects tend to palatalize /ti/ and /di/, while it doesn't happen in EP")...YgorCoelho (talk) 06:59, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, there will be a bit of overlap, but not very much. I do not think a bit of duplication would be a relevant issue. Moreover, the article about EP does not mention characteristics of BP (and correctly so) as much as the article about BP (currently and unnecessarily) mentions characteristics of EP. This asymmetry of presentation does not make sense: both dialects have a common origin in XVI century EP; modern BP does not have its origins on modern EP, nor vice versa; the article about EP is about EP, not about its differences with respect to BP; the article about BP should primarily be about BP, not about its differences with respect to EP. A contrastive analysis should be the subject of a new article, since it is a different subject than what is proposed by the title of the article.

I agree with you that after a split the article about BP would suffer a major rewriting to suit to its only purpose (description of BP). This will involve a lot of work, but this is common in Wikipedia; the article does not currently have enough quality to be kept stable anyway (and I say that as someone who has contributed to it). I suggest that, after the split, the 3 articles BP, EP and Portuguese language would each have a section that quickly summarizes the differences between standard BP and standard EP (from the point of view of each respective article), and near the section header there would be a template {{main|Differences between Brazilian and European Portuguese}}.

I think that, after the split, the BP article will shrink in size, and that is very good: it is currently huge (73KB). There will be only one description (standard BP) and one comparison involved (standard BP X informal spoken register of BP), rather than 3 (!!!) comparisons (if we also consider the current lengthy sections about informal spoken BP X standard EP) and one full description. The resulting article will still be very big (unfortunately), but it will be smaller than the current version. 15 sections is too much for just one article about one dialect. Even the article Portuguese language has fewer sections than the article about BP.

I am concerned with improving the quality of the article. The first step to achieve this improvement would be to make the text more focused in its purpose by splitting the article; then the next steps would come. Splitting is just a first step in a chain of changes for this article to reach at least a "Very Good" status, or maybe even FA status in the future (if we are dedicated enough to improve it and cite a greater amount of reputable sources). --Antonielly (talk) 11:40, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Another problem is that much of the article's information is outdated. After a recent orthographic agreement, all spelling in either dialect of Portuguese has been equalized. The article should at least remove the old differences (i.e. acção vs ação) before a move is even, if at all, attempted. TheUnixGeek (talk) 20:12, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

It is not a move, but a split. Nobody said the split would be a piece of cake and the article wouldn't need some edit work before (and after) the split. Splits always require reorganization of information and refactoring of an article. Wikipedia article splits do not happen by simple copy & paste. --Antonielly (talk) 20:18, 25 February 2009 (UTC)