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Brazil may stop speaking Portuguese and adopt a new language! Understand how historical and cultural roots are shaping the future of this surprising and inevitable transformation.
Brazil could stop speaking Portuguese and adopt a new language! Understand how historical and cultural roots are shaping a future for this surprising and inevitable transformation.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like if, all of a sudden, the language you know so well started to disappear, being replaced by something completely new?
Brazil, with its rich cultural diversity and historical influences, may be heading towards a scenario where Portuguese, as we know it, is replaced by a new form of expression.
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According to the Portuguese linguist Fernando Venâncio, in an interview given to BBC Brazil, the language spoken in Brazil is in such a profound process of transformation that it may soon be considered a new language: “Brazilian”.
According to Venancio, this change is not just a matter of regional variations or slang; it is a natural evolution that began centuries ago, long before Brazil became a Portuguese colony.
The historical roots of the language
The language we call Portuguese today has its origins in a territory very different from the one we now know as Portugal.
The true “homeland” of Portuguese is the ancient Kingdom of Galicia, founded in the 5th century AD, after the dissolution of the Roman Empire.
This kingdom, which today is part of Spain, was the birthplace of the Galician language, which, over time, evolved and gave rise to what we know as Portuguese.
Lisbon, the current center of Portuguese life, spent centuries under Arab rule, where Mozarabic was spoken, a dialect influenced by Arabic and Latin. During this period, the Galician language was already forming and influencing the region.
The tension between Galician and Portuguese
Over the centuries, Galicia and its language were gradually absorbed into the Spain and Portugal we know today.
The result was a process of cultural and linguistic erasure, where Galician was relegated to an inferior status, being considered a rural language with little prestige.
Today, movements in Galicia fight to preserve the use of Galician, but face the hegemony of Castilian, widely preferred by the local population, especially in large cities.
The history of Galician and its relationship with Portuguese is complex and reveals the shared roots that many Portuguese and Brazilians are unaware of.
Venâncio points out that the idea of a “Galician-Portuguese” is an attempt to disguise the true origins of the Portuguese language. He argues that Portuguese was essentially born as Galician and only later did it acquire its unique characteristics when it spread across the south of the Iberian Peninsula.
Linguistic transformations: Is the future Brazilian?
For Venâncio, the differences between the Portuguese spoken in Brazil and that of Portugal are so significant that it is only a matter of time before “Brazilian” is recognized as a distinct language.
One of the most notable examples of this transformation is the presence of typically Brazilian words and expressions, such as “geladeira” instead of “frigorífico”.
These changes, according to the linguist, do not represent a tragedy, but rather a natural evolution of language.
Venâncio also highlights that expressions like “inho”, in words like “cafezinho” and “Ronaldinho”, have their roots in Galician. Likewise, the famous northeastern “oxente” is another example of how Galician influenced the Brazilian language, albeit indirectly.
There is no definitive record of the origin of “oxente”, but evidence points to the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula., where Galician uses the word “xente” for “people”.
The cultural impact of this separation
The separation between Portuguese and “Brazilian” is an inevitable process, and we are living in a time of acceleration of this change.
Although the grammatical rules are still similar, the way Brazilians use the language is increasingly distant from European Portuguese.
He believes that soon, we will be able to see the emergence of a new language, the result of this natural evolution.
However, many linguists and grammarians, both in Brazil and Portugal, argue that there is still sufficient unity between the two variants so that we can speak one language.
They point out that morphological elements, such as articles, prepositions and pronouns, remain practically the same, and that formal Portuguese, spoken in formal settings, is almost identical in both countries.
Somehow, the idea that Brazil might adopt a new language may seem shocking, but, as we have seen, this possibility is rooted in historical and linguistic processes that have been occurring for centuries.
According to Fernando Venâncio, the evolution of “Brazilian” is a natural consequence of the cultural and geographical distance between Brazil and Portugal.
The question remains: Are we really prepared for this change? What would this linguistic separation mean for our national identity? Leave your opinion in the comments!
