Native Portuguese speakers outnumber those of French, German, Italian and Japanese
An article in todays New York Times begins:
More people speak Portuguese as their native language than French, German, Italian or Japanese. So it can rankle the 230 million Portuguese speakers that the rest of the world often views their mother tongue as a minor language and that their novelists, poets and songwriters tend to be overlooked.
And concludes:
Spanish-speakers have sometimes jokingly dismissed Portuguese as simply "Spanish, badly spoken." But because of Brazil's huge size and dynamic economy, cities like Buenos Aires and Santiago, in neighboring countries, are now awash in fliers and billboards offering Portuguese language courses.
"For 850 years, our neighbors next door have been saying that there is no future for Portuguese," said Mr. Soares, of the community, referring to Spain. "But here we are, still. The dynamic for the language may come from Brazil, but there is no doubt in my mind that Portuguese as a language will remain viable."
Personally I've always viewed Spanish as degenerate-Portuguese. (Since Portuguese has a wider range of vowel sounds than Spanish... :-)
—Michael A. Cleverly
Monday, October 23, 2006 at 10:07
Well, being a native Brazilian Portuguese speaker, but having learned Spanish, I do think that Spanish speakers speak their language more correctly than Brazilians do.
In Brazil we have given too much room for things like "voce" (really not a person), not using proper mesoclises (Spanish speakers usem them all the time, e.g. 'di-me-lo tu') and other things that make the language more consistent and concise.
So whenever I hear people speaking Spanish, I usually think "I wish we Brazilians used our language as correctly as we do".
It's not that Portuguese is "Spanish, badly spoken" since the language is still there, it's just that we in Brazil speak it incorrectly. If we were to compare correct Portuguese to correct Spanish, I like Portuguese much better.
But I have to tip my hat to Spanish speakers that even in countries just as poor as Brazil or poorer, managed to retain more of the correctness of the language over the centuries.
Mon, 23 Oct 2006, 12:33