Language Affairs in Portugal and Brazil

Recently, I read some news reports regarding the effect of Portuguese soap operas in Brazil. Brazil has always been a great producer of soap operas, exporting them to various countries around the world. Portugal has now begun to get into the business of soap opera exportation as well. Brazilian soap operas are seen all over, just like the Mexican ones, all of them dubbed into the target country's language. When those from Brazil are shown in Spanish-speaking America, they're dubbed into Spanish; when one from Mexico gets to Brazil, it is dubbed into Portuguese, or, if it gets to Japan, into Japanese, and so forth. The Spanish-speaking market is quite big. A soap opera made in any of the three major Spanish soap exporters, Mexico, Venezuela or Colombia, can be and is shown in any of the Hispanic countries without the need for dubbing because of the common language, including Spain. Brazil has been doing the same thing with Portugal, exporting its soap operas to Lusitanian lands since the 1970's. Portugal is now beginning to export its own creations to Brazil, with one difference: the soaps are dubbed.

What's that, you say? I said the same thing as I found out. Indeed, the soaps from Portugal that have started to be broadcast in Brazil are dubbed. Dubbed into what if both of these countries share the same language? Into Portuguese, of course. So, they are dubbed from Portuguese into Portuguese? Confusing? Let's attempt to clear things out.
The Portuguese have been exposed for three decades to the Brazilians soaps, which are broadcast with its original soundtrack, without any dubbing. The Portuguese are quite accustomed to the Brazilians' way of speaking, being familiar with the pronunciation and expressions from the South American country. Unfortunately, this is not the case in Brazil when it comes to Portugal's way of speaking. The Brazilians have not been exposed to any kind of media from Portugal. They find themselves not being able to understand the speech from the Lusitanian Peninsula because they are not familiar with it. Changes in the language have taken place in Portugal of which the average Brazilian is not aware. Thanks to Brazilian soaps and music in Portugal, the Portuguese are rather familiarized with the speech from its ex-colony and have virtually no trouble understanding its people. The Brazilians, on the other hand, find it very difficult, sometimes impossible, to comprehend the Portuguese. Hence the television network's decision to dub the soap operas coming from its overseas brother, sharing the 'same' language.
Some people, both Portuguese and Brazilians, have gone so far as to say that what is spoken in these two countries is no longer the same language; in Portugal, there's Portuguese, which has taken a different evolution path than the idiom in Brazil, where "Brazilian" is spoken. It is said that the written norm gives a false impression that what is spoken is still basically the same, when, in reality, the spoken norms are completely different. In actuality, though, an educated Brazilian has little problem communicating with an educated Portuguese. Some Brazilians say that the professionals and the language professors can easily understand Portuguese as spoken in Portugal, but, they say, it is artificial, because these people have learned an idiom that is not natural to them; that the Portuguese in Brazil is another thing. The cause for this lies not only in the different pronunciation habits but also in the lexical area, as we would expect, and, in morphosyntax. The deviations in each country don't belong solely to the popular class, rather, they are part of the standard language. That is, there are differences in what's considered standard in each of these nations, the popular speech, being even more distant.
In pronunciation, we find the Portuguese supressing untressed vowels, and even complete syllables at times. The Lusitanian accent is said to sound more like a Slavic tongue, rather than a Romance one. Syllable-final S is rendered as [ʃ] or [ʒ]. This is the main feature that identifies the Portuguese. Another characteristic of European Portuguese is the central unrounded vowel [ɨ] (found also in Russian),and is the weakest of all the vowels and the one suppressed more often. L is pronounced [ɫ], a velarized L, like the one in English. In some ways, European Portuguese could be compared to Georgian, because of its great deal of consonants that can be said without any vowels. A sentence like É que se me disseres que não podes, terás de vir primeiro could be said as the following, especially in Lisbon again, where the most number of vowels are dropped: ['ɛksm di'seɾʃk nãũ pɔðʃ, tɾaʒd'vir pɾi'mɐjɾu]. Unstressed E in careful speech is pronounced [ɨ], though in normal discourse, it is dropped, as in the sentence above. We see this as well in the way the lisboetas, the Lisbon natives, are usually mocked by remarking their pronunciation of Portugal as [prtgɑɫ] and Lisboa as [ɫʒboa]. All of this is why the Brazilian has such a hard time understanding the Portuguese. The Brazilians don't have all that hushing, pronouncing syllable-final S as [s]and [z], except in Rio De Janeiro and Belém[*]. They don't posses the Slavic-sounding [ɨ], instead having for untressed E either [e] or [i]. Sillable-final L becomes [w] here, probably because there was already some velarization at time of colonization (this is found in English within some regions, where velarized L turns into [w]). In Brazil, untressed vowels are not suppressed like in Portugal, rather, they are clearly pronounced and opened. Brazilian Portuguese is closer, in terms of pronunciation, to the Portuguese in the colonial times than that in the Peninsula. The example sentence above would be pronounced in most of Brazil as: [ɛ ki si mi ʤi'seɾis ki nãũ 'pɔʤis, te'ɾajz ʤi viχ pɾi'mejɾu]. The Brazilians clearly pronounce each syllable, and the monosyllabical words are given its own stress, very much unlike the Portuguese. This difference in stress patterns in turn has caused other changes, including the most significant one in syntax: personal pronouns.
Another major difference in the standard and popular uses of the language in each land is the placement preference for object and reflexive pronouns. In Portugal, these are given no stress so they tend to simply be clung to the verb, similar to what happens in Catalan (for instance, where te becomes t' or 't). This means that what is stressed is actually the verb itself, the pronoun being placed generally after the verb, i.e. Vou dar-te [vo dart] or [vo 'dartɨ] (I will give to you), Diga-me! ['diɣam(ɨ)] (Tell me!), Amo-te ['amut(ɨ)] (I love you). In Brazil, as I said, these pronouns have its own stress because unstressed E, though weakened to [i] in most regions, it is not supressed. With this, their placement here is different than that in Portugal. Brazilians would render the sentences above as: Vou te dar[vo ʧi daχ], Me diga! [mi 'ʤiga], Te amo ['ʧjamu]. They would place the pronouns always before the verb to which it corresponds, even in in the imperative. The situation in Portugal, where the pronouns are placed after the verb, corresponds to an archaic stage in some Romance languages. For instance, in modern Spanish we have Se sentó, with the reflexive pronoun before the verb. However, in an older period in the language, there was Sentóse, with the pronoun postposed, for the very same thing. You can see this by reading any literature works from the period, such as Don Quixote. The Romance languages with this feature evolved to putting the pronoun in front of the verb in these cases. Portuguese, at least in Portugal, retains this archaic Romance characteristic. In Spanish, we still find many cases where the pronoun is placed after the verb, including the imperative affirmative, i.e. ¡Dígame! (Tell me!), ¡Cuídese! (Take care of yourself!). European Portuguese follows this as well. In Brazil, even though the standard written language retains the European tradition in this case, the spoken norm places the pronoun in front of the verb in all cases, including the imperative, i.e. Me diga!, Se cuide!. In Portugal, the preposing of the pronoun could as well happen in dependant clauses and with prepositions, though never in the imperative affirmative [but in negative commands, the pronoun is indeed preposed, Não me diga], i.e. Quero que me diga isso (I want you to tell me that), O que se viu era real (What was seen was real). This applies to Brazil as well, though many people in formal writing will write the opposite, O que viu-se era real, when in this case the pronoun should be indeed be preposed. This is done probably by hypercorrection due to the grammar rule that goes against what Brazilians say everyday, as in Me diga! (compare Italian Mi dica!), preposing the pronoun, where here the standard language says that it should be postposed. Then, they get to dependent clauses, and erronously believe that the latter rule applies as well, when it doesn't, causing hypercorrections seen in many places, including the media.

I read once a paper by a Brazilian writer in which he stated that all of this is rather artificial to the Brazilian native, because in their mother tongue, these are unnatural rules, written by some studious guy thinking about what is found in Lisbon and not in Brazil. With this, making the average Brazilian think that Portuguese, his own native tongue, is the most difficult language in the world. There are separatist movements today wanting to put an end to the 'colonial' ruling already, and claim a Brazilian language. Once in a newsgroup, I found this Portuguese-Brazilian dilemma being compared to what happened with Dutch and Afrikaans. It was discussed that Afrikaans is solely a variety of Dutch, both still quite intercomprehensible. At the time of separation, Afrikaans was a simplified version of its mother language, avoiding cases, conjugations and gender. All it took was a policital revolt to make it a separate language altogether, and earning itself the credit as the only Indo-European tongue of the Germanic family having being created outside of Europe. Brazilian separatist groups say that the same could and should be done for what is spoken in Brazil; that the national standard language should be leveled to what the educated classes use, shedding all those "book" rules that are never used outside of school or the language purists still remaining. The thing is that the language in Brazil has already separated from that in Portugal. Unlike the Spanish countries whose language academies meet every decade or so and not only agree on what should be correct or not, but respect it as well, Brazil and Portugal are nowhere close to this. Each country has chosen what is best for itself, even if attemps in recent times have been made to bring the language in both closer to each other, which have been unsuccessful. A series of spelling accords in Brazil eliminated silent consonants, which Portugal still retains as sign of etymology and different pronunciation, i.e. Br. fato, Pt. facto; Br. batismo, Pt. baptismo. This is how one can easily identify where a text was written, however, it makes them seem even more distant. In compound verbs, in Portugal, we find pronouns attached to verbs, Vão-me levar, Vão levar-me or even prounoun skipping Que me vão levar. In Brazil, the preference is to always put the pronoun before the verb it belongs to without a hyphen, Vão me levar (compare Fr. Ils vont me dire), this, again, having to do with the different stress patterns in each country.
Other differences include the dissappearance of the third person oblique pronouns in Brazil. Whereas in Portugal we would find Vejo-a (I see her), Conheço-o (I know him), in Brazil we would hear, Vejo ela, Conheço ele. The Brazilians have replaced the third person object pronouns with its corresponding subject forms. This is used by everyone, at all social levels. The standard language omits this use as correct, reserving rather the forms as used in Portugal, even though there are some Brazilian grammarians who have incorporated it as part of the standard, since it is not stigmatised at all. This, in turn, has brought other diverging points. The Portuguese still use the so-called mesóclise, where the pronoun is placed in between the verb root and the tense marker, i.e. fá-lo-ei (I will do it), dar-to-ia (I would give it to you). Notice in this last example also the fusion of the object pronoun te with o, resulting in to. Both of these uses are dinasours in the mouths of Brazilians, not part of the standard language, much less of the popular one. I read an anectdote once about a Brazilian, where he said that when he was a boy in the 1950's, the verb forms with mesóclise were still used, including in the children stories he used to read. He continued by saying that when he had children himself he read some of those same stories, to which his children, confused, asked what those words meant (such as dir-te-ia), implying that by this time these forms had dissappeared completely in Brazil, nowadays avoided at all costs even in formal writing and the media. This is accomplished by using a practice accepted in Brazil, in which the pronoun is placed between the verb and subject pronoun, such as in Eu o faria, a practice not standard in Portugal. Other differences we can include here is the familiar address, where Portugal prefers tu, which the Brazilians see as an archaism, and Brazil, você (Spanish usted); the pronunciation of /ti/ and /di/ as [ʧi] and [ʤi], respectively; and, the construction of the present progresive with estar + gerund in Brazil, i.e. estou fazendo (I am doing) [Sp. estoy haciendo, It. sto facendo] , in Portugal rather estar a + infinitve, i.e. estou a fazer (I am doing). As you can see, there are characteristics which form part of the standards in each country, not just found in popular speech, that marks them different.

In Spanish-speaking America, the ties remain strong with its former ruler, Spain. Spanish singers and actors are known and recognized throughout the Hispanic nations. In the United States, the situation is similar. The British are everywhere in our media and culture, even Australians, to an extent. This is not the case in Brazil, where it would be a rarity to find someone who knows the face or name of even one personality from Portugal. Therefore, the Brazilians do not quite have an opportunity to hear their language as spoken in Portugal. Now, even less with the decision to dub the Portuguese soap operas. The network says that at least the Brazilians will have a chance to get to know the Lusitanian culture by seeing the characters interact. On the news report, one of the network executives says that the reason for dubbing the soaps is that "brasileiro não entende o português de Portugal" (Brazilians don't understand Portuguese from Portugal). Being myself a speaker of European Portuguese, I always talk to Brazilians and they understand quite well, though they acknowledge all the things I have mentioned here about their vague exposure and unfamiliarity with the Lusitanian accent. Only a few counted times have I had trouble communicating, one of which I had to resort to speaking Spanish to carry out the intended discourse. Also, when speaking to Brazilians, I try to pronounce the 'mute' E's as [ɨ] that would otherwise be dropped. On one occassion, as I engaged in conversation in Portuguese with a Brazilian girl from São Paulo at my school, she told me that I should learn Portuguese. I said to her that I already spoke it, why did I have to learn it? She went on to say that she meant that I should learn português do Brasil, Brazilian Portuguese. I also remember reading an article by a Portuguese writer in which he talked about one of his visits to Brazil, where he went on a television interview. Before going on it, he was advised not to drop too many sounds when speaking. After the interview, he says he was told that he spoke a very good Portuguese. He then said that he couldn't resist replying that in case the reporter didn't know it, it was them, the Portuguese, who 'invented' the language. He added that what the reporter meant was that the writer spoke a good Portuguese... intelligible for the Brazilian ear.
To talk from the other end of the spectrum, even with all these things, the language is still Portuguese. We may say Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese, but the language is the same. The same thing happens with other languages, for instance, Catalan, which have several recognized standards depending on the region. To some extent, even English, in Great Britain and the U.S., has even different spellings for some words (i.e. colour, color), and there have always been some British claiming that in the U.S. we speak "American", not English. And just like there exist the separatist movements to declare a Brazilian language, there are groups whose goal is to promote a unified idiom with not only European, Brazilian and African Portuguese, but also with Galician. These people claim that Galician, sharing the same predecessor with the Portuguese language, is another variety of Portuguese, where the Brazilians are also part of the family.
Nonetheless, the American linguist Steven Roger Fischer declared on a visit to Brazil, that the difference between European and Brazilian Portuguese is greater than that between British and American English. He added that if the tendency continues, we will see the separation of the two varieties as two languages. He says that with English it is different because the influence of the United States is quite big, and with this, British and American English are growing closer to each other, thanks to the media itself. In spite of all those Brazilians soaps and music in Portugal, the Portuguese are not talking any closer to the Brazilians. A few things have caught on though, such as some people using você instead of tu, and some expressions. However, other than that, you don't hear anyone in Portugal ceasing to not pronounce all those letters or saying [ʧi] for te.

It's clear now: the Portuguese soap operas will go on to be broadcast dubbed into Brazilian Portuguese. The Brazilians in turn will get the opportunity they were never given before, that to experience at least the Portuguese culture, the speech itself will come soon hopefully, aiding to bridge the gap that a lack of communication, both linguistical and cultural, has created, distancing their common language indeed.