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Iversen
Super Polyglot
Moderator
Denmark
berejst.dk
Joined 6704 days ago
9078 posts - 16473 votes 
Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan
Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian
Personal Language Map
| Message 33 of 50 18 February 2013 at 9:43am | IP Logged |
REaders of HTLAL may have noticed that I occasionally use expressions and words which might qualify as archaic. But my stance is that it is as important to keep old words in use as it is to create new ones. Those who don't like them will just stop using them, and if nobody need or use them they will die out, but there is no reason to accelerate the process by bowing to the wishes of those who never have learned those words and expressions. After all you wouldn't try to force a teenager to avoid expressions which his/her grandma or teacher don't understand, so I see no reason to accept pressure in the opposite direction.
Edited by Iversen on 18 February 2013 at 9:43am
6 persons have voted this message useful
| Surtalnar
Tetraglot
Groupie
Germany
Joined 4397 days ago
52 posts - 67 votes
Speaks: German*, Latin, English, Spanish
Studies: Arabic (Written), Arabic (classical)
| Message 34 of 50 05 March 2013 at 1:19pm | IP Logged |
Archaic German: "Ich nahm des Ritters Schwerte."
("I took the sword of the knight.")
Modern German: "Ich habe das Schwert von dem Ritter genommen."
("I have taken the sword of the knight.")
But I (and some other) still use the "archaic/poetic" form because it's shorter and sexier.
3 persons have voted this message useful
| Random review
Diglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 5784 days ago
781 posts - 1310 votes
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German
| Message 35 of 50 05 March 2013 at 1:56pm | IP Logged |
Acut wrote:
There are a bunch of archaic and falling into disuse expressions/tenses
in Brazilian Portuguese. Some uses are even contradictory. Most grammar books regard
the "older" forms as correct, condemning the "newer" forms (especially when the "newer"
forms imply a separation from "European Portuguese"), but the newer forms are,
effectively, what current educated native speakers (ENS) use on a daily basis, in
spoken and written forms. Using the older forms may sound odd or even pedantic.
In most of Brazil, the verbal forms associated with the familiar second person pronoun
"tu" have died out. I rarely hear someone saying "Tu queres algo?". The pronoun itself,
however, is still very used, even associated with incorrect constructions, or mixed
altogether with the more formal second person pronoun "você". One can hear "Eu te amo.
Você é tudo para mim." (mixing both pronouns "tu" e "você"), which sounds very natural
even to educated speakers (even though it is a grammatical mistake). You may also hear
"Tu gosta de cantar", which is a mistake a bit more obvious to the ENS, but still often
made, except in some southern states.
In a nutshell, one may sometimes switch from "tu" to "você" almost freely, even in the
middle of a sentence, even if it may incur what prescriptive grammars call "wrong".
Grandma never allowed me to use "tu" when talking to others (she, and some older
generations, find it offensive/too informal), but that didn't preclude me or her from
using the associated objetive pronoun "te". Very weird if you actually think about it,
but absolutely natural to the ENS.
"Vós" is now confined to written language - as is mesoclisis, or some other pronoun
rarities "Dei a casa a ele = Dei-lha". The proposition "a" has mostly been replaced by
"para" - "Fui para a Bahia", "Dei a casa para ele"...
Proclisis sounds very weird in certain contexts. "Te dei um presente" sounds much more
natural to the ENS, even if wrong according to the grammar books, than "Dei-te o
presente". Contemporary literature easily disregards those rules, for the sake of
naturality - but pre-1922 works usually follow "the book". There is a tendency for
proclisis, even when it's not mandatory.
I see the future tense getting weaker as well: "Vou comprar o presente" sounds more
native-like than "Comprarei o presente". Some "mais-que-perfeito" forms may sound even
weirder: "ele chegara na festa antes de Joana" sounds less natural than "ele havia
chegado na festa antes de Joana". Overall, we tend to use "split forms" in lieu of
"pure" verb forms.
The verb "haver" is normally replaced by "ter" - "Hei de ser honesto" became "Tenho
de/que ser honesto" and "Há uma pedra no meio do caminho" became, rather famously, "Tem
uma pedra no meio do caminho".
Gerunds are more often used nowadays, sometimes to the extreme (like substituting "Eu
vou ligar para o cliente" by "Eu vou estar ligando para o cliente"). That "gerundism"
is usually avoided by the ENS, but sometimes has become almost standard in sub-educated
speech.
I've heard that there has also been some changes in pronunciation, but I don't know
exactly what happened.
If I read books from the 1970s (even technical, engineering books), I can clearly
notice some usages/vocabulary that would be weird today. The changes have been very
fast. Machado de Assis wrote only some 100 years ago, and his books, despite still
readable (and great!), sound almost foreign today. I wonder if this has happened to
other languages as strongly as it has in Brazilian Portuguese. |
|
|
@Acut: very
interesting post, I have long had the impression that with Brazilian and
European Portuguese we are watching two (both very beautiful) dialects smack-bang in
the process of turning into separate languages. It also seems to me that these changes
are happening very rapidly and I fully expect to see them as separate languages within
my lifetime (assuming I live to a decent age). With the rise of Brazil as an economic
power, I also wonder if the African lusophone countries will soon switch from teaching
the European standard to the Brazilian in their schools.
Personally I have such affection for both dialects that I'd like to see them converge a
little and stay one language (these unusually divergent dialects are part of the reason
why Portuguese is so beautiful IMO); but that's not a POV that has received much
sympathy on here when I've expressed it before. I can't see that happening anyway tbf.
Would you also say that Brazilian Portuguese uses the subject pronouns a lot more than
European Portuguese (or Spanish/Italian)? I have that impression. I think that
Brazilian Portuguese is just starting the process of turning from a pro-drop language
like Spanish or Italian into a language like French or English (as indeed happened to
French itself in the middle ages)- which is also fascinating if true.
Regarding archaisms (and I know this has been discussed on other threads) I'd like to
mention the question word "cuán" in Spanish (which is archaic, but not obsolete, in
most of the Spanish-speaking world).
It's far more beautiful and elegant than any of it's modern replacements.
Edited by Random review on 05 March 2013 at 1:58pm
1 person has voted this message useful
| Josquin
Heptaglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 4845 days ago
2266 posts - 3992 votes
Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish
Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian
| Message 36 of 50 05 March 2013 at 2:21pm | IP Logged |
Surtalnar wrote:
| Modern German: "Ich habe das Schwert von dem Ritter genommen." |
|
|
This is very colloquial language. In Standard German, it would be:
"Ich habe das Schwert des Ritters genommen."
Once again, the genitive in German is NOT archaic, but very much alive!
2 persons have voted this message useful
| Medulin
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Croatia
Joined 4669 days ago
1199 posts - 2192 votes
Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali
| Message 37 of 50 06 March 2013 at 6:54pm | IP Logged |
Random review wrote:
Acut wrote:
There are a bunch of archaic and falling into disuse expressions/tenses
in Brazilian Portuguese. Some uses are even contradictory. Most grammar books regard
the "older" forms as correct, condemning the "newer" forms (especially when the "newer"
forms imply a separation from "European Portuguese"), but the newer forms are,
effectively, what current educated native speakers (ENS) use on a daily basis, in
spoken and written forms. Using the older forms may sound odd or even pedantic.
In most of Brazil, the verbal forms associated with the familiar second person pronoun
"tu" have died out. I rarely hear someone saying "Tu queres algo?". The pronoun itself,
however, is still very used, even associated with incorrect constructions, or mixed
altogether with the more formal second person pronoun "você". One can hear "Eu te amo.
Você é tudo para mim." (mixing both pronouns "tu" e "você"), which sounds very natural
even to educated speakers (even though it is a grammatical mistake). You may also hear
"Tu gosta de cantar", which is a mistake a bit more obvious to the ENS, but still often
made, except in some southern states.
In a nutshell, one may sometimes switch from "tu" to "você" almost freely, even in the
middle of a sentence, even if it may incur what prescriptive grammars call "wrong".
Grandma never allowed me to use "tu" when talking to others (she, and some older
generations, find it offensive/too informal), but that didn't preclude me or her from
using the associated objetive pronoun "te". Very weird if you actually think about it,
but absolutely natural to the ENS.
"Vós" is now confined to written language - as is mesoclisis, or some other pronoun
rarities "Dei a casa a ele = Dei-lha". The proposition "a" has mostly been replaced by
"para" - "Fui para a Bahia", "Dei a casa para ele"...
Proclisis sounds very weird in certain contexts. "Te dei um presente" sounds much more
natural to the ENS, even if wrong according to the grammar books, than "Dei-te o
presente". Contemporary literature easily disregards those rules, for the sake of
naturality - but pre-1922 works usually follow "the book". There is a tendency for
proclisis, even when it's not mandatory.
I see the future tense getting weaker as well: "Vou comprar o presente" sounds more
native-like than "Comprarei o presente". Some "mais-que-perfeito" forms may sound even
weirder: "ele chegara na festa antes de Joana" sounds less natural than "ele havia
chegado na festa antes de Joana". Overall, we tend to use "split forms" in lieu of
"pure" verb forms.
The verb "haver" is normally replaced by "ter" - "Hei de ser honesto" became "Tenho
de/que ser honesto" and "Há uma pedra no meio do caminho" became, rather famously, "Tem
uma pedra no meio do caminho".
Gerunds are more often used nowadays, sometimes to the extreme (like substituting "Eu
vou ligar para o cliente" by "Eu vou estar ligando para o cliente"). That "gerundism"
is usually avoided by the ENS, but sometimes has become almost standard in sub-educated
speech.
I've heard that there has also been some changes in pronunciation, but I don't know
exactly what happened.
If I read books from the 1970s (even technical, engineering books), I can clearly
notice some usages/vocabulary that would be weird today. The changes have been very
fast. Machado de Assis wrote only some 100 years ago, and his books, despite still
readable (and great!), sound almost foreign today. I wonder if this has happened to
other languages as strongly as it has in Brazilian Portuguese. |
|
|
@Acut: very
interesting post, I have long had the impression that with Brazilian and
European Portuguese we are watching two (both very beautiful) dialects smack-bang in
the process of turning into separate languages. It also seems to me that these changes
are happening very rapidly and I fully expect to see them as separate languages within
my lifetime (assuming I live to a decent age). With the rise of Brazil as an economic
power, I also wonder if the African lusophone countries will soon switch from teaching
the European standard to the Brazilian in their schools.
Personally I have such affection for both dialects that I'd like to see them converge a
little and stay one language (these unusually divergent dialects are part of the reason
why Portuguese is so beautiful IMO); but that's not a POV that has received much
sympathy on here when I've expressed it before. I can't see that happening anyway tbf.
Would you also say that Brazilian Portuguese uses the subject pronouns a lot more than
European Portuguese (or Spanish/Italian)? I have that impression. I think that
Brazilian Portuguese is just starting the process of turning from a pro-drop language
like Spanish or Italian into a language like French or English (as indeed happened to
French itself in the middle ages)- which is also fascinating if true.
Regarding archaisms (and I know this has been discussed on other threads) I'd like to
mention the question word "cuán" in Spanish (which is archaic, but not obsolete, in
most of the Spanish-speaking world).
It's far more beautiful and elegant than any of it's modern replacements. |
|
|
Brazilian standard and Portuguese standard are almost the same.
But that's not the point.
Educated colloquial usage in Brazil is different from both these standards
(since the Brazilian standard does not reflect the oral usage of Brazil).
It's just like Swiss German.
Standard/written Swiss German and Standard Germany's German
are almost the same (except for some vocabulary and spelling differences).
It is in the spoken language where differences are.
Current Brazilian elites benefit from diglossia, and in no way
they would accept the colloquial Brazilian usage
for a base of the new language
(something which has happened in South Africa, when the spoken language [Afrikaans] replaced Dutch as a standard language).
In Brazil, many times native speakers are required to pass a Portuguese language test in order to apply for a job. This does not happen in Argentina, UK, USA etc...If you're a native speaker, you don't need tests to prove you're fluent in your 1st language. This is done to discard poor people (who have no knowledge of ceremonial usage because they frequented public schools and not private ones), so only rich people get good jobs, and poor are poorer and poorer...In Brazil, the archaizing written standard is used as a social exclusion tool. (For example, in India this is never done, since people have an option of studying everything in English; no Tamilian would be excluded from Tamilian society for not knowing formal Tamil; colloquial Tamil and English are enough to succeed in Tamil-speaking areas of India).
Edited by Medulin on 06 March 2013 at 7:09pm
3 persons have voted this message useful
| Zireael
Triglot
Senior Member
Poland
Joined 4652 days ago
518 posts - 636 votes
Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, Spanish
Studies: German, Sign Language, Tok Pisin, Arabic (Yemeni), Old English
| Message 38 of 50 06 March 2013 at 7:28pm | IP Logged |
Quote:
The placement of object pronouns after a verb: "Dánmelo" ("They give me it") instead of
"me lo dan". |
|
|
It's archaic? So why am I taught the placement of object pronouns after a verb?
1 person has voted this message useful
| Random review
Diglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 5784 days ago
781 posts - 1310 votes
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German
| Message 39 of 50 06 March 2013 at 11:57pm | IP Logged |
Medulin wrote:
Random review wrote:
Acut wrote:
There are a bunch of archaic and
falling into disuse expressions/tenses
in Brazilian Portuguese. Some uses are even contradictory. Most grammar books regard
the "older" forms as correct, condemning the "newer" forms (especially when the "newer"
forms imply a separation from "European Portuguese"), but the newer forms are,
effectively, what current educated native speakers (ENS) use on a daily basis, in
spoken and written forms. Using the older forms may sound odd or even pedantic.
In most of Brazil, the verbal forms associated with the familiar second person pronoun
"tu" have died out. I rarely hear someone saying "Tu queres algo?". The pronoun itself,
however, is still very used, even associated with incorrect constructions, or mixed
altogether with the more formal second person pronoun "você". One can hear "Eu te amo.
Você é tudo para mim." (mixing both pronouns "tu" e "você"), which sounds very natural
even to educated speakers (even though it is a grammatical mistake). You may also hear
"Tu gosta de cantar", which is a mistake a bit more obvious to the ENS, but still often
made, except in some southern states.
In a nutshell, one may sometimes switch from "tu" to "você" almost freely, even in the
middle of a sentence, even if it may incur what prescriptive grammars call "wrong".
Grandma never allowed me to use "tu" when talking to others (she, and some older
generations, find it offensive/too informal), but that didn't preclude me or her from
using the associated objetive pronoun "te". Very weird if you actually think about it,
but absolutely natural to the ENS.
"Vós" is now confined to written language - as is mesoclisis, or some other pronoun
rarities "Dei a casa a ele = Dei-lha". The proposition "a" has mostly been replaced by
"para" - "Fui para a Bahia", "Dei a casa para ele"...
Proclisis sounds very weird in certain contexts. "Te dei um presente" sounds much more
natural to the ENS, even if wrong according to the grammar books, than "Dei-te o
presente". Contemporary literature easily disregards those rules, for the sake of
naturality - but pre-1922 works usually follow "the book". There is a tendency for
proclisis, even when it's not mandatory.
I see the future tense getting weaker as well: "Vou comprar o presente" sounds more
native-like than "Comprarei o presente". Some "mais-que-perfeito" forms may sound even
weirder: "ele chegara na festa antes de Joana" sounds less natural than "ele havia
chegado na festa antes de Joana". Overall, we tend to use "split forms" in lieu of
"pure" verb forms.
The verb "haver" is normally replaced by "ter" - "Hei de ser honesto" became "Tenho
de/que ser honesto" and "Há uma pedra no meio do caminho" became, rather famously, "Tem
uma pedra no meio do caminho".
Gerunds are more often used nowadays, sometimes to the extreme (like substituting "Eu
vou ligar para o cliente" by "Eu vou estar ligando para o cliente"). That "gerundism"
is usually avoided by the ENS, but sometimes has become almost standard in sub-educated
speech.
I've heard that there has also been some changes in pronunciation, but I don't know
exactly what happened.
If I read books from the 1970s (even technical, engineering books), I can clearly
notice some usages/vocabulary that would be weird today. The changes have been very
fast. Machado de Assis wrote only some 100 years ago, and his books, despite still
readable (and great!), sound almost foreign today. I wonder if this has happened to
other languages as strongly as it has in Brazilian Portuguese. |
|
|
@Acut: very
interesting post, I have long had the impression that with Brazilian and
European Portuguese we are watching two (both very beautiful) dialects smack-bang in
the process of turning into separate languages. It also seems to me that these changes
are happening very rapidly and I fully expect to see them as separate languages within
my lifetime (assuming I live to a decent age). With the rise of Brazil as an economic
power, I also wonder if the African lusophone countries will soon switch from teaching
the European standard to the Brazilian in their schools.
Personally I have such affection for both dialects that I'd like to see them converge a
little and stay one language (these unusually divergent dialects are part of the reason
why Portuguese is so beautiful IMO); but that's not a POV that has received much
sympathy on here when I've expressed it before. I can't see that happening anyway tbf.
Would you also say that Brazilian Portuguese uses the subject pronouns a lot more than
European Portuguese (or Spanish/Italian)? I have that impression. I think that
Brazilian Portuguese is just starting the process of turning from a pro-drop language
like Spanish or Italian into a language like French or English (as indeed happened to
French itself in the middle ages)- which is also fascinating if true.
Regarding archaisms (and I know this has been discussed on other threads) I'd like to
mention the question word "cuán" in Spanish (which is archaic, but not obsolete, in
most of the Spanish-speaking world).
It's far more beautiful and elegant than any of it's modern replacements. |
|
|
Brazilian standard and Portuguese standard are almost the same.
But that's not the point.
Educated colloquial usage in Brazil is different from both these standards
(since the Brazilian standard does not reflect the oral usage of Brazil).
It's just like Swiss German.
Standard/written Swiss German and Standard Germany's German
are almost the same (except for some vocabulary and spelling differences).
It is in the spoken language where differences are.
Current Brazilian elites benefit from diglossia, and in no way
they would accept the colloquial Brazilian usage
for a base of the new language
(something which has happened in South Africa, when the spoken language [Afrikaans]
replaced Dutch as a standard language).
In Brazil, many times native speakers are required to pass a Portuguese language test
in order to apply for a job. This does not happen in Argentina, UK, USA etc...If you're
a native speaker, you don't need tests to prove you're fluent in your 1st language.
This is done to discard poor people (who have no knowledge of ceremonial usage because
they frequented public schools and not private ones), so only rich people get good
jobs, and poor are poorer and poorer...In Brazil, the archaizing written standard is
used as a social exclusion tool. (For example, in India this is never done, since
people have an option of studying everything in English; no Tamilian would be excluded
from Tamilian society for not knowing formal Tamil; colloquial Tamil and English are
enough to succeed in Tamil-speaking areas of India). |
|
|
I didn't know about this. That's a pretty disgusting situation. :-(
Hopefully it changes soon...if this is being used as a tool to exclude the poor from
good jobs, then probably it is better that the two dialects split completely. Some
things are more important than languages.
2 persons have voted this message useful
| leosmith
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6551 days ago
2365 posts - 3804 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Tagalog
| Message 40 of 50 07 March 2013 at 6:27pm | IP Logged |
Iversen wrote:
| my stance is that it is as important to keep old words in use as it is to create new ones. |
|
|
No offense, but when you and others do this I always assume - "ah, a non-native speaker". I recently got scolded from someone who defended his very strange usage with a dictionary definition. Hard to argue against that.
1 person has voted this message useful
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