Talk:Portuguese language/Archive 7

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Archive 7

Why Mention This in the Introduction

Despite its status as a global language the international learning of Portuguese, and the schools which offer it as a subject, is smaller compared with more Euro-centric and smaller market languages such as German and Italian in addition to lacking official language status at the United Nations.

I would like this line to be removed for two reasons:

1. If you take out intuition, there are no reliable sources mentioned to back this claim.
2. It doesn't make sense to include this line in the opening paragraph.

If no objections are raised, I will remove it on the eighth day from now.

Sin un nomine (talk) 06:21, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree. --Good Hope Phanta (talk) 18:31, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Removed the line. Sin un nomine (talk) 15:03, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Another important question to avoid is the next: "the most spoken language in both South America (the number of Spanish and Portuguese speakers is actually extremely close, but about 51% of the continent's population lives in Brazil)"

Firstly, it is simply not true. You can add the population of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina, Peru and Chile and it is more than the population of Brazil. Secondly, there are nowadays 12-15 million of Spanish speakers as native or second language in the same Brazil. If you add this 12-15 million people, Spanish is obvioulsly, the most spoken language in South America. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.57.47.52 (talk) 15:50, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Lexical Stress: Please do not edit examples

Anonymous editors keep deleting the phrases "in Brazilian Portuguese" and "in European Portuguese" from the section on lexical stress. Please stop it!

The remarks are important, as the pronunciation of the pairs of words differs between the two varieties of the language, and some of the pairs differ in more than just stress, in some of the dialects.

This kind of misguided "correction" happens so often that I'm not sure how to avoid the problem. FilipeS

BTW, I'm Brazilian and I don't pronounce "ouvi" as [o'vi].

The pronunciations given in the article are the most common. Obviously, it would be impractical to represent all different accents. FilipeS 15:06, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm brazilian too and I don't pronounce "ouvi" as [o'vi] too.

How do you pronounce it? FilipeS 13:56, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

incorrect BP pronunciation

the IPA for the "brazilian portuguese" pronunciation contains some inaccuracies:

• "idade", "sorte" etc. are affricated not palatalized. see Talk:Portuguese phonology.

Aren't they both affricated and palatalized? "sorte" (AFAIK) doesn't end with the sound that "nuts" (English) ends with, which would be [t] + affricate. Instead, it's [t] + affricate + palatal. Smith.chuck 04:36, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

It is an affricate, namely [t̠ʃ]. This has been discussed here a few times before. SeeTalk: Portuguese phonology. FilipeS 07:20, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

• i don't believe that low-mid vowels exist in pre-tonic syllables.
• i question the superscripted /j/ after non-final nasal /e/; what's this supposed to mean?

both the Collins Dictionario Pratico and The Romance Languages (Harris and Vincent) support all of the above. Benwing 06:46, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Are you talking about the phonetic transcription of the excerpt from Camões' poem, at the bottom of the page? FilipeS

Manezês

Manezês Manezês is spoken in Florianópolis. They say it has a very close accent to the European one. http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manez%C3%AAs

Thank you very much for the link. However, that article is in Portuguese! I'm not sure we should link to it here in the English language section of Wikipedia... FilipeS

I've added it to the Dialects entry. FilipeS

I've added pt:Manezês to Wikipedia:Translation into English#Portuguese-to-English. User:Angr 17:43, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

I have taken a crack at translating it. --It's-is-not-a-genitive 16:32, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Guttural R

There was some controversy recently about the pronunciation of the initial R in European Portuguese. Wikipedian Richard George edited the uvular R IPA transcriptions into alveolar trills. I reverted his changes because I felt they were significant and inaccurate, and that he should have discussed them here in the Talk page first. Still, I suppose I could have made a bigger effort to make him see this, and "significant" is perhaps a subjective qualification.

Although an arbitration request has been issued by Richard George, and it's still underway, I felt it would be best for everyone if we sorted this out as soon as possible. Thus, I am presenting my evidence here, to be discussed. If convincing evidence to the contrary of my position is shown, I am willing to change my stance on this matter.

• First of all, I want to point out that the article, in its current version, does not deny that the alveolar trill is used in Portugal. On the contrary, by linking to the Guttural R page, it openly acknowledges the existence of that pronunciation.
• I argue, however, that the alveolar trill is not the most representative pronunciation of the Portuguese of Portugal; the guttural R (uvular, in this case) is. In favour of this position, I give the following sources and observations:

1. I am a native speaker, and most people I know use the guttural pronunciation, not the trill.
2. TV presenters in Portugal overwhelmingly use the guttural pronunciation. In the radio, the trill is a bit more common, but I would say the guttural R is still predominant.
3. This expert opinion (in Portuguese) states that the uvular pronunciation is the most common in the country today: "O r inicial, tal como o dobrado (rr) tem, de facto duas pronúncias, uma também apical, mas múltiplo, ou seja com mais toques, o que lhe dá o chamado som rolado, muito usado ainda sobretudo no Norte de Portugal, e o uvular, muito parecido com o r alemão, que é actualmente o mais usado."
4. Mateus, Maria Helena & d'Andrade, Ernesto (2000) The Phonology of Portuguese ISBN 0-19-823581-X, on page 5, describe the uvular pronunciation as the standard, although they also mention the trill, and they identify the former with "the standard dialects spoken in Lisbon and Coimbra, which are accepted in Portugal as a reference for teaching Portuguese as a second language and are the most heard on radio and television" (page 4). FilipeS

The uvular trill is the most common in my opinion. I'm european portuguese and I always use R and hear others use it too, not ʁ (I'm from Lisbon). I'd change the page but I may be wrong, maybe the uvular trill R is not the most common in europe but I doubt it.

Also no r is not an allophone. People don't pronounce it by accident, it happens to people that have trouble pronouncing R. Also common people can tell the difference between r and R. Anyway not an expert, phonetics is just a hobby for me so I might as well be wrong. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Raydred (talk • contribs) 15:18, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Should we put a note pointing /r/ as alophone of /ʁ/? José San Martin 00:55, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, I suppose we could change

"There is considerable dialectal variation in the value of the rhotic phonemes /?/ and /?/. See Guttural R in Portuguese, for details."

to

"There is considerable dialectal variation in the value of the phoneme /?/. In Europe and Africa, its most frequent realizations are the voiced uvular fricative [ʁ] and the trill [r]. In Brazil, it is usually pronounced as a voiceless velar fricative [x], or as a voiceless glottal fricative [h]. See Guttural R in Portuguese, for details."

as is already at Portuguese phonology. That should avoid any misunderstandings. To be honest, the transcription of the initial rhotic of Portuguese is always going to be a complicated matter. /r/ is its traditional value, but using this would give the wrong idea about what is the most common pronunciation today, to foreigners. I like /ʁ/ because it still looks like an "R", although in absolute terms [x] and [h] are probably used my more speakers than either of the former two... FilipeS

• I am a native speaker of portuguese too. The trill is also used in the South of Portugal and in the lower classes of the major cities except Lisbon. The only people I know that pronounciate the other r (that sounds french to me) are mostly from Lisbon. So I think the trill r is still the predominant.Japf1 01:10, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

-Regarding the above discussion of the appearance of /ʁ/ relative to r / R ... If you're dealing with IPA transcription, we ought to try and come as close as possible to that which is a 'standard' pronunciation. /ʁ/ for 'reais'? Really? I am by no means a speaker of Brazilian Portuguese, but I've *only* heard it as [x] or [h]. In IPA, orthographic representation is not important; representation of the sounds produced by native speakers is paramount. Anyone expecting to interpret IPA transcription ought to be assumed to understand IPA, so deviation in orthography isn't really an issue. Maybe provide both as examples of allophones?

There is no standard pronunciation. Portuguese is pluricentric. The Portuguese standard is /ʁ/. In Brazil, no doubt it's different. Whatever -- there are four main different ways to pronounce this phoneme. But the article can't use all of them, all of the time, so it picked one, and uses that as a representative -- not a standard -- of the Portuguese "rr", which is often (though not everywhere) guttural. It doesn't make much difference which regional variant is used in the article, as long as it's consistent within itself, and (preferably) with other Portuguese language articles. This article clearly mentions that there is more than one way to pronounce it. FilipeS 12:36, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough. Thanks for the clarification, Filipe. Smith.chuck 04:38, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

-WRT the box on the right-hand side of the main article, it lists [poxtu'ges] as the Brazilian pronunciation. In the audio file that plays for the pronunciation, which is supposed to represent Brazilian Portuguese in the second pronunciation, it sure sounds to me like [portu'ges] not with the {IPA|[x]} at all. I'm not a native speaker, but I do detect an inconsistency there. Anyone care to comment? Smith.chuck 09:05, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

If that is how the audio sounds (I'll confess in advance I haven't checked yet) it is probably because the person who recorded it is from Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina or Paraná. Using an alveolar trill in syllable coda is an exception in BP; you will hear [x], [h], [ɹ] or [χ] everywhere else in the country, including the most populous areas of the country (namely Minas Gerais, Bahia, Rio de Janeiro (state) and São Paulo (state). I think the pronunciation should either reflect the speech of the majority or include all the variants (that may be cumbersome). Macgreco 23:24, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

I have listened to the file and indeed it doesn't sound like [x] - it actually sounded to me like an alveolar tap. See this [1] article on the various realizations - seven, plus a stigmatized [ś] and the caipira [ɹ] which is not cited - in Brazil. Macgreco 00:00, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

The article focuses on the main variants of Portuguese. The caipira "r" is mentioned in the specialized articles Guttural R, Portuguese dialects, and Caipira. FilipeS 12:38, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

I meant the pdf paper that I linked. Macgreco 23:53, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Vouch for this. Brazilian native, and our "rr" is definitely softer than the European one. Frmoraes 03:10, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

You can keep your vouches for yourself. Show me some sources. FilipeS 00:26, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Translation of excerpt from Os Lusíadas

The following change has been made, with the argument that there were translation errors:

For all the qualities she saw in them --> For all the qualities (s)he saw in her

And in their language, which when she imagines, --> And in the language, which when she imagines,

I am changing the verses back, because these are not errors:

1. In context, via clearly refers to Venus (she).
2. Gente (people) is feminine singular in Portuguese (her), but a plural in English (them).
3. "The language" is not good English. You must use the possessive, "their language"; it can't be omitted, as in Portuguese. FilipeS 22:56, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough. I went through the article rather quickly and didn't realize that all of those verses were from one contiguous passage; I thought they were a series of isolated stanzas. Taken in context, you are absolutely correct in reverting my edit. Dasondas 23:01, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

On the other hand, FilipeS, wouldn't you agree that "E na língua" should be translated to "And in the language" instead of "And in their language"? I think I'll change that one. Dasondas 23:10, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Does anybody have an opinion about possibly changing the translation of "estrela" from "star" to "destiny"? I think "destiny" would be a better fit here and would be a proper rendering of the Portuguese into English. Dasondas 00:44, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I have to go away for awhile, so I made the change suggested above. I think it reads a little bit better now. Let us (me) know if someone disagrees. Dasondas 00:58, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I think that "star" in this case is supposed to mean "good fortune", but I will check it in the literature before making any changes to the translation. FilipeS 10:56, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I considered "good fortune" as well and that might actually render a slightly better-sounding English. However I chose "destiny" because this passage is a description of a debate (or discusssion) between the gods about the future legacy of Lusitania, and in this sense I think that "destiny" is a more accurate English rendition of the sense of the dramatic action since "fortune" or even "luck" would imply a result do to chance or nature rather than by deistic assistance. I also changed "showed" to "displayed" to improve the flow of the translation. I think this helps also, but I'll readily concede that there are other possibilities that might be better yet. Dasondas 12:27, 5 October 2006 (UTC)~

I've now found Lengdon White's translation from 2001, which is the only modern English translation I could find referenced anywhere (albeit my research was fairly cursory)> I didn't find his efforts particularly satisfying, by I repeat them here for discussion,

Against him spoke the lovely Venus

Favoring the people of Portugal

For her love of Roman virtue

She saw ressurected in them,

In their stout hearts, in their star

Which shone bright above Ceuta,

In the language which an inventive mind

Could mistake for Latin, passibly declined

I'm intrigued by his translation of "mostraram" into "shined". In the first place the number is confusing because "star" is singular and "mostraram" is plural. Clearly in White's translation it is only the star which is shining and not the hearts, so this appears to be one problem. The other is with the passive-voice rendering. This possibility had actually occured to me before finding White's translation, but I thought that Portuguese required the pronomial form of "mostrar" (e.g. "mostrar-se") in order to be translated as "shone" in the passive voice, although perhaps in the days of Camões White's rendering would have been fine. We are now quite far away from my areas of expertise, and it would be educational to hear a (much) more informed opinion on this point, such as that of FilipeS. Dasondas 12:48, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I like Mr. White's translation, actually! It does not stray much from the original, but flows very smoothly! I disagree that his translation implies that only the star "shone", as this verb is valid both for singular and plural. It can very well refer to the "star" and the "stout hearts" (the latter of which, by the way, is a nicer translation than the one the article has currently). Regarding the use of the passive, well, White has rephrased the metaphor a little bit. It's very difficult to keep everything the same when translating poetry. But I don't think it takes anything substantial away from the sense of the verses.

Going back to what we were discussing before, though, I have to say that I'm not entirely satisfied with your change of "star" to "destiny". The original poem has a metaphor -- why lose it in the translation? Keep it! I think the English word "star" has the connotation of "good fortune", too, like in Portuguese. What do you think? FilipeS 14:11, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, I certainly agree that White's translation of this passage taken in its entirety is better than what we have now, and it wouldn't bother me at all if we just used his version. On second read, I can see how "stout hearts" might be shining as well "their star" as part of the metaphor -- although I think most readers of the English who are not already familiar with the original will only see a star shining without the hearts. On the other hand, I do agree that White has preserved the sense of the metaphor in his use of "star"; in the original translation that I found in the article I don't think that this metaphor was well-preserved -- that is actually what prompted me to attempt a change. The connotation certainly exists in English, as you point out, however IMO due to modern usage habits it is a weaker connotation these days than that in Portuguese. I also prefer White's rendering of "corrupçaõ", which was another difficult point in the translation that bothered me. I also agree that White flows very well and is more poetic, so upon further reading and after considering your comments I say, "Let's just use White instead". I do note with a (very) small amount of satisfaction that White at least agrees with me on "the language" instead of "their language" :) Anyhow, FilipeS, I am well aware of the enormous amount of excellent work that you have done on this article, and others similar, so at this point I will simply step aside on this point and let you do whatever you think is best with this passage. Thanks for engaging me on this; I enjoyed it. Dasondas 14:49, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your kind remarks! Even though I contributed substantially to the translation which is currently in the article, I would not mind if it were replaced with White's translation, which is better. However, we must be careful with copyright issues. Is it O.K. to copy White's translation to the article, if we cite him as the author?... FilipeS 17:23, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

According to WP:CITE there shouldn't be any problem using this material if it is cited properly. I have the information necessary to make a proper citation, but when I went back to the article to make the change I noticed that the only other footnote (titled "Note") appears to be an orphan insofar as it doesn't seem (unless I missed it) to have a direct referrent in the body of the article. Being a newcomer to this article, I'd prefer not to start making changes in footnote and reference formats, etc. On the other hand, if you have the time to track-back the existing note and let me know what is the correct referring sentence/paragraph in the main text, I will be happy to make the appropriate formatting adjustment to: a) preserve the existing note and include a working footnote superscript in the body of the article and b) incorporate White's translation of the Lusíadas passage with proper citation. Dasondas 14:38, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Hello again. I'm pretty sure the footnote had to do with the number of speakers of Portuguese. Most of that material has been moved to Geographic distribution of Portuguese, so the footnote may now have become obsolete. Still, I can't figure out where it was supposed to be in the other page... FilipeS 16:04, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

OK, I included White's translation. I put his name in the column header and gave a proper footnote reference at the end of the passage. I think it works, don't you? I also deleted the orphaned note. Dasondas 03:28, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

It's fine — good job. :-) FilipeS 13:10, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Thank you, FilipeS. Dasondas 14:02, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Dialects and classification

Please bring back the dialect maps and the spoken samples. They're wonderful illustrations of the article and hiding them in sub-articles does not make this article better. And the section is now effectively without any clear references.
The point of the section "Classification" seems to have been somewhat misinterpreted due to its previous title: "Classification and related langauges". The point is not to examine in detail how Portuguese relates to each of its linguistic neighbors, but to provide general information of its place among the Romance languages. Consider down-sizing this section since its size is not the least bit motivated. Portuguese is not unique enough in this instance to motivate such an excessive treatment. There should really be more focus on other sections.

Peter ^Isotalo 23:22, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

For a quick classification, see the template at the top of the article. I'm reverting your change to the section heading, as your version is less descriptive than the previous one. FilipeS 23:29, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

The infobox is a minimalistic quickie of a reference chart, and not much else. It is by no means a satisfactory summary of anything. Please see Wikipedia:WikiProject Languages/Template#Classification for why you should consider trimming the section. A lot of the information about development from Latin, for example, would seem more at home in the history section.

Is anything going to be done about the almost complete lack of citations, btw? I can't see this article making it through even the most ingratiating of FA-reviews in its current state.

Peter ^Isotalo 13:43, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

You missed this part:

These are only suggestions, things to give you focus and to get you going, and you shouldn't feel obligated in the least to follow them. However, try to stick to the format for the Infobox for each language.

FilipeS 20:22, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Ignoring guidelines usually assumes you have a good motivation for doing so. I don't see one.

Peter ^Isotalo 02:34, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

"Ignoring guidelines usually assumes you have a good motivation"... Really?! Which Wikipedia guideline says that? FilipeS 13:24, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

I've tried to motivate my edits with detailed arguments and all you've done is revert and claimed that you don't have to motivate anything because the guidelines don't need to be followed. If you feel that an exception is necessary, you should motivate it.

Peter ^Isotalo 15:11, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Don't be so melodramatic. I actually implemented one of your most significant suggestions. You just can't please some people. FilipeS 20:56, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I object because I see it as a problem, not because I want to be placated. And, again, try not to forget to make the article verifiable. It's not up to current FA-standards and I don't want to see it demoted.

Peter ^Isotalo 21:42, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I suppose the dialects topic is wrong, concerning the dialects spoken in Portugal. In fact, there's no different portuguese dialects in Portugal mainland. All portuguese mainland regions use exactly the same spelling and the same grammar, being a slightly different accent the only noticeable change. I believe that a difference in accent is not enough to define a dialect - if so, ultimately, six billion different dialects were spoken on Earth: each human being speaks with his unique accent...
In conclusion, I suggest the deletion of the reference to Portugal's mainland dialects. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.138.39.53 (talk) 14:42, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

No, it's not wrong. Differences in pronunciation (in some cases accompanied by differences in vocabulary and grammar) are dialectal differences. FilipeS 21:37, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I object the term "Nortenho" to identify one of the Portuguese dialects. "Nortenho" means Northerner, and as we can see from the map, it is abusively used to identify one Northerner dialect of Portugal. (Alto-Minhoto and Transmontano are also "Nortenhos", as they are spoken in the North of Portugal.) The use of "Nortenho" to identify the dialect spoken in the Porto-Braga axis derives from a bias some people from that region have, which reserves to themselves that adjective. Linguistics never use the term "Nortenho" to identify that specific dialect, but to identify the whole family of dialects spoken in Northern Portugal; the specific dialect identified with number 9 in the map is called "Baixo-Minhoto-Duriense" ("Portuense", if refering to the specific dialect spoken around Porto), not "Nortenho" 213.13.230.99 (talk) 18:48, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Great Info! I am working on learning Portuguese. It's a very fascinating language. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.239.232.35 (talk) 18:33, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Very Large Page

I archived the majority of the talk, because it was just to long and difficult to navigate. Now, this page is gigantic. Should it be separated into several smaller pages? It is really hard to navigate the page. I vote for this! Charlesblack 22:40, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Do you mean this Talk Page, or the main article? FilipeS 13:23, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Lei → Ella

I'm italian and I changed in the italian example lei into ella, beacause, although the first is far more used, lei is not correct, it means her, in function of object (e.g.: Quella è la mia amica, penso che conoscere lei o ragazze come lei potrebbe farti bene). The correct subject pronoun is ella or essa if referring to something unanimate (e.g.:Ella mi guardò male. L'aria è irrespirabile, essa è piena di fumo.) Giacomo Volli

Please stop trying to be cute. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.141.23.15 (talk) 02:01, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Portuguese vs. Romanian

The sentences currently given as examples in Portuguese: Latin and other Romance languages also apper in Romanian language: Classification. Clearly, one of the versions was inspired by the other. I don't think it's very pleasant to have these same examples reused in the articles of two Romance languages; only one of the article should keep them, or at least they should be reduced in one of the articles. Does anyone remember which article was the first to use these examples? FilipeS 23:29, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Seems like a somewhat of a non-issue to me. In an encyclopedia with 1.6 million articles, some redundancy is unavoidable. As long as the examples are relevant to both articles, I can't see what the problem is. But if you want to insist on purging duplicate material, you can start by weeding out the classification section here, because it sure is bloated...

Peter ^Isotalo 19:05, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Opinion noted. Anyone else who can actually answer my question?... FilipeS 22:44, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Small rewrite in intro

I've eliminated the following from the intro:

Portuguese is often nicknamed The language of Camões, after the author of the Portuguese national epic The Lusiadas

As far as I know, this is only done in Portuguese. I don't think it's "often" called "the language of Camões" in English. FilipeS

It doesnt. And the quote above doesnt either. What it states is that portuguese is often nicknamed the language of Camões, and not that people in other languages (say, english) nickname it language of Camões.

LtDoc 18:45, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Since the text is in English, it can be interpreted either way. FilipeS (talk) 15:25, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Caipira and Sertanejo

Can someone explain what is the supposed difference between those two? Macgreco 23:06, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

It's the damn same thing.. sertanejo is supposed from Sertão the geographic region far from the coastline that is little inhabitated, and caipira is anything related with rural regions. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ciao 90 (talk • contribs) 20:35, 22 February 2007 (UTC).

Not exactly the same thing, I should say. At least not in all of Brazil. "Caipira" is used much more to refer to people from rural areas in the Southeast, South and Center West regions in Brazil. They also use "sertanejo" in that sense. But, in other regions, "sertanejo" - although "sertão" means, in a strict sense, any countryland inside the territory, away from the coast - is more referred to the rural people who live in the semi-arid "sertão" from Northeast, while "caipiras" are the ones from other regions. 201.9.167.80 (talk) 08:30, 20 April 2008 (UTC)Ygor Coelho

I disagree. The words caipira e sertanejo mean the same for almost every person in Brazil. And I think neither one should be used to name a dialect, but an accent. 186.212.34.177 (talk) 21:35, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

GA Fail

Do not nominate an article when none of the objections on the FA review have been fixed. This article needs references and external links needs to be cut down. M3tal H3ad 07:22, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Ok, that was really harsh. The article has references, just not overly specified. If the FAR concerns had been addressed, we'd been talking FA status, and this is merely about GA status. Considering that the decision was made a mere 3 minutes (!) after the article was listed as a candidate it's difficult to believe that a serious review was made. I am going to relist the article quite soon unless more detailed and thorough criticism is provided.

Peter ^Isotalo 09:27, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Has references? It has 5 and TWO more sources tag (since January 2007) and (December 2006). Articles with more source tag are failed right away. What are you trying to say about GA? that any article can get it? its "mere" in comparison to FA?. You can't expect an article that was de-lsited as an FA for failing criteria 1a, 1c, 2b, 3, 4. The point is absolutely no effort has been made since the Featured article review

• • Unsourced claims - The CPLP or Community of Portuguese Language Countries is an international organization consisting of the eight independent countries which have Portuguese as an official language.
  • Portuguese is with Spanish the fastest growing western language,
  • The Portuguese speaking African countries are expected to have a combined population of 83 million by 2050.
  • The language is also starting to gain popularity in Asia, mostly due to East Timor's boost in the number of speakers in the last five years,
  • Beginning in the 16th century, the extensive contacts between Portuguese travelers and settlers, African slaves, and local populations led to the appearance of many pidgins with varying amounts of Portuguese influence
  • The earliest surviving records of a distinctively Portuguese language are administrative documents of the 9th century,
  • Most of the lexicon of Portuguese is derived from Latin.
  • Between the 9th and the 15th centuries Portuguese acquired about 1000 words from Arabic by influence of Moorish Iberia.
  • Starting in the 15th century, the Portuguese maritime explorations led to the introduction of many loanwords from Asian languages.
  • There is a maximum of 9 oral vowels and 19 consonants, though some varieties of the language have fewer phonemes (Brazilian Portuguese has only 7 oral vowel phonemes)

If you want you can get a review Wikipedia:Good article review but i'm positive that GA reviewers will agree with me. So main the reasons are two unsourced tags, not enough sources, one sentence paragraphs, a one sentence section, too many external links and the fact that no effort has been made to improve the article per the Featured article review. Have a nice day! :) M3tal H3ad 10:30, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't need a review, I just noticed that you for some reason assumed that the FA requirements were more or less identical to the GA requirements, and it was obvious you needed to provide a wee bit more specific details instead of just going "what they said!".

Anyway, the article has 10 separate references, but only 5 footnotes. Footnote counting is not a constructive way of judging how well-referenced an article is. And I'm not going to comment on what the exact difference between an FA and a GA is, except that simply saying that FA standards not being met is the same thing as failing as a GA. I'm sure this is some prestige thing, but let's face it: GA have lesser demands than FAs, so requirements for individual articles need to have a minimum of specification.

But let's go through your demand for citations here.

• The CPLP – It's like asking for a reference of what the UN is. Or, for that matter, Slayer.
• 16th century appearance of pidgins – What are you questioning? The existence of pidgins or when they appeared? Both seem a bit too much like common knowledge, or at least not controversial.
• Most Portuguese words are of Latin origin – Portuguese is derived from Latin. It's technically a Latin dialect with a long history. What's the reason for questioning this statement?
• Number of vowels, consonants, etc. – There's a footnote at the end of the section that says "the reference applies to the entire section".

The other queries are more reasonable, but I think I proved my point about checklist type reviewing. Ignorance alone isn't a valid reason to demand a footnote. Am I correct in assuming that you have little or no knowledge or experience of either Portuguese or linguistics in general?

Peter ^Isotalo 13:54, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

The dialect map is wrong

Is neccesary to change the map of the dialect of portuguese dialect in Portugal. The map included Olivenza and this city is Spain. Noviscum 17:11, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

No, OlivenÇa is a Portuguese City and territory by International Law and the Treaty of Wien, ruled sinse 1801 by Spain(ilegal ocupation). The Portuguese is also a language or dialect in Olivença. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.22.149.201 (talk) 15:39, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

The language map shows Portuguese spoken as an official, but not native language in Angola. However on the Angola page it says that 60% of the Population speaks Portuguese as a native language (and 20% more are fluent). Shouldn't Angola be colored dark green (indicating it is spoken as a native language) if the majority in fact do speak it as a native language. Perhaps, in the way, Mozambique could be striped with dark and light green, since over 10% there speak Portuguese as a native language (although not the majority). I think these changes would reflect the linguistic situation more accurately. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.42.123.30 (talk) 07:44, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Derived from Pre-Roman languages?

Some of the words which are purportedly not derived from Latin look like they could be. Isn't abóbora derived from the Latin apoperes, cerveja from cerevísia, and saco from saccu? Corvokarasu 14:44, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Maybe, but I think Latin cerevisia is of Celtic origin and saccu may be of Punic origin. Nevertheless, you do make a valid criticism... FilipeS (talk) 15:23, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

There is a theory that pre-roman Lusitani spoke a language similar to the roman latin due to themselves being originally from the same region ... and who can claim the moral authoring of any of the latin common words ??? 89.214.178.128 (talk) 23:22, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Unique features section

This section says: "For instance, the meaning of Tenho tentado falar com ela may be closer to "I have been trying to talk to her" than to "I have tried to talk to her", depending on the context". I can't think of any possible case or context in which this sentence could have the second meaning shown. The "depending on the context" bit may have been added just to "be on the safe side", or the editor might have had another example in mind. I'll change it for now.

How well do you speak English? FilipeS 12:53, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Well enough, I think. If this was meant as an affirmation that "I have tried" can be used to denote an action that initiated in the past but continues in the present, please state so. An example would also be good (by the way, sorry for the late response). 201.1.18.48 08:53, 21 May 2007 (UTC) (That was me, forgot to log in. AoS1014 09:01, 21 May 2007 (UTC))

How about this, then? O tempo está óptimo. Tenho ido à praia todos os dias. "The weather is great. I've gone to the beach every day". This translation seems just as good to me, if not better, than "I've been going to the beach every day". Or consider Temos-nos falado todos os dias. Both "We've talked to each other every day" and "We've been talking to each other every day" seem like acceptable translations to me. FilipeS 17:53, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

"Tenho ido à praia todos os dias" implies that I expect to keep going to the beach in the near future (otherwise I'd say "fui à praia todos os dias"). Likewise, I'm reasonably sure (and this is where a native speaker might be needed to confirm either way) that "I have gone to the beach every day" implies something entirely in the past (as in, the vacation is already over). I do think "I have been going to the beach" is the correct translation. Same thing for the second example.

Something I thought that would be probably be good to add, though (so I can add something, not just criticize...) is that the verb "ter" + participle has this meaning only in the present indicative. In most other tenses it has the same meaning as would be expected in English (ter feito - to have done; tinha feito - had done, etc.), with the only exception, I think, of preterite indicative, in which it has no meaning/is never used. Thoughts? - AoS1014 13:02, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

What you are saying is that the meaning of the present perfect differs more between Portuguese and English than that of other perfect tenses. This is true, but it's not an exclusive of Portuguese and English. The same happens between Spanish and English, or Italian and English, or indeed Portuguese and Spanish... FilipeS 13:40, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Also, the sentence "Ouviu a última notícia?", while perfectly understandable (at least in BP), feels a bit incomplete (and is technically ambiguous). The most natural (and unambiguous) translation for "Have you heard the last news?" in BP would be "Você ouviu a última notíca?", while in EP it would normally be translated as "Ouviste a última notícia?" (also unambiguous). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by AoS1014 (talk • contribs) 06:48, 29 April 2007 (UTC).

Neither sentence is "technically ambiguous" in context, which is how real people speak. And whether you include the pronoun or not makes no difference to the point being made, which is about the meaning of the verb. FilipeS 12:53, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

I can concede this, it wasn't much of an issue. Just note I only said it because it sounded incomplete to me, and I like to think of myself as being a real person. 201.1.18.48 08:53, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Numbers of Speakers and Ranking

I'm going to add the encarta estimate to the ranking of native speakers. For reference here it is:

1. Mandarin (not estiamted by them but ranked 1 by all current estimates)
2. Arabic
3. Hindi
4. English
5. Spanish
6. Bengali
7. Portuguese

Android Mouse 20:58, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

The moment you see different numbers in the introduction and the info box, you know something is wrong. After following up on all the cited references, I'm note sure how the 210-250 mil. came to be; only one private website mentioned them, without any references. In fact, most sources seem to be in agreement on 177 million speakers, and their most widely-cited primary source is the research project "Ethnologue" by SIL International, a formal UNICEF consultant. I omitted the figures for non-native speakers because I couldn't find references for the information. You're welcome to add it back with the proper citations. Binba (talk) 18:51, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Taken from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil": Population: 187,393,918. That alone is more than the 177 million stated. The number in the pt wiki is 230 million (aprox.), which makes much more sense. Why such difference? --CaioMarcos (talk) 04:41, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Brazilian is not portuguese

The brazilian is a evolution of the portuguese but the brazilian has his own ortography and is a different language right now.

The Brazilian Constitution says otherwise. FilipeS 15:32, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Art. 13. A língua portuguesa é o idioma oficial da República Federativa do Brasil.

You are an idiot, I´m quite surprised that a brazilian who knows at least how to write english, can say something like that.

Please refrain from personal attacks. That's a violation of Wikipedia policy. FilipeS 14:45, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

This is just plain stupid, maybe you are one of those who think that Portugal is Spain..., wait, if so, American English is a language on its own as well! Mascal4 20:30, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Origin of nasal diphthongs

I am deleting the following addition to the article (in boldface):

Nasal diphthongs occur mostly at the end of words. This is partly due to the origin of the nasalized vowel combinations, which in many cases are derived from latin letters such as m and n, which require nasalization when following a vowel in portuguese (i.e. the words "san" and "são" would be pronounced so similarly by most portuguese speakers as to eliminate a need for the former spelling, because the pronunciation is essentially the same). With the large number of latin words which terminate with the letters m or n following a vowel, it is a common occurrence to see such letters replaced in portugues by dipthongs that reflect the same phonology. The cases in which a nasal dipthong does not replace a terminus such as -an or -am are generally words in which a stress mark is required at a syllable other than the final syllable of the word.

While what is said is basically correct, it is explained in a language with some inaccuracies, and it seems inappropriate to focus so much on a particular detail, in a generic article like this. FilipeS 14:43, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Language Regulator

The International Portuguese Language Institute is not the official regulator of the Portuguese language as claimed in the article. In fact, most people don't even know the Cape Verde-based IILP even exists ! I don't know about Portugal, but, in Brazil at least, the Brazilian Literary Academy (Academia Brasileira de Letras, incorrectly translated in the Wikipedia as the "Brazilian Academy of Letters") is recognized as the official regulator of Brazilian Portuguese. Toeplitz 12:12, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Are large areas of Brazil Spanish speaking?

I am a little confused. According to the Spanish language map large sections of Brazil are Spanish speaking. If this is true you should change the Portuguese map and show the Spanish speaking areas. If it is not then please let the Spanish language page know.

This article is about Portuguese, not Spanish. In any event, the Spanish language page has already been alerted to that inaccuracy. FilipeS 17:31, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

That's right. They have been alerted but nothing has happened. More people need to let them know their map is bias. Please go to Talk: Spanish Language

Thanks

Someone needs to correct the map. FilipeS 04:22, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

It would make sense that some areas of Brazil would have some Spanish speakers, as Brazil borders many Spanish-speaking countries; but are these areas actually dominantly Spanish-speaking as a whole? This statement seems a little ambiguous to me. But then again I'm not Brazilian, :-) so maybe someone else can clear this up. :-) learnportuguese (talk) 02:13, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I've never heard of any area of Brazil where people speak Spanish instead of Portuguese. Same for Portugal, it only borders Spain and yet none of its territory is Spanish speaking. Húsönd 02:49, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

The map is entirely wrong for sure. In Brazil almost all the population speaks Portuguese. Those who don't, in general, speak Amerindian languages, Italian and German dialects or Japanese, with very small linguistic minorities of other languages. Not only there are few Spanish speakers, but also, in fact, Portuguese is the language that is spoken by thousands of people (Brazilian immigrants and native people) around the borders with Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, not the opposite. This is a fact.201.9.167.80 (talk) 08:35, 20 April 2008 (UTC)Ygor Coelho

Yes. The map has already been corrected at the Commons, but some users permanently try to revert or upload other versions that basically make huge chunks of Brazil Spanish speaking areas (not to mention doing the same with the US, Canada, the Philippines, Morocco, Western Sahara, the Falklands!!!). It is a permant struggle... You can all participate in the discussions at Image:Map-Hispanophone World.png (the one used in this article) and Image:Map-Hispanophone World.PNG (a version where an user is trying to paint the "world" as Spanish speaking). Thank you. The Ogre (talk) 09:49, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Remark on fluminense deleted

I have deleted the following remark:

Due to a great number of italian descendents in this state, many words suffer some vocal changings: 'u' instead of 'o' and a 'i' instead of 'e'.

Not only is it unsourced, but I can't understand what the editor was trying to say with it. FilipeS 17:35, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

wrong link

In the article Portuguese dialects, the section with the Fluminense link, it links to the Fluminense Football team, not an article on the Fluminense dialect of Brazilian Portuguese.

learnportuguese 02:15, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Fixed, thanks. You could have posted in the talk page of Portuguese dialects. FilipeS 20:48, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

"Spoken in"

The "spoken in" section of the infobox is too ambiguous. What criteria of inclusion should there be for listing countries there? If it's just countries with a large community of Portuguese speakers, then many are missing. If it's countries with a large percentage of population speaking the language, then many shouldn't be there. In Equatorial Guinea for instance, virtually nobody speaks the language despite it having been arbitrarily declared official. Húsönd 02:10, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree that it's too broad. We should take a look at how it's done in other language articles, but in principle I think the table should list only the countries where the language is official. FilipeS (talk) 23:58, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Well the name of the section is quite clear, "spoken in" mean countries where there is evidence that a language is spoken. I see no evidence that portuguese is spoken in Guinea ecuatorial even if a political decision made it an official language.--Kimdime69 (talk) 11:00, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Hello guys! Just to give a help and avoid edition wars: this source at least does not report Portuguese as being spoken in E. G. Ten Islands (talk) 11:03, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

In fact the best website I know about geolinguistic (unfortunatly in french) state [2] that a portugues based creole (crioulo) is spoken in the island of Bioko and Annobon by 9000 people but there is not evidence at all that the portuguese language itself is spoken--Kimdime69 (talk) 11:22, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Vocabulary section

Here's what I'm thinking of doing: put the examples in this section into a single table (as follows), and move most of the text that is presently there to the Portuguese vocabulary main article. My argument is that, although the text is interesting and well written (and therefore worth moving to the other article), it really comes down to a series of examples which could be even more reader-friendly in a table. On the other hand, the Portuguese vocabulary article, which currently is just a list, would have some well-written text added to it.

However, I have a few doubts about this change, so I thought I'd ask for more opinions here in the Talk Page first. Please have your say. FilipeS (talk) 23:57, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Word	Meaning	Origin
abóbora	pumpkin		Celtiberian
bezerro	year-old calf
cerveja	beer		Celtic
saco	bag		Phoenician
cachorro	puppy/dog		Basque
espora	spur	*spaúra	Gothic
estaca	stake	*stakka
guerra	war	*wirro
aldeia	village	aldaya الضيعة	Arabic
alface	lettuce	alkhass الخس
armazém	warehouse	almahazan المخزن
azeite	olive oil	azzait زيت
Fátima	city in Portugal	Fāṭimah فاطمة
metical	Mozambican currency	miṭqāl مطقال
oxalá	hopefully	in shaʾ Allāh إن شاء الله
corja	rabble	kórchhu	Malay
chá	tea	chá	Chinese
catana	cutlass	katana	Japanese
batata	potato		Taino
abacaxi	pineapple	ibá cati	Tupi-Guarani
ananás		naná
tucano	toucan	tucan	Guarani
cafuné	head caress	kifumate	Kimbundu
caçula	youngest child	kusula
marimbondo	tropical wasp
bungular	to dance like a wizard	kubungula
castelhano	Castilian	castellano	Spanish
fiambre	wet-cured ham	fiambre
melena	hair lock	melena
bife	steak	beef	English
folclore	folklore	folklore
futebol	football	football

This is a good idea, although I would suggest removing "Fátima", for it stands out as the only proper name in the list. And I could suggest the inclusion of the word "esquerdo", from Basque "ezker". Húsönd 17:56, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the support, but I'm very hesitant. One one hand, I'm not entirely pleased with the current version, which feels a bit like a long stream of loanwords. But on the other hand at least there's a text to tie the examples together. Reducing it all to a table might look a bit... naked. More feedback is welcome. FilipeS (talk) 17:29, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Seems a good idea. A small correction is necessary, though. "Cachorro" in Portuguese stands only for "dog". It only means "puppy" in Castillian (Spanish). Ninguém (talk) 01:39, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Andorra?

Is Portuguese spoken in Andorra? I ask for 2 reasons: first the country is out of alphabetical order in the infobox, second it's not on the map of Portuguese-speaking areas 129.67.125.194 (talk) 17:25, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Portuguese is spoken by a considerably large community of Portuguese immigrants in Andorra. However, Andorra should not be listed there, along with the countries where Portuguese is an official language. Removed now. Húsönd 17:48, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Need help

Please, I need to know the meaning of two words I always hear Jose Mojica Marins say in his films. I don't have subtitles. They are pronounced: 1. "fo-say, or po-say" 2. "fee-o-mee!" Thank you. Mike P (talk) 00:06, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, if the movie was Brazilian, then I guess the second word could well be "filme", which means "movie". As for the first one, not that easy. But maaaaybe the word you heard was the very common "você", meaning "you". Húsönd 11:56, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

ThanksMike P (talk) 16:55, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

The first one might be "fosse", which is a present subjunctive form of ser (to be), often translated as "were". Tvindy (talk) 04:16, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

IPA for "Português" in BP

It says "discuss on talk before changing", so here goes. The article currently gives three realizations for "português" in BP: (1) [portu'ges] (2) [portu'geis] (3) [pohtu'geiʃ]

I have no objection to (3). However, (1) and (2) both indicate an alveolar trill for the "r", which is not a widely-heard realization in BP. In BP a "r" following a vowel, but preceding a consonant (other than "r"), can be realized as either

• [ɾ]
• the realization of the /ʁ/ phoneme, which in BP is most commonly [χ] or [h]

Thus we have three possibilities: [ɾ], [χ] or [h], for the "r" of "português". Another question is to what extent choices in the realization of the "r" correlate with the choice between [s] and [ʃ] for the written "s" at the end of the word. In any case it's clear that there are many possible realizations, and that the currently displayed realizations don't do a very good job of displaying them to the reader. Grover cleveland (talk) 08:22, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

The Brasilian dialect where ends with the voiceless postalveolar fricative consonant [ʃ] is the carioca dialect, where voiced uvular fricative is pronunced as with the voiceless uvular (or velar) fricative (χ (uvular) or x (velar)). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Luizdl (talk • contribs) 01:06, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

The "r" (in syllable ending) caipira is alveolar approximant, and can be checked searching for "r puxado" (pulled r) on Google--Luizdl (talk) 01:15, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Equatorial Guinea

This discussion is most relevant for this article, as it will definitely affect it if it becomes clear that Portuguese is not an official language of Equatorial Guinea. Feedback would be greatly appreciated. Húsönd 13:36, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Portuguese is not yet an official language in Equatorial Guinea. The Government (President and Prime-Minister) have approved july 20th 2011 a decrete for the introduction of the language, but the decret is yet waiting for approval by the People's Representative Chamber. It will come in force 20 days after the publication of the approved decret in the official state gazette. All this you can see here: http://www.guineaecuatorialpress.com/noticia.php?id=703 here: http://www.guineaecuatorialpress.com/imgdb/2010/20-7-2010Decretosobreelportuguescomoidiomaoficial.pdf and here: http://www.guineaecuatorialpress.com/noticia.php?id=712 , specially in the second link wich is the actual diplome.212.68.229.178 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 14:29, 26 October 2011 (UTC).

Actual number of speakers of Portuguese

I'm sorry, but the information on the number of speakers of Portuguese is wrong now and must updated. The source given is the one of Ethnologue, whose account shows 163,153,389 people for Brazil, where almost the entire population (certainly >99%) speak Portuguese as their mother tongue. However, now in 2008, the Brazilian population is, according to the official statistics bureau of Brazil (IBGE), about 188 million. So, lnly in Brazil, there'd be about 185 million native speakers of Portuguese, and then we include 10 million from Portugal and another couple of millions in other countries. 189.13.12.96 (talk) 21:33, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Number of words in the language?

How many words are officially in the language? I know there isn't real way to get an exact number but according to accepted sources you can get a rough ball park figure. English, for example, is recorded in dictionaries and some have 600,000+ words (some over 750,000 - http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/JohnnyLing.shtml), is there something comparable in Portuguese? Maybe they have a committee like German that decides how many are acceptable? --Billy Nair (talk) 05:00, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't think there's an official count, or even official words. It would be a terrible task to determine, even if roughly, the number of words in Portuguese. Should the complex conjugation of verbs, for instance, be included in the count? If so, every single verb would produce tens of separate words. Also, the Portuguese diminutive and augmentative declension system makes it possible for a speaker to create a word that does not officially exist but whose meaning is promptly understood by other speakers, just as if it were a regular Portuguese word. Húsönd 14:35, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Error in EP IPA example

In the EP IPA example all "<L>s" are written as dark (velarized) Ls, but AFAIK only coda Ls are velarized in EP. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.180.209.104 (talk) 20:32, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

According to Mateus and D'Andrade, the "l" is always at least slightly velarized in European Portuguese, though this is especially so in the coda. FilipeS (talk) 15:44, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Very outdated number of speakers

There must be a reasonably update data for the number of speakers of Portuguese. Both references given in the article are extremely outdated, with data that refer to the populations in the 1990's. It's simply impossible that Portuguese has only 177 to 191 million native speakers, since Brazil alone has now (2008) 190 million inhabitants. Since the overwhelming majority (~99%) of the Brazilians speak Portuguese and there are still some dozens of speakers of Portuguese outside Brazil (10 million Portugal alone), the actual number of speakers, in updated numbers, would range from 210 TO 220 MILLION SPEAKERS. Now we must find references to this. As for the estimated number itself, I'm totally sure about it. YgorCoelho (talk) 00:26, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Very outdated number of speakers II

I fixed the average of Portuguese speakers according to the version in Portuguese of this article,

"A língua portuguesa, com mais de 215 milhões de falantes nativos, é a quinta língua mais falada no mundo e a terceira mais falada no mundo ocidental" (Portuguese, with more than 215 million of native speakers, is the fifth most spoke language in the world and the third in the West).

"O português é falado por cerca de 187 milhões de pessoas na América do Sul, 16 milhões de africanos, 12 milhões de europeus, dois milhões na América do Norte e 330 mil na Ásia" (Portuguese is spoken by about 187 million in the South America, 16 million in the Africa, 12 million in the Europe, 2 million in the North América and 330.000 in the Asia)

but there's someone that insists on put outdated and wrong datas. I don't know if that one is trustworthy but I am sure that it is more veracious. As it was said "(...) Since the overwhelming majority (~99% [or ~188 million]) of the Brazilians speak Portuguese and there are still some dozens of speakers of Portuguese outside Brazil (10 million Portugal alone) (...)". So THE ROUGH MINIMUM AVERAGE OF PORTUGUESE SPEAKERS SHOULD BE BIGGER THAN 200 MILLION OF PEOPLE. Lordofmidgard (talk) 23:25, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

It's about what reliable sources say, not what we think the total number of speakers should be. Kman543210 (talk) 01:20, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, but you must agree having a source isn't enough when that source is clearly wrong/outdated. What was true 10 years ago isn't necessarily true now, especially if we're dealing with quantities. Brazil alone has an officially estimated 190 million inhabitants, of which about 99% (again, estimates from almost all sources) are Portuguese speakers, how could Portuguese have less than 200 million speakers? So, if the outdated source is now a wrong information, I'm sure there will be a more update source that will be closer to the real number of speakers. All the recent (2008) sources I found estimate 230-240 million speakers: http://www.brazzilmag.com/content/view/9689/1/ AND http://gulfstreamblues.cafebabel.com/en/post/2008/06/03/Portugal-Changes-its-Language.189.13.54.119 (talk) 11:33, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Very outdated number of speakers III

This is simply absurdous!

Brazil alone has ca. 193 million inhabitants, more than 99% of which being native speakers of Portuguese! Portugal has over 10 million inhabitants, practically all of which speak Portuguese, not to mention the other 8 countries and regions where Portuguese is an official language. It is therefore impossible for the Portuguese language to sum less than 203 million native speakers.

You guys have got to be joking to state such nonsense!

Ethnologue must not be a serious research institution.

Popotão (talk) 09:46, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

It may be 'absurdous' but the RS rules apply. The problem is to find an official poll or published study to cite. HammerFilmFan (talk) 02:22, 18 February 2011 (UTC) HammerFilmFan

Intervocalic ɲ

The article says in the Consonants section:

"In many parts of Brazil and Angola, intervocalic /ɲ/ is pronounced as a nasalized palatal approximant [j̃] which nasalizes the preceding vowel, so that for instance /ˈniɲu/ is pronounced [ˈnĩj̃u]."

Can someone please write which word it is? I suppose that it's ninho, but it would better to clarify it.

It would also do good to provide examples and proper sources for the other phonological phenomena. This is not to say that they are wrong, but that a reference would be very helpful for people like myself who want to study the deeper linguistic phenomena of the language.

Thanks in advance. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 17:26, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

An official language of the UN

I marked the section "Movement to make Portuguese an official language of the UN" as "This section may contain original research".

The "factors [that] detract from this campaign" which the article provides seem to be guesses. One could as well write that two Romance languages are already official in the UN and there's no need to make a third one official.

If i am wrong, please correct me by clarifying the sources. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 17:33, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Sorry! I would appreciate your help...

Sorry, but I'm new in Wikipedia and, while actualizing information in this article, I accidentally clicked outside of the main box and the paragraphs automatically disorganized (looks like some kind of Wiki"bug"!), along with some references.

Even though I was able to actualize info, the page is still quite confuse and I wasn't able to fix it because I didn't know the original disposition of the paragraphs nor the codepage configuration...

There must be no major problem, since the paragraphs apparently just mixed themselves, mantaining the written order. So, for the good of the Freedom of Information Wikipedia provides the world, please help fixing it! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.106.197.54 (talk) 18:11, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

It has already been undone. In the future, when you realize your edit didn't work well, just click "undo" over it on the article's history. Húsönd 23:38, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Possible mistake in BP IPA code

I think the codification of the first 'e' from the brazillian way of speakinking 'gente' may be wrong. I have never heard anyone saying it like a '~e'. Instead I would codify it like "e + that 'n' with the long front foot with translates into english -ing" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.18.91.208 (talk) 02:04, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Dialects

The "Dialects" section is heavily unsourced.

The only source given in the text is the Instituto Camões.

Now, reading the texts at the Instituto Camões website, we see that it does not endorse the idea that there are ten different dialects in Portugal; on the contrary, it only distinguishes three different dialects; galego in Spain, and septentrional Portuguese and center-meridional Portuguese in Portugal.

Besides, there is no reference that supports the idea of different dialects in Brazil.

All those ideas seem to be POV and unscientifical. Ninguém (talk) 01:40, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

In fact, even the way references are cited is biased.

For instance, a link is given to the Instituto Camões as a reference for "Audio samples of the dialects from outside Europe". But in reading the page it points to, we see that it only talks about "Portuguese outside Europe - Audio Samples". Ninguém (talk) 01:40, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Agree. The dialect page states "A dialect is distinguished by its vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. Where a distinction can be made only in terms of pronunciation, the term accent is appropriate, not dialect." All the so-called "dialects" share the same grammar and the same basic vocabulary, just with regional words added. They should be called accents. 186.212.34.177 (talk) 21:28, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Official speaking countries

Equatorial-Guinea has Portuguese as an official language, do not believe me? go check it out... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gomes89 (talk • contribs) 19:44, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, I've checked on the official website of the Republic of Equatorial Guinea and the only languages available to read on the site are Spanish and English. You cannot assume that just because it is written on the Equatorial Guinea wikipedia page it is an accurate information. Check out http://guinea-equatorial.com/

Putting Guinea Equatorial to the list of official speaking places would be the same as adding Goa, Daman and Diu to it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Correctman (talk • contribs) 21:01, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Dear friends, Portuguese is not yet an official language in Equatorial Guinea. The Government (President and Prime-Minister) have approved july 20th 2011 a decrete for the introduction of the language, but the decret is yet waiting for approval by the People's Representative Chamber. It will come in force 20 days after the publication of the approved decret in the official state gazette. All this you can see here: http://www.guineaecuatorialpress.com/noticia.php?id=703 here: http://www.guineaecuatorialpress.com/imgdb/2010/20-7-2010Decretosobreelportuguescomoidiomaoficial.pdf and here: http://www.guineaecuatorialpress.com/noticia.php?id=712 , specially in the second link wich is the actual diplome.212.68.229.178 (talk)

Question

Did you notice that Portuguese language sounded almost Spanish-like to you? Because there are several words that is a lot like Spanish, the rest of them are Portuguese, don't you think? JMBZ-12 (talk) 22:33, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry, what is your point exactly? Spanish is very close to Portuguese, but the way they sound is quite different, to the point that most Spaniards do not understand a word of Portuguese. The Ogre (talk) 11:39, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Time is not a portuguese word

futebol, revólver, estoque, folclore, time from English beef, football, revolver, stock, folklore, and team.

"Equipa" = "Team" and "Inventário" or "Acções" = "Stock" in Portuguese. In European Portuguese time does not exist and estoque is a cane sword, only Brazilian Portuguese uses time and estoque as described. For that reason I think it should not be part of the borrowed words from other countries. There is no other word in Portuguese for chá or catana, only those words should be considered as borrowed.

However, if your going to leave like that I suggest adding "esporte" = "sport", which is "desporto" in European Portuguese. "Esporte" seems to be in some newer European Portuguese dictionaries however its use is rare if not null.

"only Brazilian Portuguese uses time and estoque as described"... Well, the "only" that you mentioned represents more than 90% of the portuguese speakers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.214.216.67 (talk) 02:42, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Actually, "estoque" is not used in Brazil as a synonymous of "ações", but as "guarnição" (supply). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 187.92.169.194 (talk) 18:01, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

IPA for "Português" in BP - again

To present all the dialectal varieties for "Português" in BP is RIDICULOUS!! The main "formal" variety should be presented and that is it. Otherwise, I shouldn't someone present all the dialectal varieties for "Português" in Euro-Pt? Come on... The Ogre (talk) 17:36, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't have many ideas, but, the most populous states are São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, perhaps we should present only the Paulistano and Carioca. Luizdl (talk) 00:22, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

A better place to discuss this is at Wikipedia talk:IPA for Portuguese. What applies here should apply everywhere. Plus, we're still trying to figure the best way to deal with Portuguese dialects. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 00:40, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

It perhaps should be more formal if removing the "diphthongization" of "e", although it really is very common, it is considered a mispronunciation among the Brazilians.Luizdl (talk) 02:11, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

The dypthongization of "e" isn't considered a mispronunciation among most Brazilians, but only a dialectal variation. As for the "formal", there is not such a thing in Brazil, so it's impossible to choose the "formal accent" if there is no standard version of Brazilian Portuguese. The Paulista and Carioca dialects never got to become standard, even if their respective speakers are numerous and economically more powerful (even TV Globo and other TV stations use a softened, "neutralized" version of either Paulista or Carioca accent). Besides, Carioca dialect isn't the 2nd most spoken dialect: actually, after the Paulista accent, the most numerous must be Nordestino or Mineiro dialect, each of them with about 20 million speakers. It's difficult to set a unique form of representing the Brazilian pronunciation of "português" because this particular word deals with some major factors of dialectal variation in Brazil (the /r/ sound, the final /s/, the final /e/ or /ej/. And it's difficult to say accurately which dialects are more numerous: São Paulo, for example, has two dialects (Paulista and Caipira), and there is no census that shows how many speakers each of them has.201.9.237.202 (talk) 22:18, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

But the pronunciation of the Portuguese word português on this article is just a trivia, this article is not about phonetics, but if you want, insert the [j] between parenthesis instead of add another transcription. --Luizdl (talk) 02:04, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Challenges

I don't get this part on the article, it sounds like the personal opinion of someone, and it's a bit biased.

"For example, English, French, Arabic and Spanish are each official languages of multiple states and of over half of the world's countries. In contrast, four out of every five speakers of the Portuguese-speaking world live in just one country: Brazil." And Russian is pretty much only spoken in Russia and Chinese in China, what gives?

"In addition to Brazil, Portuguese is the official language in only 7 other sovereign states; however, English is official in 53 states, French in 29 states, Arabic in 25 states, and Spanish in 20 states." Russian is only official language in 4 states, Chinese in 3.

What is said about the Portuguese in the last paragraph could be said about the French.

The official languages of the UN were decided not based on number of speakers or their geographical distribution but cause they are the official language of the security council member states, plus the Arab cause of the middle east.Strumf (talk) 17:37, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Correction of text in a reference --Rui ''Gabriel'' Correia (talk) 01:18, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Hi. I can't out how to fix text within a reference. Reference 5 says "Somos 6000 billion milhões de falantes". It should read "Somos 6000 billion 240 milhões de falantes" --Rui ''Gabriel'' Correia (talk) 01:19, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

fixed. For you fix wrong texts in references, you has to click in the arrow at the left side for you can see in what part of the article that reference is being used, and then fix it there.--Luizdl (talk) 02:03, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

unsupported claims

Under "official language" in the info box, I removed countries with Portuguese-speaking minorities, since that's irrelevant. Also the following:

Obligatory learning in

Uruguay
Argentina
Venezuela
Zambia
Congo
Senegal
Namibia
Swaziland
Côte d'Ivoire
South Africa

If you follow the refs, you'll see that they're mostly proposals to add Portuguese electives in the schools. Only in the first two would Portuguese be required, and even there they are only decrees to be implemented at some future date. I wouldn't mind the first two so much if we had refs that this plan was actually implemented, but under English should we list every country with obligatory English in 2ary school? — kwami (talk) 07:50, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Mangled text.

Both markup and visible text are still mangled in many places. Example: The paragraph starting "Like other languages". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.94.222.207 (talk) 01:40, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

São Paulo's dialect

The true "paulistano dialect", with Guttural R in similarity to French /ʁ/, the /r/, is today obsolete. While on television, and other forms of media, the dialect of journalists and actors of São Paulo is represented as so much close to mine - I am from Rio de Janeiro - when I visited the city I found people just using Caipira, without Ieísmo and other characteristics of the "official" Caipira dialect, but was Caipira. When interviewing people of lower and middle classes on TV, they also use something close to Caipira. But we have too a dialect among people from poor communities of São Paulo, where they speak in a way very different from the Caipira, you may notice that in almost all the national songs of hip-hop, they speak with "closed voice", remember me European Portuguese.

Anyway, I would not say so São Paulo people use the same dialect that in Marília, Ribeirão Preto and Uberaba, actually São Paulo city have different dialects, but how they use the [longer than] R guttural changed much over the decades. What represents how São Paulo actually speaks 'Português' today generally is [poɹtuɡeˈ(j)s] and not [poɾtuɡeˈ(j)s] (last is really from São Paulo?). But in ancient paulistano dialect, the true, 'Português' is [portuɡeˈ(j)s]. And I, in my capacity to meet the multicultural reality of São Paulo, felt it important to consider both at the top of the article. Lguipontes (talk) 05:23, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

At Rede Record and Rede Bandeirantes I listem the [ɾ] in syllable coda, and sometimes I also listen this one here in São José dos Campos, a city of São Paulo state which is not part of the Greater São Paulo, although here it is possible to find many different types of coda R and the most common in my city is the [ɹ]. In the city of São Paulo it's the opposite, the [ɹ] also happen but [ɾ] is the most common. Perhaps you think the coda R you listen at São Paulo media is similar to that of your dialect because some times it's pronounced voiceless, essentially when it is in word final, but in some words it's generally voiced and clearer to notice as in 'por que', essentially when it's followed by another voiced consonant as in 'arma'.--Luizdl (talk) 04:04, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Pronunciation of the word Português in Portuguese of Portugal

The pronunciation of the word Português in Portuguese of Portugal is incorrect, on the audio the speaker gives emphasys on the E (like Portugués) instead of the correct more closed pronunciation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.80.36.110 (talk) 11:59, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Polemics about the number of Portuguese speakers

See sections Very outdated number of speakers I, II and III of this discussion page.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Popotão (talk • contribs) 09:08, 8 February 2011‎ (UTC)

Very outdated number of speakers IV

Hi, according to each Country's Governemnt Official Webpages these are the numbers:
> Population of Angola 12,000,000 (official information)

 Embassy of Angola in Portugal http://www.embaixadadeangola.org/

> Population of Brazil 190,732,694 (official information, Census 2010)

 Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics http://www.ibge.gov.br/home/presidencia/noticias/noticia_visualiza.php?id_noticia=1766&id_pagina=1

> Population of Cape Verde 434,263 (official estim.)

 Government of Cape Verde http://www.governo.cv/

> Population of Guinea-Bissau 1,520,830 (official information)

 National Statistics Institute http://www.stat-guinebissau.com/

> Population of Macau 549,500 (official information)

 Government of the Special Administrative Region of Macau http://www.dsec.gov.mo/PredefinedReport.aspx?ReportID=1&Lang=pt-PT

> Population of Mozambique 20,366,795 (official information, 2007)

 Government of Mozambique http://www.portaldogoverno.gov.mz/Mozambique

> Population of Portugal 10,617,000 (official information, 2007)

 Government of Portugal http://www.portugal.gov.pt/pt/GC18/Portugal/Pages/Portugal.aspx

> Population of São Tomé and Prince 169,000 (official information, 2005 UN)

 Government of São Tomé and Prince http://www.gov.st/content.php?intMenuID=60

> Population of East Timor 924,642 (official information)

 Government of East Timor http://timor-leste.gov.tl/?p=91&lang=pt

This makes an oficial total population of 237,314,724 people living in the countries and jurisditions of Portuguese oficial language. Then, according to information picked on the internet, including wikipedia articles:
100% of Portuguese speak Portuguese as mother language: 10,617,000
99% of Brazilians speak Portuguese as mother language, and 100% speak it as mother and second language: 188,825,367 and 190,732,694
30% to 40% of Angolans speak Portuguese as mother language, and 60% to 70% speak it as mother and second language: 3,600,000 and 8,400,000
6% to 9% of Mozambicans speak Portuguese as mother language, and 40% speak it as mother and second language: 1,222,007 and 8,146,718
So, this makes about 204,264,374 native speakers to about 217,896,412 total speakers counting only Portugal's, Brazil's, Angola's and Mozambique's populations. Out stayed Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé and Prince, Macau, Goa, Daman and Diu and the lusophone diaspora (lusophone immigrants and communities, wich can go from 5 to 10 million people or more?), because there is no complete reliable information about native and total speakers from these countries, although some data is known, like 95% of São Tomé and Prince speaking Portuguese.
So, at least (in rough numbers) 210 million people speak Portuguese worldwide as a mother language, and at least 225 million speak it worldwide as a mother and second language.
Do you think this information is good enough to be put in the article in wikipedia?
79.168.157.188 (talk) 17:04, 26 February 2011 (UTC) Italic text

Blanket removal of unsourced information

This is about Sin un nomine's recent removal of 3,602 bytes of information. While I understand Wikipedia is supposed to be "verifiable" and there was a 3-months old "citation needed" warning, could Sin un nomine have at least tried to get some sources?

I have started reverting (and sourcing!) but appreciate any help!--Pignoof (talk) 09:46, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out my mistake. From now on, I will first try find resources and only when I can't find I will I remove the unreferenced content.

Sin un nomine (talk) 04:00, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Portuguese as an official language of the United Nations - removed

For a long time this article had a section titled "Portuguese as an official language of the United Nations". It cited very few sources, most of which were dead links. The only non-dead-link source was to a news article saying that a petition has been signed by 5,900 people and is going to be sent to several important people. The rest of the section was point-of-view and original research. Today i removed it. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 10:56, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Brazilian Pronunciation in Examples of different pronunciation

What Brazilian pronunciation is this supposed to be? I see /h/ for <r> as if it were são paulo, but then I also see /puɾ ˈkwɐ̃tɐs/ for <por quantas>, which is pretty seriously off for SP (/puɾ 'kwantɐs/ or even very-slightly nasal vowel in <por>). --— robbie ^{page talk} 12:31, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

I did not understand what you meant. Is your doubt with /r/? Is it with nasal vowels?--Luizdl (talk) 23:55, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

File:Map of the portuguese language in the world.png Nominated for Deletion

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The origins of Portuguese

In the beginning of the article it's said that "Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in Northern Portugal and spread, with the Reconquista, to Southern Portugal". It is not a complete information, because the language was born in ancient Galicia (which covered both present Galicia and Northern Portugal). So I've completed the information and added some reliable sources. In add, you can see the map of the extension of Iberian languages through the centuries, here in the article. Susomoinhos (talk) 16:32, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

POV

• Just read, many Portuguese claiming wikipedia is toilet paper due inaccuracy and constant anti-Portuguese rank, which led many Portuguese choosing not to edit in wikipedia. One of the astonishing wikipedia claims is:

Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the mediaeval Kingdom of Galicia,[3][4][5] nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal, and spread, with the Reconquista, to Southern Portugal and with the Portuguese discoveries to Brazil, Africa and other parts of the world..

• For such an outstanding claim, we need outstanding proof!
• Galician and Portuguese are officially two distinct languages, although that is controversial, we all agree on that.
• Even if one considers both speeches to be a single language there are significant issues on how Galician is written, even Spanish may be easier to read than Standard Galician.
• Galicia was not part of the process in taking Portuguese to Southern Portugal and after that to Brazil and Africa.
• According to authors that studied Old Portuguese, there were already differences in the dialects of Galicia and Northern Portugal in the Middle Ages, besides the article is refering that Portuguese evolved in all Northern Portugal, but it was in the West part of it. That's why it linked to Northern Portuguese article and not Northern Portugal region.
• Southern Portugal has significant influence on standard modern Portuguese.
• Portuguese evolved from Vulgar Latin throw time, and not in a shiny day in the middle ages until the language is declared Portuguese in the 14th century. Note that Portugal exists as an independent entity since the 9th century.
• Historically, the most urbanized area of historical Galicia was northern Portugal (the coastal part), since time immemorial. And there are historical bounds with Spanish Galicia also from time immemorial, during the middle ages and until very recently. this sentence tries to give an outstanding importance to modern Galicia, by the duplication of the ancient name, importance that it does not have.
• I do not disagree that information on Galicia can be added to this article, and even its pronunciation in the lead. but some Brazilian accents should be removed as some are merely accents, I would keep pronunciation from Northeastern Brazil, one from São Paulo and one from Rio. IMO, the most important in Brazil. Even if Northeastern Brazil is today not as important, it has significant historical importance to the language.
• Nationalistic issues (backed by some ideology/propaganda) regarding Brazilian Portuguese should also be reviewed: Is European and Brazilian the two major groupings of dialects? It tries as if it is important or extremely different. Brazil is important due to the huge size of the population, and its famous accents. -Pedro (talk) 12:31, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Ok, here are again the complete quotes of the references. Now it's your time to show your arguments with good quotes. Regards.Susomoinhos (talk) 11:49, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

User Pedro provides no evidence of his claims (Prosist (talk) 12:22, 14 October 2011 (UTC))

If User:PedroPVZ finds the evidence for Portuguese's origin lacking, that is a matter he should take up with linguists, not with Wikipedia editors. Most of the statements in the list may be useful in describing the social aspects of the Portuguese/Galician origin and split, or their current relationship, but they are irrelevant to the genetic relationship between the languages or to where they emerged. As for Brazilian Portuguese, it isn't "nationalistic issues" that has it listed as a major dialect grouping, but the very real phonological, morphosyntactic, and lexical differences between it and European Portuguese. Ergative rlt (talk) 06:08, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

• My friend that fact that I'm presently unwilling to work in the article doesnt mean I dont have references or anything else. Please talk about subjects you know about or read something useful about, you are not sounding knowledgeable (despite the "expensive words") about the subject, but the reverse. -Pedro (talk) 15:39, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Dialects II

Why are so many variations within the same country consideres dialects? While I can certainly appreciate the linguistic differences between European Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Angolan Portuguese and so forth, I can't wrap my mind around - nor find any source supporting - considering every little regionalism as a separate dialect. While you usually have a difference in accents and slangs between cities and regions, if the basic vocabulary and grammar remain the same it can't be considered a new dialect. I am not denying the existence of different dialect within the same country, but the way it's currently written seems like an original research, not to say arbitrary.

I propose regional speech differences be deleted until further proof is given that they're dialects, and for examples to be given of the different national dialects, so it won't stay just an empty listing section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by RobertoFig (talk • contribs) 14:22, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I agree. There are no dialects of Portuguese in Brazil, there are accents. And probably the same happens in Portugal.186.212.34.177 (talk) 21:43, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

translation

Boizao — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.32.225.165 (talk) 14:31, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Wrong identification of the Brazilian dialects map

I think there was some mistake in the identification of the Brazilian dialects shown in the map. According to PT Wikipedia, the number 2 refers to the "Cearense dialect", which has its own entry in that version of Wikipedia and covers the state of Ceará and perhaps some neighboring areas (by the way, that dialect isn't even mentioned in this article, I don't understand why). In this EN Wikipedia the number 2 is indicated as the "Nordestino dialect", which is in fact marked as the number 7 in the PT Wikipedia, and that seems to be right since the broader Nordestino dialect/accent differs from the Cearense one and basically covers the Center-Northeast of Brazil's Northeast (Pernambuco, Alagoas, Paraíba, maybe parts of Bahia's Sertão). Anyway, the description given here in this article differs from what is shown (with details) in the PT Wikipedia. 177.42.146.153 (talk) 06:39, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

The overwhelmingly majority of Brazilians from Centro-Sul can not seriously distinguish none of these dialects. To us everyone sounds like a Northeasterner, except those from Bahia where there is kind of difference (that is, we find the accents of the other nordestinos very amusing, many as me love it, but we used to take a HARD TIME before we understood the syllable-timed slang of worker class bahianos until it started to erode because of mass media). Also Maranhão and Piauí have their slight differences, though it is not perceptible by those from the outside. There really is not a cearense dialect, people in Lusophone Wikipedia must be nuts, as they sound exactly like potiguaras (Rio Grande do Norte) and paraibanos (Paraíba), so that a mostly non-derogatory slur for all Northeasterners in Rio de Janeiro, Espírito Santo, Minas Gerais, Distrito Federal and Goiás is paraíba (take note that people that hate Northeasterners call them rats or retirantes i.e. Portuguese for near moribund wretched people doing rural exodus, paraíba can be even friendly and it is more acceptable socially than slurs that LGBT people use for themselves), conversely after the paraibano exodus to Rio de Janeiro and Brasília along the mid-20th century was gone, it is still widely used for the new wave of migrants from Ceará. 177.41.227.154 (talk) 21:38, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

translation help

Hi. Posting here because I can't find a Portugal wikiproject. Can anyone help with a translation (English into Portuguese) at the Reference Desk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Language#poster / http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Language#poster.2Fpt Obrigado 184.147.123.69 (talk) 16:01, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks to !Silent and Polyethylen. 184.147.123.69 (talk) 19:49, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

The only difference from "cearense" to "nordestino" is that at northern Ceará, people say "tchia" e "djia" instead of the plain "tia" e "dia" spoken in other states. I could even say that "cearense" is also spoken in Piauí. Yet, I don't think such a small change is enough to characterize it as a dialect. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 187.92.169.194 (talk) 18:31, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

No need to refer to the Portuguese colonies

I have eliminated the references to the former Portuguese colonies in the begining of the article, as they are not useful. Please check the corresponding articles on the English, Spanish and Franch languages. And PLEASE, do not revert automatically my edit! Alvesgaspar (talk) 18:21, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Number of speakers and ranking (redux)

Fourth paragraph of the intro: "With a total of 236 million speakers, Portuguese is the 6th most spoken language in the world..." Contra that, our Wiki articles, List of languages by number of native speakers and List of languages by total number of speakers, rank Portuguese 7th and 7th, respectively; the second link notes one researcher's challenged estimates of 5th for native and 4th for secondary but he still says 7th overall. Are these enough to change the ranking in this article? (No offense meant to the Portuguese language or its speakers!) --71.174.173.186 (talk) 14:43, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Huge Pan-Iberian Portuguese-Spanish linguistic community

A fact that is often ignored is the extreme similarities between Portuguese and Spanish and the consequences that this has. I live close to the Portuguese border in Spain and virtually all Portuguese people understand and speak Spanish relatively well. In fact, we all (those who speak both languages) know that both languages are extremely similar (in fact I doubt that there are other two languages in the world that are more similar) but the sound system of Portuguese somehow makes it easier for Portuguese speaking people to understand Spanish than viceversa. Portuguese is Spoken by more than 200 million people and adding it up to Spanish results in a pan-linguistic community of close to 700 million speakers. Millions of Portuguese speaking people know that this is a fact. I, who also speak Portuguese, know that this is a fact. Who else knows or ignores it? You can actually either learn Portuguese or Spanish and you will have access to a huge pan-Iberian linguistic community of more than 600 million people over huge territories, but it is true that it will be easier if you learn Portuguese first. Although this issue is covered in the article, it contains a false statement about intelligibility. Most Portuguese speaking people understand spoken Spanish in diverse degrees, but often relatively well. Most Spanish speaking people do need some experience or training before they can understand Portuguese relatively well, but a few weeks immersed in the language would suffice in most cases. Both types of speakers can read a book in either language and understand most of it without any previous training. Pipo. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.109.203.72 (talk) 03:52, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Questionable reference for number of Portuguese-Canadians

In looking at (a Google-translated copy of) the reference claiming there are 400k-500k Portuguese in Canada, it seems like this number was pulled out of...oh, let's say thin air. The author of the referenced article in one instance surmises, paraphrased: "Schoolchildren are too stupid to know the difference between mother tongue and the language they use in school." While there may be a modicum of truth to that, she then goes on to use that as a reason to inflate the Census number arbitrarily from 48,000 Portuguese in Quebec and the Maritimes to 55,000. What's more, that means she's also positing that, on the low end, only 1 in 8 Portuguese Canadians lives in Quebec or points east (presumably she meant to include Newfoundland and Labrador, not a Maritime province). Unless someone can find the ref's refs, it could rightly be dismissed as an editorial rather than a scholarly or journalistic article. As 2006 is the last real (READ: mandatory) Canadian long-form census, the kind that includes questions about language (besides English and French) and ethnicity, those numbers will have to be relied upon for quite some time.

On the other hand, the other number in the article is based on the Census, but specifically on the number of respondents claiming Portuguese as their mother tongue. I don't quarrel with that logic, though I do question it. Do only those Portuguese-speakers who learned it natively counted as Portuguese speakers? I don't know the answer, but I do know that the same Census shows 289k people who identify as Portuguese in Ontario alone, 189k of whom list no other ethnicity. It's a safe bet that most of them speak at least some Portuguese. Also, as mentioned by others on this talk page, there should be some firm criteria not only for which countries are included in the list, but for which data are used in giving totals. This would ensure apples-to-apples comparisons of Portuguese-speaking populations from country to country.

In short, it could well be that Nancy Gomes is right about the number of Portuguese speakers in Canada. But she hasn't proven it. Her ref, and the line in the article derived therefrom, should be deleted. HuntClubJoe (talk) 09:55, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

The numbers were edited by myself over a year ago and I added what references I could find. Reading the Canadian one again, I agree the article does not seem very scholarly (even though "Schoolchildren are too stupid" is not written). I included it however, and not others from newspapers, because the Janus periodical in which it was published is an academic publication with a reputation.

I note that you yourself question the use of census information but again what else do we have? In short, I guess we can keep the higher number, similarly to the rough "1% to 2%" for Venezuela, and keep the reference, maybe with a word of caution.--Pignoof (talk) 07:31, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Galiza on the map in the Infobox

The bright green square over Galiza supposedly representing a Portuguese minority living in Galiza is so big that it actually overs the whole of Galiza. This could be interpreted to mean that (the whole of) Galiza is a Portuguese minority. This could be confusing because of the debate around the status of Galician vis-a-vis the Portuguese language. Rui ''Gabriel'' Correia (talk) 08:36, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

South Africa and Namibia

The map of lusophone countries in the article includes South Africa and Namibia in light green as examples of countries where Portuguese is supposed to be a "cultural or secondary language". With all due respect, that is preposterous. Although there may be a tiny Portuguese-speaking minority in South Africa (consisting mostly of white European refugees from Angola and Mozambique), the number of native speakers of the language is less than 1 % of the total population of the country.

The most commonly spoken languages in South Africa, based on number of speakers who use them more often at home, are, according to the official 2011 Census:

• isiZulu: 22. 7 %
• isiXhosa: 16. 0 %
• Afrikaans: 13.5 %
• English: 9.6 %
• Sepedi: 9.1 %
• Setswana: 8 %
• Sesotho: 7.6 %

Despite its linguistic diversity, the main "languages of culture" in South Africa, i.e. those used in schools, universities and newspapers, are primarily English and secondarily Afrikaans, which is a West Germanic language derived from and closely related to Dutch. There is no evidence to suggest that Portuguese is either a "cultural language" or a significant "secondary language" in South Africa. The situation is similar in Namibia where the majority of the population speaks either Bantu or Khoisan languages and the most widely spoken European language is Afrikaans (approximately 11 %), but, again, English (the country's sole official language following independence from South Africa) is the main language of government, instruction and culture.

Based on language statistics, I recommend that South Africa and Namibia be removed from the "map of Portuguese-speaking countries" then. 189.69.62.166 (talk) 10:35, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

There is definitely a significant lusophone minority in both countries, especially in Namibia where many Angolan refugees went because of the civil war. And there, in Angola, Portuguese is spoken as the first language by more than half of the population by now (also according to Angolan census). To both, Namibia and South Africa, having at least a green square on this map applies due to black (esp Namibia) and white people residing in both countries speaking it.

Summing up, it might have been too optimistic to put both countries in an overall green (a very light one though!), but omitting even a green square on the other hand also renders false "information". Furthermore, Kwamikagami (or shall we call you the notorious pro English language militia yeeha?), it is more than self-centered to apply universal changes for all Wikpedias based an a single thread here in the English one, which was not even a real discussion.217.81.137.123 (talk) 10:59, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

If it's unref'd it gets deleted. Yeah, that rule was made by people who hate Portuguese. — kwami (talk) 11:54, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

The Dialects section is wrong for Brazil

The "Dialects" section is entirely wrong for Brazil. Not only most of the numbers attached to each dialect don't correspond to the number indicated in the map of Brazil, the section also misses the real dialect referred in the map as the "2" dialect, which is in fact the Cearense dialect. The Northeastern region, as indicated in the aforementioned image, has 3 dialects: "nordestino" (7), "cearense" (2) and "baiano" (3). The Cearense dialect has its own article in the Portuguese Wikipedia (http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialeto_cearense) and in it one may found the correct list of Brazilian dialects and their correspondent locations in the same map used in this "Portuguese language" article. That "Dialects" section should be completely edited to include the omited information and make the correct correspondences between the dialects and their respective areas, as in the end the section is misinforming people about what the Brazilian Portuguese dialects are and where they are spoken. 177.98.220.48 (talk) 03:46, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

I myself decided to correct the Dialects section so that the numbers in the map matched the information given on the Brazilian dialects, and I had also written a completely referenced section about the Cearense dialect, which is marked in the map as "2", distinct from the Nordestio dialect (7). However, now I see the detailed and referenced information I'd written about the Cearense dialect was deleted and substituted by a section about the Nordestino dialect with some information on the peculiarities of Cearense. To me that section became much more confuse and with less objective information (why would the Nordestino dialect provide more information about the Cearense speech than about the broader Nordestino dialect?). Besides, now that Dialects section has 2, yes, 2 sections about the Nordestino dialect: the n. 2 and the n. 7. So, now, the section is again problematic, referencing 2 dialects marked on the map as one only dialect, but in the section 2 making comments mostly about Cearense. Isn't it a bit puzzling? I gave up editing that Dialects section, since the referenced changes I made were rapidly thrown out, but I still think something should be made to give that part of the article more coherence and organization.YgorCoelho (talk) 03:06, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Edit war has to stop

Ok, it's enough. The edit war has to stop. Both of you should explain here your points of view based on reliable sources. --Lecen (talk) 02:16, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

For the addition of estadunidense

The term is a standard term used in relation to United States Americans in the Portuguese language. I am not Brazilian nor do I know its connotation in the Brazilian population, but all the following sources state the term as a generic denonym for U.S. Americans without any negative connotation or otherwise.

• Dicionário Houaiss, verbete "estadunidense"
• Dicionário Caldas Aulete, verbete "estadunidense"
• Dicionário Michaelis, verbete "estadunidense"
• Veja - Americano, norte-americano ou estadunidense?
• dicionário online de português - estadunidense

There seems to be no reason why this term should not be included.

Thank you,

Cristiano Tomás (talk) 02:23, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for moderating your language. I've asked Rauzaruku for a source for his assertion and he has obliged: he should post it here. Both of you: please avoid further edits to the article until this is sorted out on this talkpage, and please be polite: we're working to improve the encyclopedia, not to shout past each other. Acroterion (talk) 02:31, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

FYI, here's the source Rauzuruku cites: [3]. Both of you are experienced editors, let's not get into a Portugal vs. Brazil argument here, please. Acroterion (talk) 02:44, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

This Veja source says: "Estadunidense is the THIRD option of Brazilians, and is a word that contains higher doses of anti-Americanism" And he says too: "This word is pedantic. Suffice the pedantic of the word Estadunidense to alienate me against it.". I'm Brazilian, and, here, only people who HATE USA and wants to offend and satirize USA, uses this word. This is not a current word, such as "Americano" and "Norte-Americano" are, and whether it is on a dictionary, was recently added for precisely this offensive use. "Estadunidense" means "United Statian" and it sounds ridiculous and sarcastic, in Brazilian Portuguese. I do not agree that Wikipedia put this word here, as it only serves as propaganda to U.S. haters spreading their hatred in an attempt to spread a word to use non-current in Brazil.Rauzaruku (talk) 02:51, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Would "can be perceived as pejorative in Brazil" be acceptable, citing the source provided? That sidesteps a positive declaration. Since the article is citing short examples of usage, there's no need to go into detail. Acroterion (talk) 03:25, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

if you put the word, clearly explaining that it is derogatory, offensive and anti-American, fine. Because it is not a word commonly used by Brazilians, is a word restricted to a group of U.S. haters. Rauzaruku (talk) 03:31, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Other views

Could editors other than rausaruku and myself comment and voice their opinions so that we all might decide and create consensus for the addition/removal. Thank you, Cristiano Tomás (talk) 02:59, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

This discussion have thousands of pages in ptwiki and no end in sight. As the discussion is politically loaded, there's no right answer and both terms should be in the article. José Luiz ^talk 03:08, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

"Estadunidense" is a word that "it's legal, but it is immoral." Brazilian customarily accept immorality, it's no wonder that their solution is this. And we still have the issue of using Wiki-PT for propagating this word, that hardly anyone uses. Rauzaruku (talk) 03:14, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

There a few mistakes made in here. The word "Estadunidense" exist as a Portuguese word. Thus, adding Dictionaries as sources is redundant. The question is whether or not the word is regarded an insult.

It is not. It is not like the English word "nigger", which is considered offensive, but is spoken by Blacks and Mulattoes in the United States in a non-offensive way. Leftists in Brazil do prefer to say "Estadounidense" merely out of spite because they believe that the "imperialistas ianques" (yankee imperialists) shouldn't be called "Americans", since everyone from the Americas are Americans. Petty point of view. Nonetheless, even when employed by Leftists it is not used as an offensive word, as an insult. It's just what I explained: because they believe that the Americans shouldn't be called Americans.

Thus, there is no problem at having the word on this article. It's certainly being used in a non-offensive way. --Lecen (talk) 12:42, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Not offensive? So, why left-lists don't say "americano" or "norte-americano" like everybody? They want to cause impact, saying a word that sounds ridiculous and deformed in Portuguese language, a word came from Spanish (Cuba, Venezuela, Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez language, it's not a merely coincidence). When you speak "estadunidense" in Brazil it's an attempt to show rebellious and anti-Americanism, of course that is a word used with full purpose of offending, satirize, belittle and diminish. Anyone who says otherwise, is lying. "Ianque" case is different, it is a word that is used by anti-Americans but not only by them, and do not have the same negative connotation that Estadunidense has (at least not in Brazil) because Yankee is used worldwide. Estadunidense is a distorted word, this word is not even in line with the lexical Brazilian Portuguese language. Rauzaruku (talk) 15:43, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

That doesn't mean it shouldn't be in the article. Properly sourced, all you've said can be there too as context to the reader, who'll know then when and why the term is used. But, as a Brazilian, I don't think you can find a good source that spell out the meaning of the word the way you did and, frankly, I don't understand it that way. The word is used only in a context, sure, but "offensive"? Not to my ears. José Luiz ^talk 16:07, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

The intended use of this word is offending, satirize, belittle and, at least, diminish USA, because this word sounds strange to the ears, and is clearly to make the listener laugh of malformation of the word and associate USA with something idiot and malformed. As anyone who uses this word is people who hates the U.S., nothing more logical than using the worst possible word. And I said well, this word is used very little in current vocabulary of the Brazilian people, being virtually unknown to the average citizen. As this word isn't basically a word used seriously to classify an inhabitant of the United States, is not in current use, and on top, is used as a means of spreading hatred, Wikipedia should asbter to be using it. But if you still want to put it, should explain the reality about it. Rauzaruku (talk) 17:33, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, it all boils down to this: can you produce a single source to this interpretation of yours? The fact is that the word do exist and it is used - in certain contexts, almost always with a political meaning - to describe Americans in Brazil. And, as I said before, this discussion cannot and will not end with all parts involved totally happy. So, unless you can meet us somewhere in between, I give up. You're way to much invested in this and I don't have the time or the inclination to go further then. José Luiz ^talk 21:30, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

I've put my position above. This word is unknown to many Brazilians, unlike "Americano" and "Norte-Americano" that Brazilians all know and are the REAL current use words. Furthermore, in Brazil, most of those who hear "Estadunidense", they wonder, "What the hell is he talking about, that word is not wrong? Does it exist?" This is NOT a common word, NOT current, is NOT even lexically correct. It is an attempt to mess with the Americans and nothing else. There is a big difference, therefore, between "Estadunidense" and other words. Even "Ianque" is most commonly used and reliable than "Estadunidense". And Wikipedia function is not propagandize or purposely encourage the use of a word, especially one deliberately offensive. Rauzaruku (talk) 21:59, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

"The word is unknown to many Brazilians". Source? "Furthermore, in Brazil, most of those who hear 'Estadunidense', they wonder, 'What the hell is he talking about, that word is not wrong? Does it exist?'" Source? "... especially one deliberately offensive." Source? --Lecen (talk) 22:22, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Brazilian coward way to resolve disputes: "source, source..." (that's common in internet, little brazilian kids defeated in discussions do this...). Pretend to be ignorant and reverse the burden of proof when there is no reason, is a philosophical Fallacy. And it is precisely a typical fallacy used by who talks the word "Estadunidense". So I ask, show me the Brazilian official and famous press (not left-lists blogs from revolted people) speaking "Estadunidense" all the time ... it never happened. That's all there is your will to defend the spread of a nonexistent word via Wikipedia? Because that is what we see abundantly at Wiki-PT, for example... You, who want to force the teaching of this bizarre word, please place the sources that supposedly show a MASSIVE use of Estadunidense by NORMAL people, not by political fanatics... Want a proof? http://busca.globo.com/Busca/oglobo/?query=Pesquisar (O Globo newspaper)- "Americano": 141,434 results; "Norte-Americano": 41,056 results; "Estadunidense": 125 results. This is a ghost word. Let's see Google? "Americano": 136 million results; "Norte-Americano": 23 million results; "Estadunidense": 3 million results (thanks to extreme socialist/communist/left-list sites/blogs and Wiki-PT who stimulated the use of this word by his suspect users, because normal people don't use it). Rauzaruku (talk) 01:56, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Brazilian coward way to resolve disputes: "source, source..." " You mean the correct way to resolve disputes as mandated by Wikipedia and logic? O how truly coward to ask for scholarly back up from a rude and ill-maintained editor, the humanity! I think it is the most obvious thing in the world that your own personal bias and manners, or lack thereof, show your position to be false. Thank you, Cristiano Tomás (talk) 16:26, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

And looking on Google Academic, a whole different scenario: estadunidense (20 500 hits); norte-americano (86 100 hits). Hmmm... Perhaps the bias is in the eye of the beholder. And I won't come near what a "normal people" discussion means in a third world country when it comes to an encyclopaedia... José Luiz ^talk 17:18, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

It's "coward way" because when brazilians discuss (in any place, not just here), they don't try to accept nothing and don't try himselves to find sources. With total laziness, they just ask, ask an ask for sources, and even if you bring it, Brazilians do not accept and keep repeating the same thing like parrots, to irritate others. A famous type of trolling. Google academic? Oh yes, a tool used mostly by brazilian students of Philosophy that 99% of the time are anti-USA, indoctrinated by their sick teachers? Very good example. It is known that in the Brazil universities have the worst anti-Americans, like USP, just need to see that awesome event: http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reintegra%C3%A7%C3%A3o_de_posse_na_USP_em_2011 .Rauzaruku (talk) 20:56, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Vote on Inclusion

I ask that we all settle this with consensus, as Wikipedia asks us to:

• Support on Inclusion The term is a standardized term and does not carry any horrible undertone as Rauzaruku says. If anything, it holds the position that people of the USA are not the only Americans and thus seeks a better descriptive denonym. Thank you, Cristiano Tomás (talk) 16:29, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Brazil was "United States of Brazil" a long time ago and, never, we called ourselves "United Statians". So, who uses it today, is a political agitator or a truly ignorant. Your argument is a lie (this word is NOT a standardized term), and clearly you are here by political interests. And if it was that important call them "not American" to do a distinction, all the press, ABL and others have call them like that a long time ago, as well, but it not happens. Rauzaruku (talk) 21:12, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

If you actually knew me you would know that I am one of the most conservative people there are, but my personal views don't affect my editing on Wikipedia, unlike yourself. So keep your comments to yourself for goodness sakes. Thank you, Cristiano Tomás (talk) 23:26, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

• Support on Inclusion. José Luiz ^talk 22:05, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Vote on Exclusion

• Support on Exclusion - "Estadunidense" is not a current word in Portuguese vocabulary, it's not known by many people, it's not a normal word because it's used to offend, satirize and diminish USA, and Wikipedia function is not to teach or propagandize words, even more a negative one. Who supports this kind of thing on Wikipedia are just political agitators who want to use Wikipedia for their personal purposes. I don't believe in the honesty of those who defend this kind of thing. Rauzaruku (talk) 21:02, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
• Support on Exclusion - That's true. Dariusvista (talk) 23:06, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Enough with the votes

Please remember that Polling is not a substitute for discussion. --Lecen (talk) 02:24, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Has anyone seen the elephant????

This is the Wikipedia - it is an encyclopaedia. It is not a recipe book, it is not a city guide, it is not the yellow pages for prostitutes, car spares or pizza. It is ALSO NOT a language phrase book, for that, take a couple o bucks out of your pocket and get something from Berlitz, Hugo's, Phillips', etc. They all have crappy phrase books for that kind of shit.

The part on Wikipedia articles about languages where examples are used is meant to illustrate and demonstrate specifics about the language - morphology, grammar, etc - not a collection of idiotic Portuguese 101 phrases, half of them of NO USE, because they are not universally valid across the Portuguese-speaking space, they are plainly wrong. Most of the article is appalling and does not pass muster. And as for consistency, it ranges from stuff that looks as if written by my non-English-speaking neighbour's 13 year old daughter to stuff copy-lifted out of De Saussure.

And yet you guys sit here debating whether "estadudinense" is used? Yes, the word exists. Any damn word exists - you just have to say and therefore it exists. It is a Spanish invention to overcome the problem of people from the US calling themselves "American". Yes, it if fine in a newspaper to talk of the "Governo Estadudinense", but no-one except an utter moron would speak of "os meus amigos estadudinenses". Therefore, any American saying of him/herself "eu sou um estadudinense" can only expect to be laughed at and should go back to wherever he learnt it and demand his/her money back and beat the crap out of the useless teacher. So, delete the damn thing and get on with life.

Now perhaps we could get on with the task of including examples that illustrate specific elements of this superbly rich language. How about something about Portuguese diminutives? The fact that there is no equivalent to something like "está bem quentinho aqui dentro", or the fact that Portuguese has tenses that are never (or very seldom) used in spoken language, reserved for the written language? Or the fact that we can make do without ever using personal pronouns?

Rui ''Gabriel'' Correia (talk) 01:56, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Are some facts in the lead really necessary there?

The lead states that Portuguese is the second-most spoken Romance language in South East Asia after French, and most popular in South Asia. Both of these regions have a wide range of native languages, most use English if they require a lingua franca or additional language, and Portuguese is spoken in small former colonies which are already named earlier in the lead. So does this need trimming down? Indiasummer95 (talk) 16:31, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, if the statement is about Romance languages, what do native languages and English have to do with it? Rui ''Gabriel'' Correia (talk) 08:50, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Error in Brazilian Dialects

The description for Brazilian dialect #16 is incorrect. It should be a reference to the "Recifense" dialect, not cafundó. It seems that at some point someone erased the correct information and replaced it with the incorrect one. I was unable to locate the correct original information. --Mariobrazil 05:10, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Recifense does not seem to exist.--MarshalN20 | ^Talk 22:49, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

The Recifense dialect does exist and it is one of the most distinct and well known in Brazil. The city of Recife corresponds exactly to the geographical location indicated on the map with #16. Also, if you look at the corresponding Portuguese Wikipedia page, you will see that #16 is labeled "Recifense". Moreover, I have never heard of such a thing as a "Cafundó" dialect (as currently indicated in this page). The textual description says that it is a dialect spoken in the state of São Paulo, which is in southern Brazil, thousands of kilometers away from #16 as indicated on the map. Furthermore, as the word "cafundó" is a slang term of a far away and undesirable place, I believe there is a chance that someone may be trying to make a joke. --Mariobrazil 18:09, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

If there is a mistake, I don't think anyone will oppose your fixing of it.--MarshalN20 | ^Talk 14:17, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

IP rendering of IPA for paulistano dialect

Fellow nationals 450km west from me, I'm pretty sure that even though your nasalization process is quite different from ours, it doesn't amount to be equivalent to [ⁿ].

Indeed, it is much closer to not existing before onset nasal consonants, and our more uniform nasal vowels have something much closer to a faint, super-short [ɰ̃] after a relatively denasalized vowel [ə ~ ɜ], [e̞], [o̞] and even [i] and [u] (that are generally uniform in about all of Brazil) in your mouths. So it's obvious that IP has little knowledge in IPA.

Also I'm pretty sure that they don't know that the cardinal [ʌ] is a version of [ɔ] without tight lips... In other words, Brazilians would hear it as ó, not as 'â'. But I'm not sure if the former notation is true too.

So I would want to know what vowels do you have in words like samba, banana, quando, nanica, farofa, agradar, gargalhar and Pâmela.

Which one do you use for each of them? Carioca sound in plátano or French e, or schwa [ə]? Carioca sound in função and Londoner sound in curse, or [ɜ]? European Portuguese sound in não, or English sound in cup, the supposed cardinal [ɐ]? Or carioca sound in falado, the cardinal [ä] absent of vowel reduction?

The only thing I know is that you allow schwas in stressed position (sílaba tônica), but have a slightly smaller abundance of them in the unstressed ones (sílaba átona) than us. I'm not asking for a neutralized Brazilian pronunciation, the one of TV, I'm asking for the very characteristic one, almost stereotypical, of the city, the equivalent of our "saboâr/horroâr" that they would never put on Globo, since the pronunciation notation used for Rio de Janeiro notes the most marked form of our accent. Srtª PiriLimPomPom (talk) 02:03, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

"No other pair of Romance languages are as close as [Spanish and Portuguese]"

This sentence was recently added. I would like to see a source, considering there are a lot of non-nationally recognized Romance languages. This is also in conflict with the previous paragraph (also uncited), which says Portuguese is fully intelligible with Galician while with Spanish it's only "very good". Perhaps no other nationally recognized Romance language pair is as close as Spanish and Portuguese. Joeystanley (talk) 13:22, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Arabic prefix en-

What's the prefix en- in enxofre? The OED says it's the Arabic article, but that's normally al- or a-, isn't it? Is there a reason *axofre would nasalize? — kwami (talk) 00:03, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Word-initial /e/ tended to nasalise before /ʃ/ in Old Portuguese. Compare: enxugar (exsūcāre), enxame (exāmen), enxempro (exemplum). Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV (talk) 16:04, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Ah, thank you. — kwami (talk) 16:38, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Portuguese and UNESCO

"According to estimates by UNESCO, Portuguese is the fastest-growing European language after English".

I couldn't find the original UNESCO source and I really doubt this fact according to what I've read so far and according to demographic trends up to 2050.--Loup Solitaire 81 (talk) 20:30, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

South Africa and Namibia

This topic has already been brought up before, but, apparently, the editors choose to ignore it. Portuguese is not a "secondary language" or a "language of culture" in either South Africa or Namibia. Therefore, there is no reason why South Africa and Namibia should be colored in the map of Portuguese-speaking countries. 161.24.19.44 (talk) 18:57, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

http://stats.wikimedia.org/archive/squid_reports/2014-06/SquidReportPageViewsPerCountryBreakdownHuge.htm#South%20Africa & http://stats.wikimedia.org/archive/squid_reports/2014-06/SquidReportPageViewsPerCountryBreakdownHuge.htm#Namibia --Loup Solitaire 81 (talk) 23:24, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Y

Per Portuguese orthography, Y is officially a letter of the Portuguese alphabet now. However, some editors have a problem with this, claiming that it doesn't really count somehow because it doesn't have an official pronunciation. This sounds silly to me because it seems obvious that Y is simply pronounced /i/, or in any case as some kind of front vowel, for example in Cydonia. (Even in English borrowings such as cyberspace where it wouldn't, if the original pronunciation is more or less preserved, c would still be pronounced as /s/.) --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:37, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

External links modified

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Number of Angolan and Mozambican native speakers

The section "Geographic distribution" says

Perhaps 75% of the population of Angola speaks Portuguese natively,[21] and 85% are fluent.[22] Just over 40% of the population of Mozambique are native speakers of Portuguese, and 60% are fluent, according to the 2007 census.[23]

But the article Angolan Portuguese says

It is used in Angola by 60% of the population, and by 20% as their first language.[1]

And the article Mozambican Portuguese says in its section "Speakers"

According to the 1997 census,[2] 40% of the population of Mozambique spoke Portuguese. 9% spoke it at home, and 6.5% considered Portuguese to be their mother tongue.

These are huge discrepancies: 75% vs. 20% for native speakers in Angola, and 40% vs. 6.5% for native speakers in Mozambique. Loraof (talk) 14:12, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

External links modified

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List of countries by Portuguese speaking population?

IS there an article similar to [of countries by English speaking population] for Portuguese? I'm curious of the breakdown of percentage of Portuguese speakers as a total of the population in countries with significant Portuguese speaking populations. Muito obrigado. caz | speak 18:30, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Luxembourg

Very surprised not to see Luxembourg mentioned as a major centre of Portuguese-speakers, since 16% of the resident population has Portuguese nationality - surely by far the greatest Portuguese-speaking diaspora anywhere.213.127.210.95 (talk) 21:05, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

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Celtic references

@Melroross: Since you've removed the "citation needed" templates without answering the question it asked, can you clarify where the speculation of a connection between nasalization in Portuguese and that in Celtic languages comes from? It doesn't seem to be in the reference provided, or at least not at that location in the work. Nitpicking polish (talk) 00:29, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

The quantity of people that talks Portuguese.

How can there be 220 million speakers of Portuguese if the population of Brazil alone is 210 million? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:1811:C8B:800:F1C8:C18A:7F0F:429 (talk) 10:26, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

Since Portugal alone has 10 millions people, that is indeed suspicious. I found 261 millions on the RTP website. Thank you, Comte0 (talk) 12:34, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

@2A02:1811:C8B:800:F1C8:C18A:7F0F:429: This is entirely because sources that state exact figures need to be provided for every figure or estimate given in the article. Many of these sources are not as regularly updated as population statistics, predictions and metrics, so they don't always line up. The current figure given by Ethnologue stands at 224M native speakers which seems accurate considering the latest estimated populations of Brazil and Portugal are 210M and 10.5M respectively (July 2018). This obviously does not figure in other Lusophone countries for which there aren't really any official and comprehensive statistics, merely wild estimates. @Comte0:'s source references a source which does no differentiate between native and total speakers. ProKro (talk) 15:33, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Recognised minority language

User:Springpfühler seems to be hell-bent on removing South Africa from being mentioned in this section in the infobox. Yet he is absolutely silent on the Indian territories mentioned,

Take a look at

• Goa#Languages

• Daman_and_Diu#Languages

There is no mention of Portuguese being given government recognition by either of these Indian states.

The Constitution of South Africa, Section 6(5)(b)(i) expressly recognises Portuguese, amongst other minority languages (User:Springpfühler [4] conjuring out of thin air insultingly calling these S 6(5)(b)(i) languages "immigrant tongues", does he think people like Tamil South Africans who have lived in SA for generations are just immigrants?)

He seems to fatally conflate an OFFICIAL LANGAUGE with a RECOGNISED MINORITY LANGUAGE. Portuguese obviously falls under the latter in the context of SA, no such argument was made for it to be classified under the former.

--Spirit of the night (talk) 18:17, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

In addition, if this user is genuine, why does he not remove the mention of South Africa from the Tamil language infobox under the same section which uses the exact same reference as here. One would be led to believe that he finds such a mention in the Tamil infobox to be "trolling" ([5] - simply signifying utter WP:BADFAITH) --Spirit of the night (talk) 18:36, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

User:ProKro where is your input here before you mindlessly go around removing thought-out and sourced content? --Spirit of the night (talk) 19:43, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Portuguese is also mentioned in the Costitution of the Republic of South Africa as one of the languages used by immigrants communities in South Africa which should be "promoted and respect", in spite of not being an officially recognized language in the country.

This text, as inserted by User:Springpfühler is clunky, grammatically atrocious and, as pointed out above, factually wrong (calling South African communities mere "immigrants"). The language is recognised by the government clearly in the Constitution. I'm still waiting to see on what basis the Indian and Indonesian territories are included in the infobox. Or is this just a fat ploy of ignorance and Afrophobia? --Spirit of the night (talk) 19:49, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

You are totally out of your mind, you must not be in possess of all your faculties, that being nice. Afrophobia? Perhaps you are full of phobias and are a hard-core racist, not my problem. I am a language teacher and translator, I got three small kids, I am a realized person and not a Wiki freaky like you (youse). I put it about Portuguese just because it is the truth, you are trolling and writing lies. It doesnt matter if well or bad written, a lie is always a lie. The box is about official status of the language. Portuguese is not an official language nor an officially recognises minority language in South Africa. It is just an immigrants' language, and it is mentioned like that in the S.A. Constitution. The Constitution says "communities of speakers", that means immigrants. Or are you so ignorant you do not even know that? That would be quite incredible. But I can explain it to you, I am a teacher, as I said, no worries. South Africa was so nice to include the immigrants' tongues like Portuguese or Greek in its Constitution, as "languages to be protected", thus it does not make them official or minority languages. I live in Vienna, I am an immigrant myself, a proud one ; ) My children were born here. Here we have many immigrant communities, like Serbs/Croatians/Bosnians, or Germans, or Turks...Their language is respected by the Austrian Government, somewhat also promoted, but it does not make Serbian/Croatian or Turkish official here, nor minority. Just immigrants' language, that is not an insult, that is just the truth. If someone, like you, is full of complexes and take it as an insult, his problem. He's got no right anyways. About Portuguese in Uruguay, português or portuñol riverense, I think for sure it is more official than Portuguese in South Africa, which is not at all. Portuñol riverense is like a minority language in the area along the border Uruguay-Brazil indeed, although it is not 100% Portuguese, so I do not know. And about India, I am not sure, or should I know and correct everything, perhaps? If I am not 100% sure about something, I do not intervene, I am not like you, who writes without knowing a thing --Springpfühler (talk) 20:19, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Where is the official recognition of Portuguese in the Indian and Indonesian territories?? Where is your consistency here?

The official government recognition of Portuguese in South Africa is codified in black and white. Be proud to be an immigrant, good on you. But people like Portuguese South Africans and Tamil South Africans are not immigrants in South Africa, they are 100% South Africans who happen to be minorities and the constitution, an official document, makes clear recognition of their languages. Its not my problem if this is the first time you're stumbling upon this info, don't go around calling sourced edits "trolling", because your failure to distinguish between an official language and a recognised minority language is actually what could be classified as such. --Spirit of the night (talk) 20:27, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

As I already said like 100 times, I do not know a lot about Portuguese in India and consequently I abstain from writing about it. No time for searching, sorry. Your point is wrong: ok, I am Austrian though, nevertheless I remain an immigrant, it is a matter of fact. They are South African too, sure, who denies it? Nevertheless, they remain an immigrants community, even if an old one. They came from Portugal to South Africa, so they were immigrants in South Africa. Denying it is denying the dictionary and the meaning of the words. Their language is not one of the 11 official languages in South Africa (some of them were also immigrants' language, we know it...but they became official). It is not even an "officially recognized minority language". It would have been such if Portuguese was, for example, a minority language in the Cape Province or something like that. A first or second language in a given area, like, for example, Catalan in Spain, or Sardinian in Italy. But it is not like that, either. The Constitution of South Africa simply says that Portuguese, along with many other languages (I do not even remember how many...German, Greek...), should be "protected" exactly because it is "a language of one of the communities in South Africa". I put a note with a link to it, so I do not even understand your point. Nobody wants to deny it. But it would be a lie to put South Africa between the countries where Portuguese is an official language (first or minority), because it is not, just that, regardless of its situation in Goa, which is another topic --Springpfühler (talk) 20:57, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

You clearly don't know much about S Africa, or the topic as a whole. So why don't you abstain from all of it. There is no reference given or recognition by the Indian or Indonesian states, while S Africa is clear in its recognition. This hogwash about immigrant communities that you are pushing is the very definition of trolling.

Talk about the references, Portuguese is a recognised minority language in South Africa. That section of the infobox is clearly not for primary official languages, obviously SA is not a Lusophone country, you're stawmanning here. Your additions to the introduction also don't make any sense, please revert yourself. If you remove SA, remove India, Indonesia and Uruguay as well, be consistent. --Spirit of the night (talk) 22:28, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Well you do not seem to know a thing as well, and more than all, not understanding either. Regardless of what you may say, Portuguese were immigrants in South Africa, of course. If you go to live to another place, you are an immigrant, if you go to conquer another place, you are a conqueror, it is not difficult to understand. "Immigrant" comes from Latin "immigrare", that means "to come to a foreign land in order to live there" or "to settle in a place different from the one somebody was born in". Were the very first Portuguese in South Africa born in that country? No. Did they come from another place? Yes. So, they were immigrants. Consequently, the present Portuguese community in South Africa are descendants of those immigrants. The Boers were also immigrants, yes, nevertheless their language reached the status of official language and one of the main languages in South Africa, so it is called like that. Portuguese reached that status in Brazil, in Angola, in a lot of places, but not in South Africa. Consequently, Portuguese language still remains the language of a community there, not an official language. Hence it does not belong in that box. I think that the fact that South Africa's Constitution mentions Portuguese as the language of a community in the county, thus a language "to be respected" (the Constitution says just like that) is not enough to make Portuguese an "official" or "officially recognized minority language" in South Africa. Of course this mention of the South Africa' Constitution has to be cited in the article, and it is indeed, that is why I put that note. But if you all think that a mention like that is enough to make it an "officially recognized language", I do not have problems with it. Stop. --Springpfühler (talk) 14:39, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

Neither of you are being civil here, and no consensus is going to be reached if you keep talking past and about each other. Looking at the history, there have been four sets of changes that have been made in the past week, and it would be helpful to break them out and see where the consensus lies on each. Please state your views, briefly and civilly, and refrain from commenting about other editors. Agricolae (talk) 23:25, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Removal of South Africa

1. Removal from the 'Recognised minority language' section of infobox

• South Africa

Questions: 1) what does 'recognised' even mean? Need the country have some 'official' process for recognizing minority languages (as does the E.U.) for it to be included or does some other form of recognition suffice? 2) Does mention in the Constitution constitute 'recognition'? 3) Are there other members of this list that lack even this level of recognition and should be removed? Agricolae (talk) 23:25, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

"Recognised minority language" are the words that the infobox uses, such is not the same as "official language". Portuguese is given recognition in the S African Constitution to be promoted and protected. If it were a provincial language given recognition as such, that would fall under "official language", as does Urdu in India, Catalan in Spain, etc. - This is irrelevant when bringing up what a recognised minority language.

If express recognition in a country's constitution does not warrant a mention under "Recognised minority language in"; then the inclusion of Goa, Daman and Diu and Flores would fail this standard more abysmally so than S Africa. Where are the references that show that the governments of those territories have recognised Portuguese in any way or form?

Likewise, see Tamil language where S Africa has been included. If included there, on the exact same reference, why should it not be included here? --Spirit of the night (talk) 08:55, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

I do not know about Goa and Flores, honestly I do not think Portuguese has got any recognition there, but I haven't checked it. I think that Portuguese is recognized in Uruguay as a regional language. It is a complicated topic, you will not find a full consistency. If you look at the Uruguay's page, you'll find Portuguese as a "regional language" in the box; if you look at the Austria's one, as "officially recognized languages"; in Italy there are officially recognized languages too, like Sardinian or German or Friulan, but in the Italy's page are just labelled as "native languages".--Springpfühler (talk) 14:39, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

OK, but do you accept that mention in the SA constitution represents a form of 'recognition'? And clearly we need better information on the status in India and Flores and Uruguay. Agricolae (talk) 15:59, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

"I think", "I guess" and "I don't know" is not good enough. Where are your sources? Why fiercely target South Africa when its also clear that its the first time you're coming across this info, hence in bad faith you called my insertion "trolling".

Official language ≠ Recognised minority language. If the language is an official language in certain states/provinces/territories, the country is clearly indicated under "official language" status and not "recognised minority language". Urdu is official in the state of Jammu and Kashmir in India - So check under which category in the infobox its placed - "official language in", not "recognised minority language in". The same section of the SA constitution recognises Tamil as well, so check under which section in Tamil language SA is placed under - "Recognised minority language in".

We are talking about recognised minority language here, and as per the sources, there is painstakingly clear recognition of Portuguese as a minority language in SA. Its actually quite simple. --Spirit of the night (talk) 16:13, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

It is only quite simple if everyone accepts the same definition of 'recognised' when it is found under a heading of 'Official status'. If not, then people end up talking past each other, as is happening here. The template page itself states this parameter is for list of countries in which it is a recognised/protected minority language, so there needs to be some agreement on what constitutes 'recognised/protected' for this discussion to get anywhere.

It is not helpful to relive the past few days of incivility: discussion should focus on article content, not on editors or what has been said in the past, which was pretty grim all the way around - locking down a page for three days is an extreme response to an extreme situation, and means that pretty much everyone involved should consider themselves lucky they did not get sanctions applied to them personally. It means that everyone needs to take a step back, take a deep breath, and come back with a different mindset aimed at reaching consensus, not continuing the battle. (And as a suggestion, consider really hard before typing 'you/your' - most Talk page contributions that use the words end up inappropriately focussed on an editor and not the disputed content.)

I would still like to know Springpfühler's answer the specific question I asked - do they accept that mention in the SA constitution represents a form of 'recognition'? Agricolae (talk) 16:59, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

I see that up above, Springpfühler has accepted the mention of SA in this field of the infobox (please correct this if it is misstating your position), so it looks like we have consensus on this specific issue. One down, . . . . Agricolae (talk) 17:23, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

This issue was raised below, so let me make sure it is clear. The Template:Infobox language is preprogrammed to describe this list as "Recognised minority language in" and all we can do is decide which countries to list (or remove this section altogether), we cannot change the description. Agricolae (talk) 22:17, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

And duly so, South Africa belongs under this list. As it is in Tamil language and should be in all the minority languages of South Africa which have been recognised in the Constitution. --Spirit of the night (talk) 13:15, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Removal of other countries

2. Removal from the 'Recognised minority language' section of infobox

• Galicia, Malacca, Senegal, Namibia, Andorra, Luxembourg, Japan

Question: These have not been disputed, but it may have been overlooked due to the heated dispute over South Africa. Is there consensus for the removal of all of them? Agricolae (talk) 23:25, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

References would be needed to allow us to verify if Portuguese has indeed been given recognition in these countries. Likewise the case with Goa, Daman and Diu and Flores. I would think that a failure to produce such references would warrant their removal. --Spirit of the night (talk) 09:06, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

I think or rather I'm sure that there is absolutely no recognition of Portuguese in Luxembourg, Andorra (both have a Portuguese community of immigrants and that's it), Japan (Brazilian community), Senegal (Portuguese non-existent), Namibia (the same), Malacca (not anymore existent), Galicia (no Portuguese at all, but Galician language, which is similar but not the same). --Springpfühler (talk) 14:37, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

After some initial restores of these places (coupled with removal of South Africa), the removal of these seems to have been accepted by everyone involved, so unless someone objects to the removal of these before editing goes active again, there seems to be consensus on these as well.

Goa, Daman and Flores are still open questions, but as they were not part of this content dispute, I would suggest that we resolve what was being disputed first. (You might want to look back through the history and see who added them, and drop a note on their Talk page asking if they have a source.) Agricolae (talk) 17:40, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

Goa, Daman and Diu and Flores are open questions indeed, if we cannot find sources to show that Portuguese is a recognised minority lang in those territories, they will have to go. But as far as S Africa is concerned, it is a closed question. The recognition and minority status of the language could not be clearer. --Spirit of the night (talk) 13:18, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Removal of statement about Galician from lede

3. The removal of a (uncited) sentence about Galician: Reintegrationists maintain that Galician is not a separate language, but a dialect of Portuguese. This was replaced by a South African sentence, but its propriety is an entirely independent question - the South African sentence can be added without removing the Galician sentence. Questions: 1) Should this sentence be removed? 2) if retained, is this lede material? Agricolae (talk) 23:25, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

As you say, it was unsourced, in addition it makes no sense to put it in the introduction of the Portuguese language. Of course there are people who may think that Galician is a dialect of Portuguese, as there are who think that Corsican is a dialect of Italian, Macedonian a dialect of Serbian or Bulgarian, Afrikaans a dialect of Dutch, etc etc etc...a never ending list. Nevertheless, we should not put such personal opinions in the page of a language, as it is still a personal opinion which does not change that fact that Galician is a recognized minority language in Spain, official language in Galicia, recognized by the European Union etc and by linguists to be a separate language from Portuguese, very similar but separate (Galician has its own features, some of them somewhere between Portuguese and Spanish), and that is the same case for all other languages I mentioned before, it doesn't matter what some revisionists may say. I speak Spanish as native and Portuguese very good, I have no problem in understanding Galician and of course it is not the same as Portuguese, that is evident. --Springpfühler (talk) 14:37, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

If we used lack of a citation alone as basis for removal, we would be removing large sections of this article. We also can't decide what is right or wrong based on what is said to be evident by individual editors, no matter how qualified they may be to draw that conclusion. That Galician is recognized by linguists and various international bodies as a distinct language does not, in and of itself, negate the statement that reintegrationists claim it to be a form of Portuguese. It does indeed matter what some revisionists say if there are enough of them saying it to make this a noteworthy minority position, as opposed to just non-noteworthy personal opinions. The fact that I have seen this claimed elsewhere suggests that there is more to it than just one editor's personal opinion. If this claim is written about, even for the purposes of refuting it, then it probably merits mention that is explicitly counter-weighed with the majority opinion. Sometimes insight can be gained by looking at the relevant language Wikipedias - on Wikipedia pt, their article on the Portuguese language makes no mention of this claim, so this is suggestive that even in a Portuguese context, which the inherent nationalism of the claim would make most receptive, this is not considered a noteworthy position (though their article in the Galician language does mention the claim prominently along with a counterweight - this is not unusual, the same information can be noteworthy from the context of one article and not noteworthy for another). Even if it is worth mentioning, I agree that placement in the lede does seem to give it too much prominence. Agricolae (talk) 15:56, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

Addition of sentence about South Africa to the lede

4. The addition of a sentence about the South African Constitution: Portuguese is also mentioned in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa as one of the languages used by immigrants communities in South Africa which should be "promoted and respect", in spite of not being an officially recognized language in the country. Questions: 1) does this mention of Portuguese in the SA Constitution merit a sentence in the article? 2) if so, where is the best place to put it? 3) If you don't like the current sentence, do you have an alternative that you would find acceptable? Agricolae (talk) 23:25, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

South Africa should not be mentioned in the lede. Portuguese_language#Portuguese_as_a_foreign_language is the appropriate section for any such mention. The status of Portuguese in S Africa, Portuguese education there, how it got there, etc. should ideally be fleshed out more in Geographic distribution of Portuguese.

As it stands, the sentence in the lede makes absolutely no sense. "immigrants communities" is especially factually incorrect, grammatically horrendous and insulting. On what basis is the user who inserted this calling people like Portuguese South Africans, Greek South Africans, Tamil South Africans, etc. "immigrants"? --Spirit of the night (talk) 09:03, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

Spirit, no consensus can be arrived at simply by saying 'the other editor's version is terrible' or questioning their motivations. You agree there should be some mention of this, so how would you phrase it? Agricolae (talk) 13:17, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

I already explained before that of course they were originally immigrants communities and there is not any insult at it. Of course people living there now are not immigrants anymore, the children of immigrants are not immigrants themselves, that is obvious. Nevertheless, if their language is not a minority language in any given part of the country, it is normally called an immigrants' language, and that's not offensive either. Austria has like 500,000 people of Serbian/Croatian descent, their language is not a minority language though, but an immigrants'language. Instead of it, there are like 20,000 old Burgenland Croats, nevertheless their language is recognized as a minority language in Burgenland. That is like that everywhere. Italy for example? 2,000,000 Romanians I guess, nevertheless no minority language, but the biggest immigrants'language in Italy. On the contrary, there are a couple of thousand people of old Greek ancestry, nevertheless their language, which is a kind of italianized old Greek, is recognized as a minority language by the Italian country. If South Africa says that Portuguese is officially a minority language somewhere in the country, then it is, of course. Otherwise it is more like German in the U.S., imho. Which is still an immigrants' language, and there isn't anything bad on it. As for your question, I think it has to be mentioned somewehere in the page, I do not know where, you choose. I guess that the box on the right is just for official status, first language or officially recognized minority language in a country or in a part of it, that's it. --Springpfühler (talk) 14:37, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

According to that everyone in SA is an immigrant except the Khoisan, no matter how official you make it, we won't even have a claim to English or Afrikaans, because after all, those languages were brought here by immigration. Your immigrant story is, besides insulting & non-factual, a clear example of WP:OR. We are not immigrants in the country that we have been in for generations. Portuguese has recognition in SA as a minority language. Finish en klaar. The Constitution and multiple statistics and academic articles can be cited as references. There is no such need for such a sentence with "The Constitution of South Africa says ...". The Const says what it says, we don't need some bogus interpretation of "oh they are just mere immigrant languages".

South Africa is to be mentioned in the infobox, where the language is designated as a recognised minority language. The const is cited as a reference. No sentence about South Africa should be in the lede. --Spirit of the night (talk) 15:34, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

Again, we are going down the rabbit hole over the term 'immigrant'. If the mention of Portuguese in the South African constitution is noteworthy at all, how would you prefer this be expressed in a manner that avoids the wording you find problematic? This is only going to be resolved when (if) the two of you find wording you can agree on, and arguing over who is an immigrant is unlikely to lead to that result. On a technical level, there really isn't supposed to be information in the infobox that is not derived from the article itself, suggesting that if it is to be in the infobox, there should be some mention somewhere in the article of the status it is being accorded in the infobox (and there seems to be consensus that it needn't be in the lede, so that is a step forward). Agricolae (talk) 16:14, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

As above, we ought to flesh the matter of where the language is recognised as a minority language but not an official language in Portuguese_language#Portuguese_as_a_foreign_language, where South Africa is already mentioned - not in the lede. The word "immigrant" is absolutely baseless, and duh, Portuguese is not recognised as an official language in SA, its recognised as a minority language.

Better wording would simply be, "Portuguese is recognised in South Africa as a minority language".

The way Tamil_language#Geographic_distribution & Tamil_language#Legal_status describe this is what should be aimed for. --Spirit of the night (talk) 16:25, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

OK, Springpfühler, do you accept "Portuguese is recognised in South Africa as a minority language.", or do you think there is something inaccurate or important that this statement does not include? Is there a way you would prefer to state this that avoids the wording Spirit finds unacceptable? Spirit suggests this go in Portuguese_language#Portuguese_as_a_foreign_language, and Springpfühler has said it just should go somewhere, so let's work with the understanding that the statement is going to go in the 'Portuguese as a foreign language' section. Agricolae (talk) 17:12, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

The guy seems not to want to understand me, but that is his problem. Yes, all communities who came to a given point to a land were IMMIGRANTS to that point. And that is not insulting at all, but the truth. If he doesn't understand it, or feels "insulted" by it, then it's his problem since he doesn't know how to read the dictionary not even in what is supposed to be his first or second language (I must precise that, for me, English is my sixth language, counting from the first I better speak and write...). Of course after generations the children of the children of children of people who WERE immigrants are not such anymore, me too I said that many times. Boers WERE IMMIGRANTS in SOUTH AFRICA at the beginning, now NOT ANYMORE (WERE is a past simple, in ENGLISH...I guess). Portuguese, the same. Turks in Germany the same. Italians in Argentina the same. And so on. Khoisan in South Africa were never immigrants, right, or at least we do not know exactly when they were such. Greeks in Greece, neither. Sardinians in Sardinia, neither. Icelanders in Iceland, neither (I guess). Aborigines in Australian, neither. Native Americans in the US, neither. That's exactly why they are called NATIVE Americans, after all. Elementary, Watson. So, people do not keep on being immigrants forever, normally just for a generation or something. Nevertheless, their language is often called "immigrants' language" for many more generations. English became first and dominant language in Australia or the US, so it is not called "immigrants' language" anymore. The same happened with Afrikaans in South Africa, one of the main language of the country, thus not just an immigrants' language. The same happened with Portuguese in Brazil. It is BOT called immigrants' language since it's the first language of the country, although Portuguese there, as English in the US, etc, were conquerors, and immigrants too. But, German in the US, Italian in the US or Australia, etc etc are still called immigrants' language and NOBODY feels offended, because it's just the truth. The same for Portuguese in South Africa, of course. It is still an immigrants' language and that is the truth and not offensive for anyone. Everybody can get offended without a reason, we know that, but we have criteria to determine what is offensive and what isn't. Calling Portuguese immigrants' language in South Africa, even if a historic or an old one, is the truth and not offensive, if someone feels offended, that's his problem and his fault.

Anyways, I just think that right there where you put the flags you should just put the countries where a language is official, first or second language, or minority language in a given region. That would be clear and undisputable. No bullshits like cultural language or whatsoever, it would be too blurry, who determines which is a "cultural language"? I read South Africa's Constitution and it says that Portuguese has to be "protected" along with MANY other languages, like Greek for instance..., which is not an officially recognized minority language in SA either, I guess. The Constitution does not say that Portuguese is official, neither first nor second nor third language, in any part of the country.

But if by "recognized minority language" you just mean that someone "recognizes" his existence, i.e., someone says "Yes, we have speakers of this language in our country, it is not official at all but we have a community of speakers", then of course it is "recognized".

I thought in order to be "minority language" it has to be at least official somewhere in the country, like Corsican, Basque or Breton in France, Friulan, Sardinian or French in Italy, etc etc etc. If you could find any proof of Portuguese being recognized anywhere in South Africa, taught, spoken, even at a local level...then it is a different matter. But just because the Constitution says "we should protect Portuguese because we have a community here", it does not make it neither official, nor co-official, nor whatever. That is why I thought it would rather go under "Portuguese as a foreign language", there I agree, of course. The same for Goa, Flores etc, I guess. Not sure about Uruguay, as far as I know in the Rivera department Portuguese (or better portuñol...) is really at least locally recognized. But maybe it's not exactly Portuguese, rather a mix Portuguese-Spanish. Does anyone have some infos or proofs that Portuguese in South Africa is actually protected, as the Constitution suggests it should? --Springpfühler (talk) 23:32, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

This is getting us nowhere. You both agreed that mention of the situation in South Africa would be appropriate. You both agreed that it shouldn't be in the lede. We are now at the point of determining exactly what is said about Portuguese in South Africa. We have a source. It may not be as good a source as we would like, but is is what we have, and so unless someone comes up with something better (and that is unlikely at this point in the discussion) we need to come up with a sentence that adequately summarizes the situation based on the source we have. Spirit suggested Portuguese is recognised in South Africa as a minority language. If you don't think Spirit's sentence is an accurate description of the status accorded to Portuguese in South Africa, then suggest an alternative that removes whatever part of it you don't like, but that avoids the phrasing Spirit finds objectionable (i.e. it is not necessary to call the speakers of Portuguese in South Africa "immigrants" even if that is what you think they are, because that is clearly unacceptable to Spirit and our goal here is to come up with a sentence that both of you can live with). We are beyond the point where arguing about German in the United States or Breton in France is useful to determining the phrasing of the South African sentence. We need to come up with a sentence about South Africa that you both can agree on, not have a brawl over global linguistic terminology.

And just as I said to Spirit, it is not helpful to make comments about another editor. It is incivil and inappropriate. Also, if you want to put something in the article that another editor finds offensive, it is not just "his problem" as you suggest - it is both your problems, because the goal is to reach consensus, not have a perpetual revert war, and it is the responsibility of both disputing editors to find a compromise that is offensive to neither.

So again, if you don't find Spirit's sentence acceptable, what is your alternative? Agricolae (talk) 01:17, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

If the mention should be put somewhere else, you can remove it, of course. If you prefere something else to be written instead of "one of the languages used by immigrants communities", you can change it in something else, sure. I hadn't understand that JUST this was the problem, and I never meant that THIS sentence is his problem. This sentence can be changed, because we can find other ways to write the concept. I just meant that it is HIS problem if he finds the word "immigrant" in general offensive or insulting or whatsoever, because IT IS NOT. And it's not me who says that, but the DICTIONARY and the MEANING of the same word, which was not invented by anyone and it's clearly an inoffensive word in any language you may translate it, and that is not just "what I think". Just it.

Anyways, I would use the very same words of the Constitution, which are: "A Pan South African Language Board established by national legislation must ­promote and ensure respect for all languages commonly used by communities in South Africa, including German, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Portuguese, Tamil, Telegu and Urdu; and Arabic, Hebrew, Sanskrit and other languages used for religious purposes in South Africa." That is the sentence. As you may read, Portuguese and all those languages are clearly separated from the official languages and the Khoi, Nama and San languages (which are not under the official, so I suppose they aren't) as well as from the sign language. So, the words used by the Constitution are "promote and ensure RESPECT" for the "languages used by communities". If you ask me if this means an "officially recognized minority language", I would say no. At least not in my native languages, Spanish or Italian, but neither in German, as well. And in Portuguese neither. That means that Portuguese is a "language of a community", i.e., "a language spoken by a minority, the Portuguese community", YES, but NOT "an officially recognized minority language", i.e., "a language that the country see as co-official in some areas" and that "must be taught or used along the other(s) official language(s) in official documents, signs, at places, or wherever". You can see yourself the difference: the Constitution says, at the very same point, that for the official languages, the Khoi, Nama and San languages, and the sign language, the Board must "PROMOTE, AND CREATE CONDITIONS FOR, THE DEVELOPMENT AND USE OF" those languages, whereas regarding the other "LANGUAGES COMMONLY USED BY COMMUNITIES" the Board must "PROMOTE AND ENSURE RESPECT FOR" them. So, at the very same point we have two different sentences with a different choice of words and meaning. I'm seeing that the English page of South Africa puts Portuguese as a "regional language", but I suspect is a lie. There are no sources for it, no links, and in the paragraph about languages Portuguese is just listed alont the other immigrants' languages like German, Italian, French...etc. So, I would stay with the words of the Constitution, that "the Portuguese language must be respected as a language commonly used by a community" in the country. It is not "an officially recognized minority language", or at least the Constitution does not say it. That is why it should not go in the box with the flags, but it should be mentioned, with the words of the Constitution, somewhere in the text, where you like. But if you find sources that prove that Portuguese is an "officially recognized minority language" somewhere in S.A., that is really taught, promoted or used in some official way, then my pleasure, it would be a different thing --Springpfühler (talk) 11:22, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

To be blunt, you both have argued enough over this. You clearly have different views, and you clearly are not going to convince each other, and repeatedly criticizing the other editor, arguing over how their interpretation is wrong and what the situation is NOT, is not going to fix the article. What we need now is to put this argument to rest by finding wording you can both accept, not continue the disagreement with large paragraphs of further disputation. You suggest . . .the Portuguese language must be respected as a language commonly used by a community . . . but this is not a complete sentence, and it lacks the necessary context, not even naming South Africa. How would you express this as part of a complete sentence? (or Spirit, if that phrasing is acceptable for you, as far as it goes, can you incorporate it into a complete sentence that you think Springpfühler will accept?) Agricolae (talk) 12:13, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

Well, if you mean a mention in the text in a not too long sentence, it should be something like "Portuguese is mentioned in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa as a language to be promoted and respected". That IS LITERALLY what the Constitution says, so why not putting just the truth instead of trying to change it to something else, to pretend, to interpretate, to disguise or whatever else? It says like that, we should put like that. Not that "Portuguese is an officially recognized minority language" because the Constitution DOES NOT say it. If you want to put it, then provide proof that Portuguese is ACTUALLY an "officially recognized minority language", and then wonderful, we can put it. That was for the mention in the article, it doesn't matter where you put it, wherever you like.

As for the small flags in the box, if you really want to keep on putting them even if Portuguese is NOT an official language in those countries and NOT an officially recognized minority language, then the description should be as follows:

1) beside the flag of South Africa, if "recognized as a language to be promoted and respected" is too long to be put in the box along with the flags, then perhaps just "significative language". If a language is mentioned in the Constitution of a country, of course we can assert that is meant to be "significative" in that country, that is not a lie, that is the truth. Instead, saying that is an "officially recognized minority language" would not be the same, absolutely not.

2) beside the flag of Uruguay, it would be "regional language", because Portuguese is recognized as a regional language in the department of Rivera, but I do not know if it is somewhat "official" and not even if it's "officially recognized" by the Uruguayan Government, we should check it. Nevertheless, another problem would be that "that" Portuguese spoken in Rivera is called portuñol, portugués + español, so it is not 100% Portuguese language. That is why perhaps it doesn't fully belong between the countries where Portuguese is spoken, I should check how different it is from the standard language indeed.

3) beside the flags of Goa, Daman and Diu as well as Flores, it could be "former colonial language", or something similar. I doubt that now there is any Portuguese anymore there, but I'm not 100% sure. As I said, I teach Portuguese too, and I never found in any book any mention of India or Indonesia, just in text about the former Portuguese colonial period. In all books you, beside the countries where Portuguese is official, you also find Portuguese in Macau, for example, although we know that it is now hardly spoken there, but never in India or Indonesia. Once I had to translate something for an Indian citizen from Goa, here in Vienna, from Portuguese into German, but I do not remember what exactly was. He did not speak any Portuguese, anyways, and said me that there was before in Goa, but not anymore.

Or we put all these flags away and let just the countries where Portuguese is official or co-official or actually minority language. Then we should do like that for some other languages too. --Springpfühler (talk) 14:06, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

I separated the different areas of dispute out so they could be dealt with individually, rather than intermingling them and having disagreement on one issue interfere with achieving consensus on a different point. Here we are talking about the sentence in the text that is to describe the situation in South Africa - let's please stay on point. If you are uncomfortable with other areas of dispute, please raise them in those sections above, but as I said above to Spirit, it would be better to achieve consensus on the issues that are already in dispute before introducing new things to argue over (Uruguay, India). You suggest: Portuguese is mentioned in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa as a language to be promoted and respected. Now let's hear from Spirit on this. Agricolae (talk) 14:49, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

On second reading, the Constitution itself is vague - it calls for an organization to "promote and ensure respect for" the community languages. This can be read two different ways: 1) promote the languages and ensure respect for them; 2) promote respect and ensure respect for the languages. Agricolae (talk) 17:05, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

This is how the language board interpreted their charge, that they were "to promote respect for and the development of other languages used. by communities in South Africa, and languages used for religious purposes" and that the board may initiate studies "promoting respect for the languages referred to in section 3(10)(c) of the Constitution", and that they take " steps to ensure that communities using the languages referred to in section 3(10)(c) of the Constitution have the opportunity to use their languages in appropriate circumstances". [6] Agricolae (talk) 22:30, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Regardless, it is clear cut recognised as a minority language. WP:Consensus clearly doesn't require us to get Springpfühler to agree here. He clearly has his own ignorant and racist views about things that are divorced from reality, but that all is irrelevant here. We are to build consensus strictly around WP:reliable sources, of which he as none to offer.

The sources are clear. Portuguese, Gujarati, Greek, Tamil, and all languages recognised under that section are duly recognised as minority languages in South Africa. Can we please have this duly re-inserted into the infobox? --Spirit of the night (talk) 13:12, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

You can't put anything just because a clearly full of complexes, aggressive, insulting, ignorant and racist guy wants it, he is nobody and there is not any "consensus". He's extremely aggressive and racist himself and what he thinks is absouletely irrelevant. Portuguese is an immigrants' language in South Africa, but this is not the point of the discussion. If this guy has problem with immigrants communities, that is his problem, he's out of reality, but in a NORMAL country being an immigrant is not any problem at all, it is a pride instead ; ) I don't know about HIS country and I do not even want to know which country is it, maybe there IS a problem because maybe they are RACIST indeed. But that would be HIS problem, not ours.

Apart from this, and getting to the topic, the problem is that Portuguese IS NOT CLEARLY RECOGNIZED AS A MINORITY LANGUAGE IN SOUTH AFRICA, THE CONSTITUTION DOES NOT SAY IT. The sentence of the Constitution is not clear, you are right Agricolae, but even if they mean that Portuguese has to be promoted and respected, THAT DOES NOT MEAN IT IS AN OFFICIALLY RECOGNIZED MINORITY LANGUAGE, so you cant put it. YOU CANNOT PUT A LIE KNOWING THAT IT IS A LIE. If someone provides some proof of Portuguese being ACTUALLY a recognized minority language in South Africa, i.e., proof of Portuguese being taught, being promoted, being written in signs, being used in some official context, then we'll write that is an officially recognized minority language of course and it would be great, I'd be glad as a Portuguese teacher. Otherwise not, because it isn't and we cannot write a lie just because we "like it". Being ignorant and mentioning the Constitution as a source, when the Constitution does not say what he wants us to think it says, it's definitely NOT a "realiable source". And if he has no reliable sources apart from this sentence of the Constitution which DOES NOT say what he asserts, we can't put it. It's a matter of being honest, regardless of how much you can like a language. What we can put is EXACTLY WHAT THIS SENTENCE SAYS. It says that "Portuguese has to be promoted and ensured respect". AND THAT'S ALL. Let's put it. Does it say that is an "officially recognized minority language"? OF COURSE NOT. If some guy cannot even understand what this sentence says, it's not our fault. You can put the sentence LITERALLY, copy-paste, and that's it. In addition to that he does not even know what "consensus" means, he thinks that consensus is just the bullshits he says, but he can have a look at the dictionary for following terms: immigration (he does not know what it means), source (he does not know what it means), synonims (he does not know what it means) and consensus (he does not know what it means).

For Agricolae, sorry but you can read he began again, it's always him, I'm just answering. Anyways it is a shame that such people write on Wikipedia --Springpfühler (talk) 14:08, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

@Spirit of the night:, @Springpfühler:, knock it off. It is completely inappropriate to attack another editor in this way, and 'they did it first' is just an unacceptable excuse to keep being incivil. You two don't have to like each other or agree with each other, but you do have to be civil, and work toward consensus with each other. If either or both of you refuse to work toward consensus (or continue personal attacks like you did above), I am going to take this back to the Administrator's Noticeboard, and I suspect the responsible party/parties won't like the outcome. The only way to prevent the edit war from restarting when the protection comes off the page is to come up with language that summarizes the same reliable source(s) that we all have - the Constitution (and now the PSALB document) in a manner you both can live with. Springpfühler has suggested Portuguese is mentioned in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa as a language to be promoted and respected. Spirit, is this wording acceptable to you or can you suggest an improvement that still avoids the terminology Springpfühler finds objectionable? Agricolae (talk) 14:28, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

@Agricolae:, I simply added sourced text to this article, I come back and see a whole lot of edit warring and name calling by Springpfühler. Kindly re-examine who is making personal and insulting remarks (calling people mere immigrants, and who is citing sources on the talk page to build consensus)

Let's take a look at what Springpfühler's contributions to this discussion has been:

1. 1. Calling my edit (in which I cited my sources) trolling. (The infobox on Tamil language is also trolling then)
   2. Making WP:OR (at best) remarks by stating that Portuguese, Tamil, Afrikaans, etc can never be S African languages because they're "immigrant tongues"
   3. An "officially recognised minority language" should be a provincial/state language. I've already dealt with this. Urdu is a state language in Jammu and Kashmir, India - That makes it fall under the official languages label in the infobox, not the recognised minority languages.

Portuguese is a recognised minority language in S Africa. Plain and simple. Springpfühler is taking us around in circles here.

Constitution = official document. Listing Portuguese under the languages chapter = Recognition.

Hence, it is recognised as a minority language in S Africa.

The sentence Portuguese is recognised in South Africa as a minority language is crisp and accurate, there is nothing non-factual or unsubstantiated about it, hence, I once again ask, why is this not to be included in the infobox?

--Spirit of the night (talk) 16:36, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

We don't mention the UK at Punjabi language, a similar case, so we shouldn't mention South Africa here either. @Spirit of the night:, straight after being warned off attacking another editor you attack another editor. Attacking other editors doesn't help improve the article so please desist from doing so, instead focus solely on the arguments. ♫ RichardWeiss talk contribs 16:51, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Under the exact same section, why does Tamil language reference S Africa?

Has the UK government given recognition to the Punjabi language? If so, perhaps we ought to include it. Is asking for some consistency an attack? --Spirit of the night (talk) 16:55, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Spirit of the night, stop complaining about Springpfühler, and get on with the process of compromise and consensus. Your sentence is a non starter. Springpfühler has already rejected it, and explained with a whole wall of text why they don't like it. Reaching consensus in not about simply saying 'They're wrong, my sentence is perfect'. It is about compromise, coming up with a sentence the other person can live with. The sentence on the table is Portuguese is mentioned in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa as a language to be promoted and respected. Improve it or suggest a new alternative that avoids the text Springpfühler finds unacceptable. Agricolae (talk) 17:11, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

What exactly is unacceptable about the statement? One has to pose the question if their reason for "not liking" the sentence is legitimate or not. There may well be walls of text here and I've replied to the relevant points above, the rest of the substance of those replies are irrelevant - if I were to keep on replying to these walls of text we would go completely off topic, as you said, none of us will convince each other of our views.

I've stated my case. We are talking about recognition of a minority language, not primary official languages of a country.

Tamil enjoys a special status of protection under Article 6(b), Chapter 1 of the Constitution of South Africa and is taught as a subject in schools in KwaZulu-Natal province

This is true for Portuguese as well. It enjoys the same status and recognition, and can be taken as an additional language in schools. This is true for all of those languages in that section of the Constitution, because there exists sizable communities of speakers of these languages in S Africa, the option to study these languages in school is open to all S Africans. [7]

Noting that the recognition of Portuguese is expressly codified in the very founding document and supreme law of the country, there definitely is recognition of Portuguese as a minority language in S Africa. --Spirit of the night (talk) 20:58, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Springpfühler objects to the characterization of what South Africa has done as 'recognised' and to characterizing it as a 'minority language'. It doesn't really matter why at this point. That wording is out, just as Springpfühler's 'immigrant' wording is out. It doesn't matter who is right, who is wrong. As you yourself say, you are not going to convince Springpfühler, and you shouldn't waste time trying. The only way to move forward rather than the two of you just yelling at each other is to try to come up with a sentence that gets across the point while using different phrasing, avoiding the wording that you each find objectionable. So again, the sentence on the table is Portuguese is mentioned in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa as a language to be promoted and respected. Don't waste any more time and energy trying to make your point, don't waste time arguing about Tamil, because no sentence about Tamil will end up on this page. Improve this sentence for this article, or suggest a new alternative that avoids the wording Springpfühler finds unacceptable.

I will even go a step further - if the fact that Springpfühler provided that sentence is enough for you to not like it, I will provide an alternative sentence to serve as starting point, from which the two of you can both try to reach consensus, but not unless I see willingness to compromise from both of you, or else it will just change from an insoluble dispute between two alternatives to a dispute among three. Agricolae (talk) 21:52, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Lots of bullshits, but I won't say a single one and I won't count the countless ones said by others. You won't find any offence here, just a resumé. 1) no source added by other persons, apart this mention of the Constitution which DOES NOT say that "Portuguese is a recognized minority language" I do not need to add any source, it's the person who asserts that Portuguese is a recognized minority language in South Africa who needs to add sources. My edits were called "trolling", but I just said that there is no proof that Portuguese is a minority language in South Africa, and it is still like that. THERE IS NO PROOF OF IT, THE CONSTITUTION DOES NOT SAY IT. If somebody can provide proof, please and you're welcome! 2) personal and insulting remarks made from others first, not from me. I never called no one "mere immigrants", but it is obvious that the first Portuguese (and Boers, and English, etc.) settlers in South Africa WERE IMMIGRANTS (or conquerors, as you prefere). It's just the plain truth. All newcomers are immigrants when they come to another land, the word means that, I did not invent anything and it is not insulting at all. Just look at the dictionary. 3) NEVER EVER EVER said that those languages cannot be "South African languages" (moreover, this sentence has no meaning and it's very bad formulated). If with "South African languages" we mean a language spoken by some people in South Africa, then of course Portuguese is a "South African language". But we are not gonna put South Africa between the countries where Portuguese is spoken just because of that, are we? The points of discussion are: is Portuguese official in South Africa? NO. Is it recognized as an official minority language? NO. The mention in the Constitution DOES NOT say it, and that's it. With regard to Tamil, Punjabi, Urdu, Pashto, Persian or whatever, I do not even know what someone is talking about and that is completely off-topic. Im just talking about PORTUGUESE language, that is the topic, not Tamil, South Africa, black&whites, Germans or the Holy See. Just PORTUGUESE.

4) Regardless of Kashmir or whatsoever, the Constitution mentions Portuguese, that's right. BUT it DOES NOT SAY that Portuguese is a "recognized minority language". It says that "it is a language spoken by a COMMUNITY which has to be promoted and given respect". Thus, the Constitution GRANTS RESPECT to Portuguese by saying that they know there are Portuguese speaking people in South Africa (as far as I know not only Portuguese, but also other immigrants from Angola, for example), and consequently the Constitution wants their language to be "promoted and given respect". BUT saying that a language is an "officially recognized minority language" MEANS giving to this language some kind of officiality or at least encouragement in use or valorisation. Hence my questions: 1) is Portuguese taught, at any level, in some South African school as a language of choice because of being a local language? 2) is there any utilisation of Portuguese, even at a local level, like signs, advertisements, radio or tv broadcasting, or whatsoever? at least SOMETHING! If there is something, and somebody can prove it, then of course we can put that "Portuguese is a recognized minority language". I'd be glad because I am a Portuguese teacher and I always talk with pleasure about all the countries where Portuguese is spoken, Im just asking about some consistency. Otherwise, I'm afraid we cant put this sentence because MENTIONING a language as SPOKEN BY COMMUNITIES means recognizing the EXISTENCE of this language and granting him RESPECT, but not giving him any officiality. That is why I still think that the best is mentioning the EXACT WORDS the CONSTITUTION SAYS. And I find it extremely strange that someone who cites this mention of the Constitution as a source does not want to use the words the same Constitution uses. Kinda contradictory, at least. --Springpfühler (talk) 21:53, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Oh well I'm just seeing the document provided by the user, and it states that "The IEB assesses the following NSC subjects for all IEB and State schools: All non-official languages i.e. Arabic, French, German, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Latin, Modern Greek, Portuguese, Serbian, Spanish, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, and Mandarin from 2018."

Well, you see, Portuguese is on this list along with other 15 languages!!! Which of course are not all "officially recognized minority languages in South Africa" neither. The fact that you can study Portuguese at school DOES NOT MEAN BY FAR that is a "recognized minority language". Here in Austria you can study some languages spoken by the communities here but they ARE NOT "officially recognized minority languages". Otherwise, a language can be an "officially recognized minority language" even if nobody studies it. We are still waiting for a proof that Portuguese is a recognized minority language in South Africa, or that it is studied like a local language, not a foreign one. A language spoken by a community of people, even if respected by the Constitution, does not have necessarily to be an officially recognized minority language, that's the point. --Springpfühler (talk) 22:02, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

We can't use the exact words the Constitution says. First, it would be plagiarism. Second, it would lack the appropriate context for this article, and contain context relevant to the constitution that is not relevant to this article. The challenge is how best to convey the same information without using the exact wording.

It is clear now that you do not want to refer to what the Constitution does as 'recognising' Portuguese a 'minority language', and it is abundantly clear you will not accept that language. You don't need to keep repeating that explanation. We cannot move forward if we are too busy re-arguing the same thing again and again and again, but that seems to be all the two of you want to do. We have a sentence that has been proposed by you. Let's see what Spirit does with it.

And both of you just can't keep from commenting on the behavior of the other contribution. Stop it. Even without the insults (and calling another editor's contribution 'bullshit' is an insult), it gets us nowhere to comment on the other editor, it will only serve to further the distraction and again inflame the situation. Address what this article should say about Portuguese in ZA and not what you think of the other editor, both of you. Agricolae (talk) 22:15, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

I've had a look at the net, but I couldn't find any page which mentions Portuguese as a language having any kind of status in South Africa, I haven't found anywhere a sentence like "Portuguese is a(n) (officially) recognized minority language in SA". Portuguese is mentioned in the site www.brandsouthafrica.com, which, in the page about South African English and referring to influences from other languages in SA English, says as follows: "Here and there are words imported from other British and Dutch colonies, such as India and Indonesia, as well as from later immigrants – Greeks, Lebanese, Eastern European Jews, Portuguese, and more.", thus definining Portuguese and the other communities clearly IMMIGRANTS, as they are (were) indeed. https://www.brandsouthafrica.com/people-culture/arts-culture/south-african-english-2 And this is a South African site, which defines itself as "Official Custodian of South Africa's Nation Brand" and defines its mission as, among other purposes, "Developing and articulating a South African Nation Brand identity that will advance South Africa’s long-term positive reputation and global competitiveness." https://www.brandsouthafrica.com/about-us/who-we-are So, the crazy accusation of having "insulted" anyone is definitely rejected. I am just defining Portuguese and other communities with the very normal, respectful and internationally used term of immigrants, which is even used by official South African sites.

Closing this topic and speaking about the language, the site mentions Portuguese as follows: "Besides the official languages, scores of others – African, European, Asian and more – are spoken in South Africa, as the country lies at the crossroads of southern Africa. Other languages spoken here and mentioned in the Constitution are the Khoi, Nama and San languages, sign language, Arabic, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Portuguese, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telegu and Urdu." https://www.brandsouthafrica.com/south-africa-fast-facts/geography-facts/languages So, it says that Portuguese is "mentioned in the Constitution", as it is indeed, because it's "spoken here" by a community, as the Constitution says.

We should also write this, that Portuguese is spoken by a community in South Africa and is mentioned in the Constitution of this country as a language to be promoted and given respect (as the Constitution says). That does not mean that is an "officially recognized minority language", does not mean that is used in the country at any level in public (signs, local teaching, documents, etc.), does not mean that is protected or that its learning is enhanced in some way, and all this are normal requirements or assumptions for any (officially) recognized minority language. All this proves clearly that Portuguese is not such in SA, thus we absolutely cannot write a lie.

Moreover, I just had a look at the English Wiki page of all other languages not originated in Southern Africa which are mentioned in the South Africa's Constitution and I found what follows: ARABIC does not include South Africa in the box in its page under the countries where Arabic is a recognized minority language, thus no SA flag in the Arabic page; HEBREW does not include South Africa in the box in its page under the countries where Hebrew is a recognized minority language, thus no SA flag in the Hebrew page (actually no country seems to recognize Hebrew as an official minority language); not even GERMAN (in spite of including many other countries where I am not sure it is actually officially recognized) includes South Africa in the box in its page under the countries where German is a recognized minority language, thus no SA flag in the German page; neither GREEK includes South Africa in the box in its page under the countries where Greek is a recognized minority language, thus no SA flag in the Greek page; also GUJARATI does not include South Africa in its box, thus no SA flag in the Gujarati page. In the lede it is just written that Gujarati is also spoken in South Africa (by community of immigrants, ça va sans dire), and that's right, but NOT that is a "recognized minority language", which is not indeed; not even HINDI includes South Africa in the box in its page under the countries where Hindi is a recognized minority language, thus no SA flag in the Hindi page; and neither TELEGU includes South Africa in the box in its page under the countries where Telegu is a recognized minority language, thus no SA flag in the Telegu page; nor URDU includes South Africa in the box in its page under the countries where Urdu is a recognized minority language, thus no SA flag in the Urdu page.

So, out of NINE LANGUAGES just Tamil mentions South Africa under the countries where it is (supposed to be) an officially recognized minority language merely because its mention in the Constitution, which is obviously no proof that it is actually an officially recognized and somehow protected minority language.

ONE OUT OF NINE. AND JUST BECAUSE SOME UNKNOWN AND ANONYMOUS GUY MADE A MISTAKE IN THE TAMIL PAGE, ARE WE SUPPOSED TO MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE KNOWING THAT IT IS A MISTAKE AND A LIE? 'COURSE NOT. We are never going to accept such a mistake and such a lie. Portuguese is DEFINITELY NOT any officially recognized minority language in South Africa and the South Africa's flag does not belong in the box in the Portuguese page where the countries where Portuguese is actually an official or minority language are listed. --Springpfühler (talk) 17:38, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Please read the essay WP:TEXTWALL. This is not helping us come up with a sentence that best describes the situation in South Africa. (And calling differences of opinion 'lies' is incivil and fails to assume good faith, which is the responsibility of all editors. It is possible to discuss disputed content without being insulting.) Agricolae (talk) 17:54, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Let me ask this, Springpfühler. You have repeatedly stated it is unacceptable to you to state that Portuguese was 'recognized as a minority language'. Would you accept calling Portuguese in South Africa a 'minority language' as long as it is not said to be 'recognised'?

Well, I think that it has to be defined what a "minority language" is. If it is every language spoken in a given country by a certain community (minority), then of course it is. But I honestly do not think that all languages spoken by all communities in all countries are called like that. Let's put the example of Italian language, because you probably know, there are Italian immigrants in really a lot of countries all around the world, and some of these Italian communities settled in some country like 150 years ago. Nevertheless, almost never is Italian language in any country called a "minority language", but just a "language of a community of immigrants". Italian language is not minority language in the U.S., nor in Canada, nor in Australia, not even in Argentina, where like half of the population has some Italian ancestry. That is to say, "minority languages" are just called those languages which are the languages of a historic and acknowledged minority in a given country, mostly just in a part or region of that country. I.e., if South Africa had said "Portuguese people are a historic, recognized minority in (this part of) our country", then Portuguese would be a "minority langauge". But if South Africa, i.e. its Constitution, just say that Portuguese is a language spoken by a community of people in South Africa, then it is like that: a language spoken by a community of people.--Springpfühler (talk) 20:15, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

And anyways, regardless of the sentence you are going to put, I insist that the box, hence the list of countries with their respective flags, are to be used JUST for the countries where a given language is OFFICIAL or CO-OFFICIAL or REALLY MINORITY LANGUAGE IN A PART OF THAT COUNTRY. Briefly, just for the countries where a given language is used in some official way. Not for all the rest, like cultural, communities, and whatsoever, all things that mostly mean NOTHING, that are mostly difficult or impossible to prove, and that never mean that a given language can be used in some public or official context. --Springpfühler (talk) 20:27, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

You are drawing a distinction that is not applicable in all countries. Some countries have no formal 'historical acknowledged minorities'. In the US, a minority language is just a language spoken by a minority, distinct from the dominant language (English itself is not formally enshrined as the 'official' language in much of the country), and there is no distinction drawn between German, French, Hawai'ian and Navajo, spoken by their respective communities since before those regions were part of the US, and Hmong, Swahili, Armenian, and whatever is spoken by someone who just became a citizen last week. Italian is a minority language in the US, just not a 'recognised' one because no such process of official recognition exists.

That being said, it is clear you don't like this phrasing, so it is best avoided if possible. Agricolae (talk) 21:22, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

I got your point, I know more the situation in Europe, where there are historic minorities in pretty much every country, whose languages are often, even if maybe not always, officially recognized as minority languages, normally just in a part of the country, (almost) never in the whole country.

That is definitely NOT the case of Portuguese in South Africa (unless someone can prove that, let's say, Portuguese is a local language in the Cape province or whatsoever, which I really doubt it is...). And even if you say Italian may be called a "minority language in the U.S.", surely the U.S. flag does not appear in any page of the Italian language, absolutely not, because, as you say, Italian is not recognized nor a local language anywhere in the U.S.

So, even if we call Portuguese a "minority language in South Africa" because spoken by a minority there, we cannot put the S.A. flag under the countries where Portuguese is spoken as an official, co-official or regional, officially recognized minority language. If we did that, then we should put ALL the countries where there is any community of Portuguese speakers, because, after all, these communities are a "minority" indeed, hence their language is a "minority language". That is clearly absurd and no one can do that, otherwise we'd had a list containing pretty much all the countries of the world for nearly all languages.

Consequently, the flag of a country where a language is merely spoken by a community, even if this community is mentioned by the Constitution, can't and should not be put in the box where are listed the countries where a given language is official (or where it is officially recognized with some official usage). I insist that we should have just 3 categories in each box: official (sole or first language, in the whole country), co-official (along with other languages and not first language, in the whole country), officially recognized minority language (thus official or co-official in SOME PART of the country, even if just in a single town). Portuguese belongs clearly to NONE of these categories in S.A., that's why the South African flag cannot go in the Portuguese box.

But surely we should put a mention about Portuguese in the article. We should use the words the Constitution uses as much as we can, thus I still believe that writing that "Portuguese is mentioned in the South African Constitution as a language spoken by a community in the country and that consequently has to be promoted and given respect" (small changes can be done) is a good and more than all truthful solution. --Springpfühler (talk) 22:12, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Our other interlocutor seems to have lost interest, and we can't be expected to wait forever. THe sentence you proposed was "Portuguese is mentioned in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa as a language to be promoted and respected." I am not entirely comfortable with this given the ambiguity. I would suggest Portuguese is mentioned in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa as one of the languages spoken by communities within the country for which the Pan South African Language Board was charged with promoting and ensuring respect. Agricolae (talk) 18:24, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I agree, that is what the Constitution actually says, thus nobody can argue it may be uncorrect, as it is indisputably veritable and accurate.--Springpfühler (talk) 21:12, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

"Future of Portuguese language" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Future of Portuguese language. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. Soumyabrata ^{stay at home} _{wash your hands} ^{to protect from coronavirus} 08:04, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

"Future of Portuguese" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Future of Portuguese. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. Soumyabrata ^{stay at home} _{wash your hands} ^{to protect from coronavirus} 08:05, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Native Portuguese speaker help needed

See Talk:Coval Staszek Lem (talk) 21:41, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

İs Spanish or Portuguese the most spoken language in South America?

There seems to be a lot of conflicting data on this if you look up various sources on the İnternet. Furthermore, the Languages of South America article lists Spanish as the most spoken language, with Portuguese a close second. So there's a glaring contradiction within Wikipedia itself. Which one is it amigos? Yekshemesh (talk) 16:42, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

"Benguelense" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Benguelense has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 April 28 § Benguelense until a consensus is reached. 1234qwer1234qwer4 17:15, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

"Açoriano" listed at Redirects for discussion

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