On Thursday 19 August 2004 22:54, James R. Johnson wrote:
I agree with Jimbo here. Portuguese is one language,
just as English is
one language, despite regional differences, and despite some ignorant (in
my view) people saying they don't speak English, but American. And though
I may find British accents and spelling funny, that's simply what they do,
and if I were to move there or visit, I'd change how I spell things to
follow their norms. But despite our differences, we are all still English
speakers, just as Mexicans, Colombians, and Spaniards are all Spanish
speakers, and Germans, Swiss, and Austrians are all German speakers.
German is three distinct languages: Plattdeutsch (which has its own
Wikipedia), Hochdeutsch (standard German), and Oberdeutsch (spoken in higher
lands such as Switzerland). Swabian, an Oberdeutsch dialect, is pretty hard
for a Hochdeutscher to understand. Luso and Brasileiro are hardly different
at all: septimo/setimo, seu/dele (one of them, I forget which, says "seu" for
"your" (de vocĂȘ) and "dele" for "his"), ananas/abacaxi. This
is no different
than American and British color/colour or tomahawk/hatchet (both A and B say
"hatchet" but "tomahawk" is an Algonquian word - which somehow got all
the
way to PNG as "tamiok").
phma
--
li fi'u vu'u fi'u fi'u du li pa