[Foundation-l] Brazilian Portuguese Wikipedia

[Virgilio A. P. Machado]

John,

Not a bad article. I'm not a linguist, so I can't 
do a knowledgeable evaluation, but again from the 
little that I know about he subject it looks 
pretty good. I only stumbled on "The adoption of 
the new orthography will cause changes in the 
spelling of about 1.6% of the words in the 
European norm (official also in Africa, Asia and 
Oceania) and about 0.5% in the Brazilian norm." 
Not sure those figures are accurate. It omits 
some very important historic facts, but that much 
is recognized by the label on top. It still 
presents the "correct" POV, but that is old news.

I also have a visceral dislike for stuff like 
"European norm," not to mention "European 
Portuguese." I have written about that elsewhere 
(http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Vapmachado/Portuguese_language_issues) 
but that is NOT why I'm blocked on Meta. They 
don't block people there for serious stuff like that.

Now our dear correspondent Mark as stated that 
"it may not yet be used in schools." "May"? Do 
you really have any doubts? You are at a huge 
disadvantage. You see, schools are my line of 
business and have been for 56 years. Joined at 4 
and have not left yet. My children are still 
attending school, and I've already paid a visit 
to the elementary school right next to me, about 
this matter. So let me make your dubious (I 
wonder why...) statement to something more precise:

It is NOT used in schools.

Before signing off, and before I forget, let me 
ask another trivial question. It has been a long, 
long time since you have opened a grammar of any 
language, hasn't it? That's an easy guess, 
considering what a grammar is 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammar) and that 
the differences between Brazilian Portuguese and 
Portuguese of Portugal go way beyond differences 
in orthography. You'll find a lot of good links 
here: 
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Vapmachado/Portuguese_language_issues, 
particularly this one: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_Portuguese#Grammar

I think you'll be just treading water, and will 
not get anywhere this way. Why not try: Let's not 
feed the trolls, and ignore me, has you guys use 
to do, when you don't get right down uncivil?

Sincerely,

Virgilio A. P. Machado (Vapamachado)
An harmless guy who had this idea that Wikipedia 
was a great thing for his students, and paid dearly for it.


At 01:55 07-12-2010, you wrote:
>On Tue, Dec 7, 2010 at 12:21 PM, M. Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> >..
> > As far as I can tell, this decision was reached by consensus, and the
> > Acordo Ortográfico of 1990 is technically official in Portugal,
> > although it may not yet be used in schools.
>
>Thanks Mark.
>
>for content, here is the Wikipedia article about it.
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_Language_Orthographic_Agreement_of_1990
>
>--
>John Vandenberg