[Wikipedia-l] Brazilian Portuguese

[Pierre Abbat]

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 você) 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