Academia de Letras sees no reason for official adoption of neutral language

This is not the time for expressions like “todes” to officially enter the Portuguese language. This is the position presented by the president of the Brazilian Academy of Letters (ABL), Merval Pereira, at a public meeting held this Tuesday (3) by the National Education Council (CNE) to address the issue of neutral language.

Merval Pereira clarified that ABL analyzes the topic with caution. He said that neutral language is still an incipient and niche phenomenon, and highlighted that the change would be complex, as it would alter the structure of Brazilian Portuguese. Regarding the use of neutral language in official texts, he made it clear that, if any, the text will not be within the standard of the cultured language.

“Official documents must follow the official standards that are in force. If the teacher wants to say ‘todes’ in the classroom, he will be harming the majority of students who don’t know what that is. He also cannot force students to use neutral language, because there is nothing that forces him to do so,” he highlighted. Pereira also said that it is up to the Ministry of Education, not the ABL, to make a decision on a possible official adoption of neutral language, but believes that this is not the time for that.

Recently, academic Heloísa Teixeira used neutral vocabularies in her inauguration speech at ABL. Regarding what happened, Merval Pereira explained that the situation caused “astonishment, as if the Brazilian Academy of Letters was adopting neutral language at that moment, it is nothing like that”. According to him, the new academic intended to honor the LGBTQIA+ public who were present at the ceremony.

The president commented that it is necessary to treat the issue with care so that a mistake is not made either in officially assuming it or in definitively denying it. “We have to pay attention to whether or not this language continues to be used, to see to what extent it can expand in society, outside the niche in which it was born and which, at the moment, only people linked to that niche use”, explains Pereira . He concluded by saying that it is not a definitive disapproval, as the phenomenon is recent and still needs time to be evaluated.

“Education has other priorities”, says Niskier

Arnaldo Niskier, who, in addition to being a member of the Academy of Letters, was also part of the National Education Council, also participated in the public meeting. During his demonstration, he dealt with other subjects and dedicated just a few minutes to neutral language. From the little he said on the subject, he followed the line of the importance of being careful so that there is no type of precipitation.

Niskier commented that education has other priorities, such as the discussion on comprehensive education and increasing the public budget allocated to the sector. “We have to discuss maintaining and expanding funds for education. We cannot live with absurd cuts that have been made since the last government and that seem to have become a mania. Education always needs more and not less,” he said.

The professor discussed the urgency of fighting for the quality of education. “This fundamentally depends on teachers being better trained and better paid too”, he reinforced. Niskier also took advantage of the moment to demand that the CNE draft a new law of basic guidelines to replace the previous one and the need to dedicate itself to the quality of distance learning to make it effective.

Evanildo Bechara, grammarian and philologist and also a member of the ABL, was present, it was announced during the meeting, but he did not speak.