Brazilian Portuguese doesn’t hurt anyone, says linguist – 01/17/2024 – Sérgio Rodrigues

“I have an aversion to reading in Brazilian.” Portuguese linguist Marco Neves talks about encountering the phrase, in the comment of a compatriot of his on Facebook, and his perplexity when realizing that “the author was proud of what he was saying”.

In “Doze Segredos da Língua Portuguesa”, one of the many books —none published here, unfortunately— in which Neves has been carrying out remarkable linguistic dissemination work for years, this is secret number 6: “Brazilian Portuguese doesn’t hurt nobody”.

“Imagine if someone proudly declared their aversion to reading in English, Spanish, French… We would all find it strange”, notes the author. “Instead of being proud of our limitations, how about we try to overcome them?”

Perhaps the openly xenophobic formulation is a bit shocking due to its crudeness, but the feeling it conveys is far from surprising. This is something that every Brazilian writer published in Portugal (I have three books published there) has come across countless times.

The truth is that the average Portuguese reader of the 21st century has as much appreciation for Brazilian writing as for an injection in the ass – let’s say that in our variant, out of modesty. Understanding why this is so is far from a simple task.

The author of “Twelve Secrets…” points out a fact that must certainly enter the equation: a strong asymmetry in the relations between the two peoples. “For better or for worse”, he writes, “Brazil is one of the beacons of our identity: through fear or fascination, it is very present in discussions about what it means to be Portuguese.”

Neves then adds something that seems indisputable: the opposite is not true, Portugal being for Brazilians just “a historical curiosity” – and, I say, a privileged migratory destination, precisely because it speaks a language so similar to ours.

Author’s conclusion: “In short, what for us is a focus of identity tension, for them it neither warms nor cools.” In other words, it doesn’t stink or smell.

Before anyone gets offended by this, it should be noted that the relative indifference of Brazilians is what leads them to read Portuguese authors without caution, savoring the ever-increasing differences between the two aspects of the language as if they were rare spices and transforming José Saramago , Valter Hugo Mãe and others in bestsellers.

To give another turn to this post-colonial screw, the Portuguese writer Miguel Real has just published in “Jornal de Letras” an article in which he argues that “the Portuguese language today finds its omega point, its fictional strength, in the Brazilian narrative, it is a literature of passion, which enchants and amazes”, while the European Portuguese language would be “aesthetically withered”.

Whether Real is right or not, only a long and frank intercontinental debate could determine. In any case, it is certain that the reader up there, with his proud “aversion”, will prefer to abstain.

From the point of view of Brazilian speakers, what I find most interesting in this confusion is a cruel detail: Portuguese prejudices against the South American aspect of the language are very similar to those we harbor against our own image in the mirror.

“It seems to be natural for the Portuguese to think that real Portuguese is ours and Brazilians speak a smaller language, a fake Portuguese”, observes Marco Neves. Perhaps he would be surprised to know how many Brazilians cultivate this same crooked idea.

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