Knowing that there is at least one (esteemed) member of UMSF from Portugal, this news item got my attention:

Brazil Prompts Portugal to Update Portuguese
http://www.tampabay.com/news/bizarre/article510864.ece#

"Under the agreement, which was hotly contested, the spelling
will more closely match the way words are pronounced by removing silent
consonants. Also, the alphabet expands to 26 letters with the introduction
of k, w and y..."

Wow. Changing the alphabet. That sounds pretty radical to me.
"Hotly contested." I'll bet!

Why do Brasialians need KaWaYs ?

Colour
Theatre
Metre

And I'll throw tea-bags at anyone who disagrees with me

Doug

Ah, the Americans and the British -- two cultures, separated by a common language...

-the other Doug

Methinks something has got to be done about the way they pronounce "methane".

My favourite difference in pronunciation:

a-LOO-mih-num vs. a-lyoo-MIN-ee-um

"Sir Humphry made a bit of a mess of naming this new element, at first spelling it alumium
(this was in 1807) then changing it to aluminum, and finally settling on aluminium in 1812."
http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/aluminium.htm

And us contrary Americans settled on the middle version of the spelling... It's not that we just fail to pronounce a final "i" in the word, we don't even include it in the spelling of the word!

And who knew, as us humans quibbled over semantics, that this same metal was the primary component of the lunar highlands that shined over our heads at night?

-the other Doug

In 1812 we weren't interested in any damn redcoat spelling for a metal that nobody had ever laid eyes on, anyway!
The real problem is with "vitamin". That pronunciation is just plain ornery.

I often thing of UK english spelling as a French version of the US spelling, but somehow never dared to say that out loud here in the UK, since it's pretty insulting

I think you'd better get yer tea-bags out (for throwing at yourself), since you've recently used program (as in TV show), meter (as in distance) and favorite. Those are just the ones I recall from memory; I'm sure a forum search would dredge-up a few more.

Perhaps they just want to make the most of their new Apple wireless keyboards.

Personally, I think it's too little, too late. There are some experts who believe all written languages will be obsolete in just 50 years...

OMG! 2kewl!

(That's gonna KILL text-addicted teenagers...)


BTW, off-the-cuff observation here: Anybody ever noticed that it's apparently much easier for British actors to imitate the standard American accent & pronounciation rather than vice versa? Wondered why that is for some time. I can do Southern, Northern Plains (think the movie Fargo) and New Jersey/NYC accents, but cannot do any of the UK accents.

Fries
Gas
Trunk
Truck
Tire
Neighbor

..and I'll throw cheeseburgers back at you.

And while we are on the subject the French guys can weigh in on how painful it is to listen to a Quebec-er. Since I learned to speak it fluently there among other children, I've gotten more than a few dirty looks for speaking with that accent. In high school I had a substitute French teacher throw a book at me from across the room for what he thought was a painful pronunciation of "chair" in French.

You won't believe how French-Canadian (Quebec) accent and words are differents (and nice) for French people. I wonder which one of the two languages is the fastest updating itself!

That's easy: Le Shairrr.

.

"What's next? British speaking American?"

The kids around here are waaaaaaaaaaay ahead of you, they all talk like they're extras in an Eminem video already. Sat in the park, big baggy jeans around their skinny white ankles, baseball caps on, swigging their White Lightning and nodding in a zombie-like trance to the hissy tinny noise coming out of their mobile phones... whenever I walk past them I find it very hard not to laugh when they're knocking knuckles together and calling each other "bee-yatch" or "homie" or "blood"...

I feel a poem comin' on!

Move over, The Waste Land!

"Portuguese to Start Speaking Brazillian?"

I know I'm not...neither changing my way of writing...
And K, W and Y are already included in our alphabet, being teached with the other letters for some years already...

There are really some incredible stuff with this agreement...there are words that are now possible to be written in THREE different ways...for someone who was wanting to simplify the "sweet language" I can't say this was a good work...

Ah! What a nice (and funny) thread!

I'm a bit surprised by these news. Not by the issue "Portuguese to speak 'Brazilian'" or "Brazilians to speak 'Portuguese'" but by the timing, because I remember this same topic being addressed (not here, sure) years ago! Something still ongoing or is it just "old news"?

Eduardo

The Portuguese Parliament approved now the agreement signed in 1991...

Hi,

As a native Portuguese speaker, I don't think that the agreement will simplify or unify the language. "Portuguese Portuguese" or "Brazilian Portuguese" are different because each evolved on different countries from a common source. Language evolves, which is a good thing, so words acquire new meanings and spellings. That's not a problem in my view, and no agreement is needed to unify the language.

At school, I learned "British English", but never had any problem with "American English", as the teacher used to explain the diferences for some words.

So all this is just one of those political things... I'll write as I always did and won't even bother with the changes, and that is what 90% of the people will do.
As for the K, W and Y, these are used for writing foreign names or words that have no translation.

This is an interesting issue to watch from my perspective as an American. AFAIK, there's never been any effort to reconcile the differences between UK standard English spelling and American usage. In fact, Canada and I believe Australia, if not all other member states of the British Commonwealth adhere to UK standards, and the US is the only exception among English-speaking countries.

Does anyone know if something similar has been attempted between Spain and Spanish-speaking countries in the Western Hemisphere? For example, I know that there are some substantial differences between the Mexican dialect and Castillian Spanish.

Ah ah, much easier to understand Argentinian or Uruguayan than Spanish !
Not speaking about the way they pronounce the "LL" and the "Y" !

Rui and Eduardo, how do you say "Seleçao" in Portuguese?

That's global already, man. I saw kids in Tokyo back in 2004 doing the same thing; couldn't believe it.

Send them down here; they can ride with me through South Central LA on my commute, I'll drop 'em off on Crenshaw & Imperial...we'll see how fly they really are, yo!

(BTW, very overblown stereotypes via music videos, etc. at work here. I'm Caucasian, regularly stop & shop at many businesses in this area, never a cross look, never a problem; even walked the streets a few times, felt perfectly safe, was perfectly safe. It's poor as hell down there, but people are people, and they'll smile and say hello as you walk by. The gangs are there, but they're all about shooting at each other, really. As usual, the media hypes things far beyond reality.)

See how things are?
That word in Portuguese is written Selecção (originated in the latin: Selectione) and in Brazil goes like Seleção, without the first C.
Subtle but makes a difference...

Guys, for us non-Portuguese speakers, what is the English equivalent of this word, please?

The meaning climber is attributing is "national team" (Euro2008 starts in a few days...), but the word in itself is the equivalent to "selection" in English.

Gotcha...thanks, Rui! I figured there was a dual meaning, but could not discern it from the context.

I would say: Seleção Brasileira.
Subtle but makes a difference...

You beat me on this one Eduardo

Do you guys mean this SeleCÇão?...

As they say for Halley's comet, "it's once in a life time experience"!

Rui, I'm trying to make you release the pressure before Phoenix landing, that's all

One of my fondest memories is of proving that particular saying wrong in 1986...

When Halley returned to the sky in 1986 there was a lot of media attention of course, and I organised quite a few public skywatching events to show people the famous comet. I also got a lot of phone calls from people who wanted to see it - or be shown it - but couldn't get along to any of the organised events for various reasons, so I tried my best to go see them with my scope and show them the comet. One call was from a woman who explained that her mother was desperate to see the comet because, as a young girl in 1910, her father had taken her outside and shown her the comet, insisting "You'll never see it again..." And she - the old lady - was determined to prove him wrong. SO, up I toddle to the house, set up the scope, and the old lady comes out for a look. To be honest I could have centered anything faint and fuzzy in the eyepiece and she'd have known no different, but I focussed on the real thing... the lady peers into the eyepiece... smiles slightly... then starts laughing, quite loudly...



"Are you okay?" I asked, wondering if I was about to be taken hostage and locked in a cellar by a mad old woman...

"Yes, fine," she replied, "thank you... you just helped me prove the old b*****d wrong!!!!"

Turned out she really, REALLY hadn't got on with her father, so any chance to get one up on him was a real triumph.

..."revenge is a dish best served cold!" Pretty feisty, but, damn...

You did take an inventory of all your limbs before you left, yes?

Hell hath no fury, let me tell you. If i predecease my second ex, I've no doubt that she'll visit my grave once a year just to make sure that I'm still dead and laugh about it...

My favourite is 'buoy'

English: BOY
American English BOO-EE

The sheer variety and vibrancy of the different forms of English are a genuine delight. I think part of the language's enduring ascendancy is the 'almost anything goes' attitude of it's speakers.
It's sometimes clear on this forum that English is not the mother tongue of some members, but they put us monoglots to shame in formulating complicated ideas and posting them here in a foreign tongue.

Incidentally, I would highly recommend Bill Bryson's book 'Mother Tongue' as a hilarious and very interesting survey of the English language. The introduction lists two notices written by people for whom English is obviously not their first language.....

Warning to Japanese motorists:
"When a passenger of the foot heave in sight, tootle the horn. Trumpet at him melodiously at first, but if he still obstacles your passage, then tootle him with vigour"

Sign in a Yugoslavian hotel:
"The flattening of underwear with pleasure is the job of the chambermaid. Turn to her straightaway"

My favorite "non-native" variety is "Chinese-English", that you can find on toys or inexpensive devices. The boxes are covered with complete nonsense sentences !

Ahhh- Engrish. I love it

Doug

Chinese-French is, what, interesting


"It's sometimes clear on this forum that English is not the mother tongue of some members, but they put us monoglots to shame in formulating complicated ideas and posting them here in a foreign tongue."


I do not feel this way at all !!!!

Oh, I disagree. I can speak a smattering of Korean, and the three years of German I took in high school has shamefully atrophied beyond use; that's it. I am consistently impressed by all of you who exhibit such mastery of English as a second language in the forum!!!

As for me, I think there is nothing funnier than Engrish.

--Emily

HA!!!! Well, that's a website going straight into the favs...thanks, Emily!

IIRC, one of Fredrik Pohl's short story collections (Pohlstars, I think) had a lot of amusing translational mishaps described. One of the stories included was a re-translation into English from Chinese of one of his stories, and it was hilarious!

Should mention to everyone that we're laughing with, not at. English has so many synonyms and idioms (which change ALL the time) that funny phrases are pretty damn hard to avoid in translation...

Right-o, daddy-o! You're like, man, groovy... and gnarly, too, dude.



-the other Doug

My response to oDoug's compliments would of course be "Yo, thanks for the mad props, Homie, and nothin' but love for you and your posse!"...

On a slightly more serious note, here is an excellent resource for English synonyms. Unfortunately, it doesn't cover slang in depth, but slang is after all usually transient.

lol nprev, that sounds like something David Cameron would say (sorry for non-UK folks)