Linguistic Parallels and Divergences: English and Brazilian Portuguese

Portuguese is an official language in several countries including Portugal, Brazil, some African Nations, and a couple countries in Asia. It is spoken by 215 to 220 million native speakers and 260 million speakers in total. Although it was first spoken in Portugal, most of the research found comparing English to Portuguese was describing Brazilian Portuguese. The correlation between American English and British English is the same sort of correlation between Brazilian Portuguese and Portuguese in Portugal. Brazilian Portuguese and English share some similarities and differences in linguistic characteristics such as word order, use of determiners, and the formal and informal “you”.

In English there is a relatively fixed word order, which is Subject Verb Object(SVO). In Brazilian Portuguese, there is also a relatively fixed word order, that is SVO. In the following example, ‘He is talking to Rachel’ translates exactly to ‘Ele está flando com Rachel’. According to Rothman (2015), “BP allows SV order only for transitive and uneragative verbs, irrespective of whether the sentence is a declarative or interrogative”(p.

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251). Rothman also states a contrast between English, Spanish, and Brazilian Portuguese (2015), “ Unlike English similar to Spanish, VS order is possible with unaccusative verbs in BP in declaratives … and also possible in iterrrogatives”(p. 251). Later in the article it is discussed that although other word orders in the Portuguese language, they are not obligatory. Word order is very important because it can change the meaning of the sentence or make the sentence ungrammatical all together.

Determiners provide additional information about the noun. Categories within this group of words in English are, articles, possessives, demonstratives, quantifiers, and Wh-words.

According to Santos and Scarpa(2005),

In BP, the prenominal position is almost always filled by a determiner such as the definite (o ‘the-masc’, a ‘the-fem’) or the indefinite (um ‘a/an-masc’, uma ‘a/an-fem’) articles, some contractions of prepositions and articles (do, da ‘of the’, no, na ‘in the’), demonstratives (este, esta ‘this’, aquele, aquela ‘that’) and possessives (meu, minha ‘my’). ( p. 166)

Similarly, articles such as a, an, and the, are the most commonly used out of all of the determiners. Santos and Scarpa also go on to say(2005), adjectives usually do not go in between the determiner and the noun. However, it is common for a possessive to be in between an article and a noun. Another interesting fact is that in Brazilian Portuguese, articles go before proper nouns( Santos and Scarpa, 2005, p. 166). In English, it would be ungrammatical to put possessives in between an article and a noun such as, ‘the my car’. It would also be ungrammatical to place articles before proper nouns as in, ‘the Amy went home’. This could be a difficult thing to remember when learning Portuguese as a second language because a person, whom English is their first language, would be in a way programmed to know that it is not grammatically correct to put the articles before possessives and proper nouns.

The informal and formal “You” makes an appearance in many languages including Portuguese. In a discussion forum on the Duolingo website, a person asked about the informal and formal “you” in Brazilian Portuguese and the replies go on to say what they speak in their region of Brazil verses Portugal. In Brazil, the words “tú” and “você” are informal but in Portugal, only “tú” is informal. The formal “you” in Brazil is, “senhor” or “senhora”. In Portugal, it is a bit confusing because “você” is the formal version of “you”, but to be very formal or to ensure respect, “senhor” and “senhora” can be used.

In conclusion, Brazilian Portuguese and English share some linguistic similarities such as the relatively fixed word order SVO and the prenominal position of articles, demonstratives, and possessives. The two languages have far more differences such as possible use of certain word orders, the use of articles before pronouns and placing possessives between an article and noun. Lastly the difference that English shares with many languages, the informal and formal “you”. There may be a few differences between Portuguese spoken in Brazil and Portugal but knowing one dialect will be okay to get by in either place, almost identically with English in America and Britain.

References

• Free Language-Learning Resources Online | Transparent Language
• Omniglot - Portuguese Writing System