Jocelyne Rodriguez
Fourth Cultural Post: Target Language's Writing System
The Portuguese writing system uses the latin alphabet and so it has been easier to learn. Before the 1990s, Portuguese did not have the letters K, W, and Y but after the Portuguese Language Orthographic Agreement, these letter have been added to the Portuguese alphabet making it the same as the English alphabet. The main remaining difference between the English and the Portuguese writing system is the use of grammatical accents. I have had some prior exposure to grammatical accents but Portuguese is the Romance language with the most grammatical accents. It has been pretty difficult for me to learn when a word should have an accent and when it should not, especially as the Orthographic Agreement also changed the rules for determining when to use accents. Currently Portuguese continues to work towards the full implementation of the new rules established by the agreement, but many of the old rules continue to be used.
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