For this last language post, my partner and I decided to explore more into linguistic differences between Spanish and Portuguese. We had done this a little in the past and it’s helped to expand my understanding of the language when thinking about it in terms of how something would be done in Spanish. In the past we’ve discussed how ficar doesn’t exist in the language, how ão typically replaces the Spanish ending ion, and some other things. For this specific month, we wanted to continue building my basic understanding of the language, so one section of meetings were blocked off as review of some of the basics and vocabulary we’d already covered, and then the other half of meetings were strictly into this new exploration between the differences of Spanish and Portuguese. This was really helpful because the act of practice and retention is the best way for me to really learn anything. So, being forced into this recalling of what I learned previously has done wonders for me. On a side note, that learning process of constantly recalling information might be my biggest takeaway from this whole class and process. I never really understood the value and challenges of trying to remember something foreign, but you really have to work to commit things to memory through practice. However, with all that being said, this post will focus on my learning of the new material contrasting the Spanish and Portuguese languages.
One of our main learning focuses that we covered this month was the uses of the word “a gente”. Now a gente on its surface kind of is similar to the Spanish word of gente and similarly means “the people”, but it is actually much different. In Portuguese, a gente typically replaces the formal “nós” in Portuguese, which is nosotros in Spanish, and typically is used in everyday conversational conventions. Interestingly, one would never see a gente written in any formal texts or even in more formal conversations, but in everyday speech it’s almost completely expected. Nobody even thinks of it different, and it can be used very uniquely. For example, one in speech would say, “A gente sempre fala Português”, which means “We always speak Portuguese”. However, in written form or contextually this would be “Nós sempre falamos Portuguese”, which means exactly the same thing. It’s an interesting quirk of the language for sure and one that was super interesting to me. In Spanish, that would be “nosotros siempre hablamos Portuguese”, which is more similar to the second form with “nòs” for sure.
In addition to learning about a gente, we also touched upon the usage of you within Portuguese and Brazil specifically. In Brazil, for example, tu (you) began not being used in most of the country actually, and the word você became the standard. However, tu is still used in Portuguese, but it is used differently depending on the region where it is spokes. Outside of Brazil, in the rest of the Portuguese-speaking world, like in Europe, the difference between tu and você is rather similar to that of in Brazil and both are still used with their original connotation. Which essentially means that você is the formal form and tu is the informal form. Examples: Tu tá quieto, cara. Tá tudo bem?
Moving forward, our focus will be not to add any additional learning but try and keep up with what I already learned. I really learned a lot and look forward to the last two culminating assignments of the course.
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