Second Cultural Post
Differences between Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese
Is Brazilian Portuguese really the same as European Portuguese? That is something that I first wondered when deciding to take Portuguese. It turns out there are subtle differences between the two. According to the online research that I did, the two accents sound phonetically different. Some people think that Brazilian Portuguese is more phonetically pleasing because it has open vowels, compared to the fast and mumbled European Portuguese. Furthermore, Brazilian Portuguese speakers talk with higher and lilting inflections, while European Portuguese do not, which makes Brazilian Portuguese much easier to understand for foreigners.
Grammatically speaking, European Portuguese is more strict with spelling changes and foreign words. For example, the word ‘reception’ is “receção”, in European Portuguese, but Brazilians tend to add a P to make it “recepção.” When the letter P is silent, this is often the case-- that European Portuguese does not pronounce it but Brazilian Portuguese does. Furthermore, in Brazilian Portuguese its is common to turn nouns into verbs, like the word “to congratulate.” It is said in European Portuguese as ““dar os parabéns” — but Brazilians turn it into 1 word, “parabenizar”. Another difference between Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese is informal and formal speech. Brazilians are more comfortable using the informal “você” in most contexts. But in Portugal, the informal “tu” is used only for friends and family. In Portugal, using the informal “você” can be rude and impolite. People in Portugal also tend not to say the word “você” because it sounds rude to say it explicitly, instead they don’t say the pronoun but just conjugate the verb using 3rd person singular.
In the end, Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese are very similar, the few things that I pointed out before are the big differences between the two forms of Portuguese. In the end though, they are both the same parent language, and both are interchangeable.
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