A Gramática Portuguesa está FICANDO mais Brasileira

We all know that languages ​​influence each other. For example, if you watched my video about the history of the Portuguese language, you know that, although Portuguese was born from Latin, throughout its history it was influenced by languages ​​such as Arabic and Tupi-Guarani, among others. The most common form of influence between languages ​​is lexical borrowings, that is, the words that a language acquires from other languages.

Nowadays we see this type of situation all over the world with words that come from English, the so-called Anglicisms. Words like software, marketing, benchmark, etc. But the influence of one language on another does not only manifest itself in word borrowings.

It also manifests itself at the level of grammar and sometimes even phonetics. For example, it is believed that this R that I and most Portuguese pronounce as if we were choking, appeared under the influence of French, somewhere in the 19th century. And just as one language can influence another, variants of the same language can influence each other.

In today's video we will see how Brazilian Portuguese is influencing Portuguese in Portugal, and why. Why is Brazil so influent? We start with the 'why': why does Brazilian Portuguese have so much influence on the way we speak in Portugal?

Where do I start? Brazil is the 5th largest country in the world in terms of area and the 7th largest in terms of population. Of the approximately 240 million native Portuguese speakers in the world, almost 90% are Brazilian, and only around 4% are Portuguese, with the remainder distributed throughout other Portuguese-speaking countries.

Brazil is the colossus of the Portuguese-speaking world, there is no doubt about that, and therefore it is perfectly normal that it has a disproportionately large cultural influence on the remaining Portuguese-speaking countries. This influence from Brazil is felt not only in Portugal, but in all Portuguese-speaking countries. And it's not a new phenomenon either: there are lots of words of Brazilian origin that we've been using for centuries, such as canoa, capoeira, caju, mandioca, carioca, tapioca or maracujá.

The real question is: why has Brazil's linguistic influence on Portugal become so important in recent years? Why is it only nowadays that alarmist newspaper articles are written about Portuguese children who - oh no! - they speak “Brazilian”?

The answer is simple: in the past we had a huge ocean separating Brazil from Portugal and the rest of the Portuguese-speaking countries, but in the last decade this distance has been overcome thanks to the internet. Thanks to the internet, all Portuguese people are now exposed to Brazilian Portuguese in a way never seen before, but before I tell you the consequences this has, I first want to explain how you can use the internet to learn any language you want, thanks to today's video sponsor, italki! If you've been following my channel for a while, this isn't the first time you've heard me talk about italki, nor will it be the last, because one of my resolutions for this year 2024 is to take 2 classes a week on italki.

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By using this link you will be supporting my channel and with classes on italki you will make immense progress in the language you are learning, whether it be Portuguese or any other language! I was born in the 90s, and when I was a child you only heard Brazilian Portuguese in the occasional song that was on the radio or in the occasional soap opera that was on television. But nowadays everyone has a smartphone and all young people spend hours and hours on applications like YouTube, Tiktok and Instagram.

Being Portuguese, these young people will naturally tend to consume online content in Portuguese, and the overwhelming majority of Portuguese-language content that exists on the internet is Brazilian. In other words, young Portuguese people have almost as much contact with Brazilian Portuguese in their daily lives as they do with Portuguese from Portugal, almost as if they were bilingual of these two variants of the language. This makes it natural for them to end up using Brazilian words, grammar and even pronunciation when they talk to each other.

But this influence is not limited to children. Nowadays everyone spends hours and hours on the internet, and everyone in Portugal consumes a lot of Brazilian content. As such, it is normal to see many people in their 20s, 30s and 40s blurting out one or another “Brazilianism” in their everyday conversations, even intentionally.

The influence of Brazilian Portuguese We have already seen why Brazilian Portuguese is so omnipresent in Portugal, but how does this influence manifest itself? As I said, the most evident manifestation is the use of Brazilian words and expressions by Portuguese people, especially children and young people. As reported in the 2021 Diário de Notícias article, nowadays it is common to hear young Portuguese people use Brazilian words when talking to their friends, and refer to grass as grama, the bus as ónibus and even sweets as bala.

The word stripe is now a listra; the appliance that keeps food cold has changed from a refrigerator to a geladeira; and when young people address someone, that someone is now a cara. These are examples of words commonly used in Brazil being adopted in Portugal by younger children and in a more informal context. But as I already said, this type of influence happens to people of all ages, and is not limited to the adoption of vocabulary.

Grammar also suffers from some Brazilian influence, and sometimes there are Portuguese people who say things like “ir num lugar” instead of “go to a place”, “sou grato” instead of “I'm grateful” or “I'm thankful” . We are also starting to lose a little mesoclisis, which is a grammatical form in which the pronoun is placed between the root and the ending of the verb when it is conjugated in the Future and Conditional. In other words, verb forms such as “dir-te-ia” and “ver-nos-emos” are sometimes said as “diria-te” or “te diria” and “veremo-nos” or “nos veremos”.

Here I confess that I don't know if this happens due to Brazilian influence or simply because this verb tense is complicated and therefore there is a tendency to fall into disuse, as has already happened with verbal conjugations in the 2nd person plural, vós, in almost all of Portugal. I talk about it in this video, if you're interested. Just as the personal pronoun “vós” fell into disuse in Portugal, the indirect complement pronouns “lhe”, “lhes” and “vos” are also less and less used: For example, “I told her” often becomes “eu disse a ela” or “eu disse-lhes” becomes “eu disse a eles”.

There are those who, instead of saying “I bought you a gift”, say “comprei uma prenda para vocês”. I myself often find myself saying “with you” instead of “convosco”, which would be the “Portuguese” version. For example: “vou viajar com vocês” instead of “I will travel with you”.

And we can't talk about grammar without talking about the gerund. In Portugal, apart from certain specific regions, such as Alentejo, Algarve and the islands, very few people use the gerund after the verb estar. What in English would be “I'm doing” for us is “estou a fazer”, while in Brazil it's “estou fazendo”.

However, we are beginning to see more and more people using the gerund form, especially young people who follow Brazilian influencers. This gerund, which in the 17th century began to be lost in a large part of Portugal, it seems to be making a comeback thanks to Brazilian influence on the internet. I already know that this video will probably attract many Portuguese people who will complain that Portuguese is being distorted by the Brazilian way of speaking, and many Brazilians who will say that Brazilian Portuguese is the correct and improved form of the Portuguese language.

In my opinion, both are wrong, and I propose another way of seeing things: There are many ways of speaking, many accents and regional expressions within the same language, especially a global language like Portuguese. As such, the best thing we can do is continue to learn more about our own language and try to adapt our way of speaking according to the context in which we find ourselves. For example, I speak a certain way when I'm with my friends; I speak a little differently in a formal context; and when I talk to Brazilians I also speak differently, trying to adapt my vocabulary so that they understand me better.

If you are Portuguese, tell me in the comments if you have ever found yourself using Brazilian expressions or grammar intentionally or unintentionally, and if you are Brazilian and living in Portugal, also tell me if you try to use Portuguese vocabulary when you speak with Portuguese. If you liked this video, click here to see the next one!