What determines whether a language exported from one country to another has evolved to such an extent that it can be considered a new language? This is the premise of the Open debate in Brazil and Portugalperhaps one of the best examples of how the language of a former colonial power – the Portuguese – takes on new dimensions and enormous magnitudes in the country where it emerged. As in many cases of what happened with Spanish in Latin America.
In this sense, these are issues such as those defended by the Portuguese linguist Fernando Venâncio, who in his book Thus a language was born (‘This is how a language was born’). Expert said gets involved and sets a date for when we will be able to speak only of Brazilian -brasileiro- instead of Brazilian Portugueseaccording to information from Executive Digest.
In this sense, although it is a well-known issue in our country, Venâncio focuses on a controversial issue in Portugal, the origin of its language. This is a shared language that also originated in the well-known -and extinct- as Old Kingdom of Galicia -which included the north of Galicia to almost the southern half of Portugal-.
From the origin of a shared language to crossing the pond and evolving even further
“The mere idea that one day a foreign language could be the language of Portugal is unbearable to us,” says the linguist, although the reality is that it was born as the same language as later it would end up branching into Galician -co-official in said autonomous community- and PortugueseIn no case does it derive from the use of medieval Castilian and forms its own Romance language.
In fact, for the monarch Alfonso X the Wise, Galician-Portuguese was a cultured language in his court and they were commissioned to compose the cantigas de Santa María, written in that language and considered to be among the most relevant cultural creations of the time on the literary, musical and religious levels.
When will we talk about Brazilian as an independent language?
In this sense, and as the expert explains “There is no way back, there is no way to stop this process of separation between Portuguese and Brazilians”. Thus, Venâncio places this time horizon in the next two decades, although it is impossible to specify without evaluating the evolution in the coming years, that is, if the detected trend continues.
“There will be a distancing from European Portuguese. We don’t know when that will be. The only thing we can say is that this is inevitable,” the expert admits, suggesting that there is no need to worry about this type of issues, since It is something natural in languages, as it happened, for example, with Latin.:”Does knowing this make us happier? It’s the right thing to do.”
