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Regarding Paganel's Spanish

From: Christian Sánchez <chvsanchez~at~arnet.com.ar>
Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2012 01:10:16 -0300
To: "Jules Verne Forum" <jvf~at~gilead.org.il>

"In making your decision, consider at the same time Spanish and Portuguese. We are accostumed to thinking of them as big, fat, distinct 'languages' because they are spoken by formerly geopolitically dominant powers with distict and rich literary heritages. Yet they are close enough that, if political boundaries had been drawn differently, they would be considered dialects of the 'Iberian' language. Spanish and Portuguese speakers can get the gist of each other's spoken languages (although Portuguese have a much easier time with Spanish that the other way around), and I long ago gave up trying to speak, as opposed to read, Portuguese because I find it impossible to keep it separate from Spanish in my mouth and always ended up committing the gaffe of seeming not realize that Portuguese is not Spanish (which can be a particularly touchy subject in Brazil, where people are weary of Americans assuming that they speak Spanish as other South Americans do). The Spaniard would say Ese hombre no tiene mis gatos for That man doesn't have my cats, whereas the Portuguese would say Ésse homem não tem os meus gatos -- the difference here is obviously quite akin to that between Standard and Swiss German. There are plenty of 'languages' in, for example, Africa and Asia, as well as ones in Europe such as Italian, whose 'dialects' are even more different."

(The Power of Babel by John McWhorter, p. 17)
Received on Tue 03 Jan 2012 - 06:12:21 IST

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