The articles written by the PÚBLICO Brasil team are written in the variant of the Portuguese language used in Brazil.
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Carmem Miranda, in 1940, returned to Brazil, after a successful experience in the United States. It was met with harsh criticism by some who considered it “Americanized”. The response to this criticism was in the song They Said I Came Back Americanized. In it, our beloved Portuguese-Brazilian woman solves her identity crisis in shrimp stew with chayote. America appears, however, with the very usual meaning as being the United States. Being America is still a difficulty for us Brazilians.
In the articles I write for this newspaper I frequently use the expression “American Portuguese” to refer to the Portuguese spoken in Brazil and thus oppose the expression “European Portuguese”. Some — and with some reason — find it strange. It is not usual, in fact, to refer to Brazilian Portuguese as American. But why? I do it deliberately and in a somewhat provocative way.
Referring to the Lusitanian variety as European Portuguese today, when so many Brazilians are living in Europe, also seems anachronistic to me. It misses the fact that Brazilian Portuguese is also spoken in Europe. Have you realized that, in Portugal, around 10% of the population uses the Brazilian variety daily?
However, speaking Portuguese from Portugal seems redundant and sounds strange. So, if there is a lot of sense in referring to a European Portuguese because Portugal is in Europe, it also makes as much or more sense to talk about an American Portuguese, because Brazil is part of America. Or is it not?
In the choice of the expression ‘American Portuguese’ there is a belief that being American is a Brazilian vocation to which few of us — here and there — have yet awakened. I can’t help but understand that the Brazilian variety is as American as the one that is official in Portugal is European. It is a linguistic fact, but also a cultural and, yes, political one. Above all, it is the sowing of hope that Brazil will see itself as American, not by imitating Miami in a clumsy way, but by understanding itself as part of this vast and rich continent in which it is constituted as territory, history and culture.
When I go to Camboriú, in Santa Catarina, and I come across the many Argentines who go there, whether to spend holidays or to establish a home, I am reminded that there is — and spoken even in Brazil — an American variety of Spanish. Any translation app reminds me that this variety (which isn’t even one, but there are several!) exists. Likewise, I believe there is an American Portuguese. In fact, Latin Americans, a Portuguese, a Spanish, a French…
For some of us it is very difficult to feel like we speak Portuguese. There are many people in Brazil who say, somewhat without thinking, that it would have been much more advantageous for the colonization of our territory to have been carried out by the English. We forget the many countries that were British colonies and are so far from being developed lands. We also forget that our identity was created and is created in Portuguese.
We carefully leave aside the fact that we were once Portugal and these Portuguese Brazilians who stayed here after independence are one of the bases of what Brazil is today. Is there pride in that? I don’t know. There would be a lot to discuss on the topic. But it is certain that there is memory in this fact.
Speaking Brazilian Portuguese means entering into this very plural reality of sharing a complex culture built in Portuguese and which is, at the same time, African, Asian and European and also, of course, American. But speaking this variety of American Portuguese is also sharing a common heritage built in many ways, which were not always noble or ethical, it is true, but which reflect a way of being and being in the world.
Our way, as Portuguese speakers, of living in these lands where the Andes, the Amazon, the Pantanal, the Caribbean, the Atlantic and the Pacific meet. And they shape us and help us become who we are — or who we can be. And, in this way, it is also about bringing part of this American wealth, in its deepest sense, to the Portuguese language that is built and reconstructed daily around the world and that is also built in America, which is not synonymous with the USA.
