The Last Flower of Lazio

Normative grammar serves as an instrument that aims to induce the use of language by a prescriptive recipe...

She was never content alone. The Portuguese language (LP) was born from another, yes. The mother tongue? The Latin! From the womb of the Iberian Peninsula, in the body of Latium, the breasts of Italy, gestation occurred due to the rise of the Roman Empire. From the mixture of many fluids (influence of peoples, such as Arabs and Basques) and two varieties, cultured and vulgar Latin, all this miscellany formed a seminal language capable of going beyond the limits of the Peninsula and reaching other continents, such as Asia, Africa and America. Despite all these flirtations, there are those who say that LP has or should remain monogamous, without touching any other language. Normative grammar serves as this instrument that aims to standardize and induce language use by a prescriptive recipe.

Before marrying Portuguese in the 13th century, when the kingdom of Portugal was founded, LP maintained close relations with Mozarabs (a people who came to be from the mixture of Latin and Arabic) and Germans, and the Basque people, the only people who managed to preserve its language at the beginning of the domination of Rome. An example of this linguistic penetration is the Basque semen, which was fertilized in the Portuguese language by its suffixes – “rro” (as in calf, dog) or “rra” (as in guitar), words still used in Portuguese today, with roçar of idioms –, that is, he leaned against the other without merging, he caught himself in frictions agglutinating elements of the other; courtship that left these children. Bringing to light Bakhtin's dialogic conception (1988) [1] that it is necessary to think, first of all, of language as an interactional element, it is not surprising to see all the brushing of LP, because, as mentioned above, LP was conceived from the beginning in a place with many peoples and, therefore, different ways of life.

A disciplinary notion is put into vogue:

I almost feel like saying that there isn't a Portuguese language, there are languages in Portuguese [2].

(SARAMAGO, 2023).

In this light, there was Portuguese from the Roman Empire, medieval and today. Furthermore, there are differences between EP itself (European Portuguese, from Portugal) and BP (Brazilian Portuguese). Although the motto of this text is LP in the world, it is worth emphasizing the polymath notion of language: in Portugal, coconut is sipped, in Brazil, mango is sucked. Although they mean the same thing, there is linguistic identity in this, with more than one Portuguese language. Geographically, “in the 14th century, the Portuguese discovered the archipelagos of Madeira and the Azores. In 1415, they took Ceuta. They descend little by little to the coast of Africa. In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias rounds the Cape of Good Hope. In 1498, Vasco da Gama arrives in India, they reach China and Japan”. (TEISSYER, 1982). So this tells us how and when LP spread to other places in the world.

On the other hand, it is important to point out the framing made by the grammar in a very hermetic way, as if there was only one type and it only served to say how to write or speak. However: “(...) Teaching descriptive grammar would not be, evidently, teaching linguistics at school... The proposal consists of working the facts of the language from the effective production of the student. (...) What he produces reflects what he knows (internalized grammar). The unprejudiced comparison of forms is a task of descriptive grammar, and the acceptance or explicitness of social acceptance or rejection of such forms is a task of normative grammar. The three can – evidently – live together at school”. (POSSENTI, 1996, p.89) [3].

In this sense, the use of grammar corroborated [in some way] to create parameters for any language, especially the LP in question.

Finally, during the approximate 800 years of history, the Portuguese language had many courtships, flirtations and (why not say) marriages and/or foundations, considering that this language – born from Latin – became official in several continents of the world, breaking the borders of the Iberian Peninsula. Furthermore, if it reached so many places, from East to West, it obviously gained different shades over time; thus, providing a vastness capable of making more than one Portuguese exist, despite the grammar that beckons to determine a standard way of using the language.

I believe, therefore, that it is necessary to see the different relationships of the language, sometimes as a bride who marries only one groom (an allusive grammar), sometimes with different varieties or variations in line with the different peoples who “brought on it”, the language portuguese.

Lusophone greetings,

Alberto Rios.

Lethrologist.

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[1] BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Marxism and Philosophy, trans. LAHUD, Michel and VIEIRA, Yara Frateschi. 4th ed. Sao Paulo: Hucitec, 1988.

[2] Speech brought in the documentary by Lopes V, director. Language: lives in Portuguese. [Film]. Rio de Janeiro: Riofilme, 2003.

[3] POSSENTI, S. Why (not) teach grammar at school? Campinas: ALB Mercado de Letras, 1996.

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