Customer Reviews

Modern Portuguese: A Reference Grammar

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I speak Portuguese and have spent some time in Brazil. I hope that my comments as an ex-learner (still learning though) will be of some good to new learners. This book contains a lot of useful information but the wrong emphasis. It considers three strands in the Portuguese language: formal writing; general use; and colloquial use. What is entered here as formal writing is what I learned at the university for general use. General use in this book includes colloquialisms like the use of "te" with "voce". What is colloquial use according to this book includes creole variations like "nos chegamo" or "nos chegam'" for first person plural "nos chegamos". This is not the standard you are looking for when you buy a grammar (this one is expensive) for guidance on the language you are learning. Comparing with English, it is like telling our EFL students "that's what you gotta have" anything else is too formal!

This book tries to convince the reader that some sub-standard practices in spoken portuguese are after all standard. It goes to the extreme of distorting grammatical categories to make the argument look right. The sections on imperative and the pronouns are rather mixed up.

The author should stick to the portuguese spoken on good brazilian TV programmes and that you read in interviews etc in reputable brazilian magazines. The worst is that this book is presented as suitable for foreigners. You want to learn standard, not sub-standard language!

This book is an attempt to explain the Portuguese language on both sides of the Atlantic and understand some of its colloquialisms specifically in Brazil. It contains useful information. What is wrong is trying to elevate some sub-standard practices to the status of standard language. It will be better to promote the colloquial, but correct, Portuguese used in Brazilian newspapers and good quality Brazilian magazines like for example Veja. Acknowledgment of colloquialisms is OK, promoting sub-standard language is not!

Imagine a book called "English Grammar" which was based on the English spoken by the uneducated people of South Africa. This book is no better! The author had the audacity to call this a Portuguese Grammar, but it doesn't even deserve the name of a Brazillian Portuguese Grammar as it takes as its' standard the language from the ghettos of Brazil. If you want to learn correct Portuguese or read literary works in Portuguese then get the Portuguese Grammar written by Joseph Dunn - which is still the most comprehensive Portuguese Grammar in English. If you want to travel to the ghettos of Brazil and talk to uneducated people than this is your Book!

This book accepts as spoken language sentences like the following: Entao os rapazinho sobe la no alto da torre; As estrada por aqui sao muito ruim; esses aluno ficaram muito motivado; Eu e Chico chegamo / chegam' de manha. This is not spoken Portuguese, this is illiterate Portuguese.

Some people can afford indulging in inverted snobbery. They join in with the uneducated and use illiterate forms of speech when they talk to tem. Then they revert to the educated language in their own jobs, their social circle. The uneducated are left in the illusion tha their poor speech is acceptable. They are also left at the bottom of education and society.

Instead of addressing positively the problem of illiteracy in Brazil, a book like this one further reinforces the deplorable situation of socio-economic inequality.

Usually there appears to be great confusion about what is Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese. When asking native speakers, I have on occasions been given contradictory information. This new book is very helpful for people like me who have to be able to distinguish between the two standards, because professional commitments take me to both South America and Europe. This book signposts what is better left for colloquial usage only, in Brazil, and what is better left for written or formal usage in Brazil and Portugal. Everything else looks like safe ground. I may speak a bit Brazilian in Portugal but I am pretty sure that my Portuguese will be accepted. In approach and wide application, this reference grammar will find a good 'Partner' in Manuela Cook's recent Teach Yourself Portuguese a complete course in understanding speaking and writing (with audio), 2002, which has also served me well for both sides of the Atlantic.

Mario Perini's reference grammar of modern Portuguese is probably fine as a work of descriptive linguistics that covers different varieties of contemporary Brazilian Portuguese ranging from the formal written standard to the educated familiar language and the substandard popular (uneducated) speech. However, I would not recommend this grammar as a textbook for students learning Portuguese as a second language. Although it is certainly useful for an advanced learner to be familiar with language variation within Brazil, it is probably safer for a student to stick with the standard language as found in the national newspapers or heard in the national TV newscasts. In fact, a student who masters the standard will have no problem understanding either the usual (urban) colloquial language or substandard (low-prestige) popular speech.

I teach Portuguese Foreign Language and try to keep up to date on any new books being published. I read this one a while ago and what I am saying now is the product of a long reflection, not rushed comments.

I find two major causes for concern in this book. As a descriptive or normative grammar (it appears to seek to be both), it works within unconventional grammar categories. Classification is blurred for example between nominal and verbal features and between verb tenses and their functions, in particular imperative and subjunctive.

Another point of concern is the stratification of the Portuguese language in this book in which the following is gathered into one category: Brazilian formal language, European Portuguese and old literary language. In contrast, Brazilian colloquial usage is presented as the one to go for, a sort of standard status.

Most of us tend to use different registers, we do so in Portugal too, but we would not proclaim that the colloquial version is the one to be proclaimed as standard. It is relaxed, not always grammatically correct, but it can be fun. However, we should know better and teach better those who are trying to learn the language.

In Portugal we enjoy Brazilian telenovelas (soap operas) but the language we hear in them only occasionally corresponds to the Portuguese advocated in this grammar and, where it does, it is made obvious that it is a colloquial version not a standard one. Also when I open a Brazilian newspaper, magazine or website, the Portuguese I come across is not the Portuguese advocated in this grammar but the more educated brand.

As a final note, this grammar classifies European Portuguese (on a par with formal language and old literary language), but shows a lack of knowledge of it, even in elementary matters. For example, it says that in Portugal we spell "commigo" (double m) for "with me", but we do not, we spell "comigo", the same as in Brazil. How can a grammar that knows so little about European Portuguese comment on it!

I wish I could give more than two stars to this book but unfortunately I can not. I find it very inadequate, a cause for concern.

Portuguese is one of those languages (especially the Brazilian variant) whose speakers insist on maintaining a huge gap between the written standard and the spoken reality...which is fine. May the speakers of each language write as they will. But when foreign learners have to go out into the real world and defend themselves, they soon discover that all those pronouns they learned and half of those tenses they memorized are either not used, are used in a different way or are used "incorrectly" even by native speakers. This excellent grammar simply tries to give a well-presented explanation of these phenomena. I believe it is a necessary book, because there are already dozens of Portuguese grammar books that teach you ONLY standard grammar ("ajudar-nos-ão" muito pouco na vida real!), but this is the only one i have found that tells you, "hey, student!, by the way, that future tense and those mesoclitic pronouns you learned, you will only find them in books...people in real life never use them!..." To me that information is incredibly valuable so that I don't sound like a fool when speaking. At the same time, it provides the information on the formal usages, so you are not missing out on that, as well as totally unaccepted usages, which just happen to be used by nearly 100% of the native speakers of the language, so that you can actually understand people when they speak. Some of the other reviewers give the impression that the book teaches non-standard usages as "correct", but this is not true. The book very clearly states by each sentence whether the usage is formal, informal, archaic, only written, only spoken, etc., an approach I find excellent.

This is a wonderfully structured, thorough reference of Brazilian Portuguese. It goes well in depth over many topics, especially the numerous types of verbs. This book reads like a college text book (In fact that's what I assume its intended use is.) The author makes sure to point out in each section the similarities & large differences under each topic between the languages. He focuses a good deal on the differences in spoken & written language (which are much bigger than I had previously noticed.) In a few instances he also shows the differences in Spanish to the language, since many students have a base in Spanish. This is definitely worth the money!