Originally posted by: nagger
Originally posted by: Amused
Your language matured and normalized at the same time most of Europe's did. And you had far more influences than Arabic. Most significantly were the language influences from the North during the Christian expansion after the 11th century and the end of the Moors. This is where the heavy Spanish and French influence comes from. In fact, when Portugal was under the domination of Spain, from 1580 to 1640, Castilian heavily influenced the language. After that, French influence during the 18th century changed the Portuguese spoken in the homeland, making it different from the Portuguese spoken in the colonies.
My statement was based on what Portuguese sounds like when a person who has heard only French and Spanish first hears it. At first one thinks they're speaking Spanish, then French... nope, Spanish. Get it? I've known dozens of folks from Brazil who agree this is what Portuguese sounds like. As well it should, because the two heaviest influences since the 11th century have been Spanish (Castilian) and French.
I'm far from "wrong on this one."
Amused,
Before the Roman Empire invaded the Iberian Peninsula and brought the Latin language, the land were Portugal now lies was mainly composed of Celtic tribes (the fusion between the Celts and the local culture created what is called 'castreja' culture).
The Latin was adopted as the oficial language of Lusitania, and during the more than 100 years of Roman occupation the Latin language eroded into a new dialect that was a mix between Latin and the previous dialect that the 'castreja' men used.
After the fall of the Roman empire the Iberian Peninsula was invaded by the barbarians (in portuguese we call them 'alanos', 'suevos' and 'visigodos') that created a independent state with the actual city of Braga as their capital.
In 711 the Arabic invaded the Iberian peninsula bringing the words beggining with 'Al' and 'La' to our lexicon.
In the 10th century the Christian expansion begun and in 1028 the region that was named 'Condado Portucalense' was formed. The official language was a mixed language called gallego.
The language as kept similar from this time to the present day, with addition of new words or expressions from 'Mirândes', Castilian, Catalan, French, Italian, English and from expressions caught from the portuguese colonies in Africa and South America.
Castillan as a language is more recent than Portuguese, after all in Spain there are 3 other languages: Basq, Gallego and Catallan.
As for the diferencies between Iberian Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese what I can say is that the initial mix between Portuguese and the 'Tupi-Guarani' dialect created a new language all together.
Just as an example the first portuguese grammar book dates from 1536. And in the 14th century humanists and orthographer's joined forces to compile the first dictionary and to establish the first set of portuguese language phonetics, morphologic and syntactical rules.
Sorry for the English errors and the number of words in portuguese, but my Portuguese-English dictionary doesn't aid in the translation of those words.
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