Religion in Brazilian life.

In more than one occasion, everyone has thought about how Brazilians are.What is the first thought you get on your mind when you listen “Brazil”?  The tentative answers to this question are the common ones, such as football, Rio Carnival and beaches with beautiful landscapes resembling to paradise. However, what happens when we know that all those things exist thanks to religion? Let us think, for a minute, in this statement: “what is the element that has influenced the life of Brazilian people?”

First of all, Brazilians are considered cheerful and peaceful people who exhibit these virtues through their music, food and religion. The latter concept, we deem it is the most important in Brazilian culture, due to every activity they usually do, is considered and it is linked with religion beliefs in one way or another; in other words, their life is surrounded by divinity. When we refer to religion we do not only discuss about catholic religion, therefore we have to mention the African religions which have been relevant during the history of the tropical country. There is estimated that more than 74% of the inhabitants are Catholics, nevertheless, there is a huge percentage of people who belong to afro-Brazilian worship. Furthermore,we allege that it is true that every community need to have a strong bond between the citizen and the religion, because it gives life to the society in which the country develops.

On top of that, one of the biggest celebrations of the world is connected with religion and it affects the life of Brazilian people, we are talking about Rio Carnival. This celebration is related to a religious rite, it starts forty days before the Easter and it indicates the Lent. Most of the people consider that this sort of celebration is pagan, because the women wear costumes that show their bodies with delightful performances. From our point of view, we think that this kind of display is neither a sin nor unfaithfulness to God, therefore every people might have the possibility to demonstrate their devotion to a celestial being. The carnival was created to express their gratitude for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, for this reason this celebration is colourful and full of cheerful people. Truth must be told, most of tourists come to Brazil for this event.What we consider respecting to the tourists, who every year arrive at Brazil, we think they should have knowledge of the culture, because every element which surrounds this country has a special connection with the religion, as we saw in this article.

To sum up, religion is one of the most important components of Brazilian culture and it is reflected in their life. One of the greatest example of this, is the Rio Carnival, which preparation is considered a Catholic festival, it is important to emphasize that Brazilian life have a bond with religion and with people of their earth, this may explain why the Brazilians arepassionate people and why they are so devoted to their beliefs.

Life lessons from a death-camp.

Many times we have seen ourselves searching for life’s meaning; and this is a question that often comes up to our mind, as in the case of the Austrian psychiatrist Dr. Frankl, the author of the book Man’s search for meaning and who suffered as a long-time prisoner in the Nazi concentration camps. What can we learn from this search? And how can we learn from feelings such as emptiness and suffering?

What he says is that first, what we need is a change in our attitude towards life. Maybe it can sound a bit contradictory, but we have to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead, to think of ourselves as those who are being questioned by life. Our answer must consist in right action and in right behaviour. And, furthermore, the meaning of life differs from man to man, thus it is impossible to define the meaning of life in a general way, because Life does not mean something unclear, but something very real and concrete. They form man’s destiny, which is different and unique for each individual, and which cannot be compared.

Nevertheless, why do humans still have this question and have a feeling of existential emptiness? Because human beings need security, and nowadays he does not possess that instinct or tradition that tells him what he has to do. Instead, he either wish to do what other people do, or what other people wish him to do. And how is that emptiness manifested? Well, mainly in a state of boredom, and that emptiness is growing. In this case, man must recognize that it is he who is being questioned by Life.

Having said that, men can answer to life by answering for their own life. What is important, then, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment. Such a precept, confronts him with life's finiteness as well as the finality of his life and himself. It is, therefore, up to him to decide whether he should interpret his life task as being responsible to society or to his own conscience.

But what happens with suffering? We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when are confronted with hopelessness and when facing a destiny that cannot be changed. Then, what matters is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one's difficulty into one’s achievement; we are challenged to change ourselves. As Dr. Frankl said, in some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.

Finally what is important, and what we have to learn is that it does not really matter what we expect from life, but rather what life expects from us.

Portuguese Orthographic Reform

First of all we have to bear in mind that not so many years ago in the world existed two official orthographic norms for Portuguese: one in Brazil and another in the remaining Portuguese-speaking countries. This was the reason why in December 16th, 1990, a negotiation between the Lisbon Science Academy and the Brazilian Academy of Letters took place, the result of this was the establishment of a new Orthographic Agreement.

The legislation follows the Orthographic Agreement endorsed by the eight Portuguese speaking countries, namely Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, São Tomé & Príncipe and East Timor.

To know better the impact that the reform had in Portuguese society we had the pleasure to have interviewed Miss. Thaís Wojciechowski, a Portuguese professor.

Good afternoon Miss Thaís, nice to meet you. Well, we know that the reform took place in 1990 but:

Q: In Brazil, when the reform was officially adapted?

Thaís: Brazil changed adopted the reform on January 1st, 2009.

Q: What is your opinion about the orthographic reform?

Thaís: The Portuguese Spelling Reform was very good, because it unified the spelling of the eight countries with Portuguese as the official language.

Q: Do you agree whit this reform?

Thaís: Yes! I am in favour of the Spelling Reform.

Q: Why is that?

Thaís: In my personal opinion, I think it helped the way the world sees Portuguese language. I also believe that it was useful to teaching our language to foreign learners, because now we have only one “orthography system”.

Q: Because of what they did this reform?

Thaís: They did this reform with the aim of unifying orthography and spelling among all Portuguese native-speaker countries.

Q: Do you believe that these kinds of reforms are necessary?

Thaís: Yes believed it, because for example, English and Spanish have already their languages unified, Spanish from Chile or from Spain are spoken differently, however since long ago, these languages are written similarly. Nevertheless, in Portuguese language that did not happen. In Portugal it was written in one way, and in Brazil in other way, and even in other countries there were even more variations. We needed this to understand, and to communicate with each other in a better way.

Q: Do you think that everyone agrees with this reform?

Thaís: There are people who say that the Academics should have taken advantage of the Spelling Reform and should have simplified more the language. E.g in Portuguese the letters ss, sc, ç, s, xc have the sound /s/, many speakers do not understand why Portuguese language works like that. They also claim that should exist a reform that could let people to write with S all words with /s/ sound to simplify the spelling.

Q: And, do you agree with that opinion?

Thaís: Even though that may seem like a good idea, it would be a very bad thing, because language is history and culture, every word is written in a certain way for a reason.

Q: Please, explain this a little bit. In what aspect words are culture?

Thaís: Just to give an example, words of African and Indigenous origin are written with ç. To change everything could be drastic and this could have unthinkable consequences.

Q: Do you think that in the future a new reform will be necessary?

Thaís: About upcoming spelling reforms I think that everything should be done very carefully and having a relevant reason, because language is not something you can get to change when you want.

Well thank you so much for let us interview you, I’m really glad for it. I have to say that I support your thoughts and I believe that language is culture so we need to be careful in the changes we do.

To finish, I hope we could meet again in the future. Take care.

Thaís: Bye Amanda, take care.