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.