Utopial

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Portuguese language: stereotyping

Hi. Thanks for discussing. As you may have noticed, my edit in the lede corrected several inaccuracies in addition to language prejudice via stereotyping, for example "phonology"/"sound system" replace "phonetically"; adding Italian and not focusing on comparison with Spanish only, etc. Regardless of the source and without taking into account language variety, calling a language, in this case Spanish, "harsh" to elevate the status of another language, in this case Portuguese, is purely subjective and definitely armchair linguistics at best. Therefore, such qualifications have no place in an encyclopedia article, unless, that is, the article is on language stereotyping. You will also see that I left the quotations of the famous writers because what they said is notable, not what one can infer. Also, if one feels compared to compare Portugese to Spanish, the converse argument might be made using language stereotypes by Brazilians on Argentine Spanish, viewed as "mellifluous", and European Portuguese, considered by the same as "harsh". Notice there is no stereotypical comparison of German ("harsh"/"guttural") to English in the article for the former. What's more, any comparisons of this type fall flat simply because they are appeals to emotion. So, if language stereotyping were to be included, it would need to be labeled as such.

There is an excellent book on the topic, in Spanish, by Juan Carlos Moreno Caberera La Dignidad e igualdad de las lenguas: Crítica de la discriminación lingüística ISBN 978.84.206.6744.7 with chapters dedicated to false dichotomies such as "sweet" v. "harsh" sounding. --CJ Withers (talk) 12:43, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

You said you wanted users to known how Portuguese sounds. Why not simply include an audio file, or a few, to let people actually experience it? :-) --CJ Withers (talk) 15:20, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

As for the ring tone or sound clip, I wouldn't put any English or Spanish, as the point of the article is Portuguese. If someone wants to compare, they can open another window, and click on items in the Spanish (language) article. It would, however, be interesting to include varieties of Portuguese in the sample to show regional differences, i.e. European (Lisbon, the Azores, southern, central), Brazilian (Rio, São Paulo), African (Mozambique, Cape Verde, Angola, São Tomé), etc. This info usually goes under the phonology section. --CJ Withers (talk) 15:47, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

World language

I appreciate your response to the disputed sections of the world language page. Unfortunately I have my hands full with a few projects at the moment, so I can only give quick response to your points, and I don't have the time now to dig up credible sources to post and back up what I try to make as you requested, although I intend to do so by this weekend. Can I request that neither of us make any drastic alterations to the page for the time being until I get back to you on that?

Just something from the UN website for your perusual: "An international organization must have effective ways to overcome language barriers to avoid becoming a Tower of Babel. Since almost every country in the world is represented at the United Nations, it is not an exaggeration to say that the United Nation is a microcosm of the world. The Organization uses six official languages in its intergovernmental meetings and documents, Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish; the Secretariat uses two working languages, English and French." Arabic was added in 1973, coincidentally around the time the Arab nations demontrated their political clout through the oil crisis, not that the Arabic macrolanguage itself wasn't already one of the most influential languages in the world.

One point I'd like to mention though, is that de jure official recognition within a single country is one but not the only deciding factor, whether a language is a major world language. Italian is recognized as an official language in at least 5 countries, Swahili has 50 million total speakers compared to only roughly 5 million native speakers...both languages command a disproportionate amount of influence regionally. But in all seriousness, no one will rank them as equals in terms of global prestige and significance compared to Russian and Chinese, isn't it? And I think you highly underestimate the number of non-Chinese and non-Russian people out there in the world who actually speak the aforementioned languages but not considered as their mother tongue, both within and outside of China and Russia. The PRC itself has at least 55 different non-Han-Chinese ethnic groups, and much like how the Russians had brutally imposed the hegemony of their native language upon Soviet minorities, so has the PRC government with the ethnic minorities of China. Even within a disputed but de facto state like Taiwan, there are 13 ethnic groups there who are in fact of Austronesian origins, who don't consider Mandarin or any of the Sinic languages as their first language.

And what is the official language of Bangladesh? That's right, it's Bengali and Bengali only. It was one of the main reasons why Bangladesh exists today, instead of being Pakistan's black sheep province as it was post-Partition. And to take your point that Mandarin is only the co-official non-national language of Singapore, well Bengali is merely one of two dozen of different non-national dialects and languages which are named as "constitutionally-recognized languages" of India under the 8th Schedule of the Indian constitution. The only official languages recognized by India is Hindi and English, that's it. Bengali warrants a mention for being a language that has a massive number of speakers, but much like the Japanese, the reality is that the overwhelming majority are in fact native Bengalis, it isn't used as lingua franca across India, and its influence outside of Bangladesh is West Bengal, the handful of Indian states adjacent to it, and the legions of Bengali guest workers worldwide who are from Bangladesh or India. To further prove my point, compare the statistics between Bengali's total speakers, and the total population of Bengali people worldwide. And Sierra Leone is a bad example, actually it is a good example of how de jure recognition is hardly the most important thing if you want to argue on a language's significance based purely on official recognition of an X number of countries: it only has honourary status in recognition of the Bangladeshi army's peacekeeping contributions, there is no evidence I've read that says it is being widely taught as a second language in that country, and English is the only recognized official language, but it isn't the most widely-used lingua franca, Krio is.

By the way, you claimed that "Big language =/= world language. There are other pages for that." Well, there is no wikipedia page called big language, or defines anything along these lines. I don't quite understand the meaning you're trying to convey by using the term "big language", but I definitely know that it surely can't be the same meaning as "highest number of total speakers", because that doesn't tell us anything.

Haleth (talk) 10:12, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Linguistic prestige isn't subjective. It's relative.

I think you're missing the point on what are the defining characteristics of a "world language", or what the entire discussion on world languages should be all about. Whether linguistic prestige is subjective or not is irrelevant to this discussion: the connotations behind what constitutes a world language is all about power, influence and convenience. I'll give you a definition based on one source I have found: The terms "international language" or "world language" are, "high prestige, majority language(s) used as a means of communication between different countries speaking different languages". (Baker $ Prys Jones, 1998: 702). Why would anyone want to learn say, Portuguese, if it isn't perceived as a linguistically prestigious language, if it isn't seen as a majority language that is used widely for international discourse due to convenience or necessity, and if it isn't seen as a stepping stone towards societal prestige and better economic status, and if it isn't based on an idea promoted by government initiative or societal norm to connect or reconnect with one's cultural and national heritage?

Your argument that a supposed world language must have "official international associations entirely founded due to linguistic connection" in its name, as well as the examples you have given (why are they all Portuguese-based??) is false. If that is so, where are the exact equivalents for all of the Lusophone organizations you have listed, for the Arabic, German and Russian speaking nations (because I can't find any)? Are you saying that the citizens of Brazil, Mozambique and Angola all miraculously developed an ability to speak Portuguese at some point in prehistory, and somehow connected with Portugal in the same language at some point when Portuguese sailors started sailing to distant lands? The CPLP for example, has three members listed as associated observers, and multiple countries as "officially interested countries". Most of them have little to no Portuguese-speaking communities within their countries. All of these Lusophone organizations are founded based on a shared colonial history and heritage between member nations, the same reason why the Commonwealth Games and the various Francophone organizations are founded because all of these members countries have had historical ties with the former British Empire and Colonial French Empires, or hosted important minorities (even the educated elite could be considered "minorities" in a numerical sense) who spoke the language. The Francophone Games is even more glaringly obvious, as they have more then a dozen participants whose societies have no real, tangi ble linguistic connections to the French language times, in the present.

And last but not least, a lot of these organizations were in fact founded by the former colonial master from which the lingua franca originated, to promote the continued usage of that languages...English, French, Spanish and Portuguese are spoken on a very widespread scale today, whereas Dutch does not have the sheer number of speakers because of the Dutch colonial government's policy not to aggressively promote Dutch for much of the history of its colonial activities in countries like Indonesia. If a passing connection to Portugal in a nation's past is all that it takes for it to be an active Lusophone participant in activities organized by these Lusophone organizations, and through that Portuguese's prestige as a world language is boosted, then I can say the same thing about international organizations based in East Asia that counts amongst its members, China as well as Japan, Korea, Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries with their historical ties and influence from Chinese civilization and especially the Chinese language. But I digress.

The thing is, with international organizations which happen to be comprised of members speaking a common language, it does not mean is founded purely based on that linguistic connection at all. For example, the Arab Union organization is not solely based on being proficient or fluent in Arabic as the context is much more holistic, incorporating ethnic, cultural, and even religious common grounds, although being able to speak Arabic is a part of what constitutes an Arab (and arguably, Arabic's worldwide relevant today is primarily due to liturgical reasons, and because of the indirect political and economic clout of the Arabic OPEC nations). Similarly, the Latin Union isn't founded solely on lingustic commonality, but because of the historical ties between Spain and the Latin American or Hispanic countires. Actually, the terms "Arab", "Hispanic" and also "Han Chinese" are ethnocultural terms. Defining their characteristics are considerably more complicated then defining the Japanese or Bengali people, both relative cohesive and homogeneous ethnic groups but with heterogeneous origins. And I have said it before...the vast majority of ethnic minorities in PRC and Taiwan aren't closely related groups to the Han Chinese people at all, please do more research on this topic and get your facts about the Han Chinese and the minorities groups right.

And again, your opinion on the so-called varying 'ethnicities' in Japan or Bangladesh isn't really relevant to our discussion about world languages. Statistical information as well as popular perception both within and outside Japan and Bangladesh, indicate that they consider their societies to be relatively homogenous culturally and linguistically, with a very small population of ethnic and indigenous minorities; foreign expats do not count. You're right in saying that the vast majority of Chinese speakers (and it's not just confined to Mandarin: Standard Mandarin is to the Chinese what Standard Modern Arabic is to Arabic, they are standard registers of two macrolanguages of dialects that have varying degrees of mutual intelligibility) in countries outside of the PRC and Taiwan are overwhelmingly Han Chinese. But why should it matter that the overseas Chinese diaspora consists of self-identified Han people (at least 400 million, with many after the first generation considering themselves as much of a citizen of their birth country as their heritage as ethnically and culturally Chinese) who are mostly able to speak some form of Chinese, when there are minority groups numbering at over 100 million in both China and Taiwan speaking a form of Chinese as a second language? How on earth does that make the Chinese language and all of its forms, any less of a world language?

The situation with the Sinophone world and the ongoing trends in learning Chinese is something different altogether, compared to the Sprachraum for Bengali and even Hindi, and was what the Japanese language was well on its way to become...had Japan's economic bubble not burst at the dawn of the 1990's which it never recovered from. Today Chinese is now being taught not only to ethnic Han people in these countries with large Chinese populations, but also to non-Han-Chinese people, which I have personally witnessed [1]. A lot of prominent websites now offer translations: The World Bank's website for example, can be translated into Chinese, Spanish and Arabic. http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/0,,contentMDK:20130470~pagePK:50016803~piPK:50016805~theSitePK:13,00.html Again, I repeat: other then the six official languages, why don't the UN issue any documents in Hindi, German, Portuguese or Japanese, unless specifically requested as stated on their website, and that delegations from the countries where these languages are spoken are asked to supply their own translators if they want to speak in their native language, which will be translated into one of the six official languages anyway? Yet, Spanish and later Arabic in 1973 were added, an important point I raised which you didn't address, and surely the number of their total speakers are easily in the same league as the four languages mentioned.

If you strongly believe in your opinion that the official languages are there only because of the makeup of the UN Security Council and that today they still do not reflect a status of relevancy, prestige, and necessity of use as lingua franca that a world language should have by themselves, then post a source on the talk page. Even then, I think it will only prove my point that world languages are associated with cultural, societal and linguistic prestige because of the political and cultural clout of influential nations: it is a matter of fact that Russian and Chinese would become more important after the setup of the UN Security Council back in the day, because of the disproportionate amount of influence the Soviet Union and ROC/PRC would later generate due to their status as great powers. Much like how more and more people from countries which were not colonized by or have historical ties with the British Empire are learning English over the last 40 years because of the powerful political and cultural hegemony the USA and to an extent Britain hold, and along with it their desire to travel to English-speaking countries to live, work or study. Use of English as lingua franca is sometimes also based on a political choice: In practice English is more widely spoken in South India amongst the Dravidian peoples of different native languages, compared to other parts of India where Hindi is still as popular as ever, but perhaps still not enough for Hindi to be considered a world language due to a lack of international recognition and geographically widespread use, complicated by the fact that a lot of the overseas-born Indian communities do not speak any Hindi or Urdu dialect as a first or second language. It is also self-contradictory that you seem to insist that official recognition by a set quantity of nations and international organizations is of paramount important in defining a world language, and yet you insist that the designation of 6 specific languages as official languages of THE most important international organization in the world as a significant factor, are to be ignored.

Haleth (talk) 19:35, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree, in a way. There's no point continuing the discussion on anything. At the end of the day, it's just opinion from you and me, even if some of the points we have raised are based on well-researched facts. I've got a few sources for the article, and will put it in soon. Haleth (talk) 14:42, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Re: your response on Dbachmann's usertalk page. I apologise if I did come across as overly aggressive and confrontative in my responses to you. I think I got annoyed when I perceived that you were attempting to detract from the discussion at hand by bringing up other unrelated topics (like the Lusophone gaming organizations, or insisting that your oversimplification of the Han Chinese ethnic identity/concept and comparing it to be exactly as the Bengali/Japanese cultural or ethnic concepts, is authority. The Han Chinese identity adopted by not only the people of the core Chinese-speaking countries but even the greater diaspora, is about as complicated and controversial as the various "Arab" ethnicities all over the Middle East, or even the various Hispanized peoples of most South American countries. For example, the extensive Arabization process the indigenous Egyptians went through struck me to be highly similar to the Sinicization of tribes who were ancestors of various modern Southern Chinese dialect groups, and were considered to be distinct unrelated ethnic groups to the Northern Han Chinese at least some 1000 years ago), some of which struck me as being unsubstantiated opinion, which was what you called some of the previous contributions to the article. But let's put that aside now.

I don't think I have actually defamed you when I was discussing the world language page. I certainly didn't make any childish insults or called you any negative names, what I did say was you did use the characteristics posted by the original creator of the article (Dbachmann), and that was why I approached him as I did find the book he was citing from, but I couldn't find a complete list of the so-called characteristics the article mentioned, and I doubt that you would know as much about the source as the original editor. The issue I had was that you seemed to take the "all or nothing approach" when , even though the article never said something along the lines of "a language has to score strongly in all of the below criteria". The other thing I should note, if I haven't already, is that whenever the "Chinese language" is named or recognized in international discourse (i.e. as an official language), in truth it is a somewhat ambiguous lable which doesn't specifically say it is Mandarin.

On the contrary, I think I did change my opinion as well. I was not the one who put Hindi + Urdu into the original world languages list. I reverted your edit very early on, read your reasonings, thought more about it and eventually returned Hindi + Urdu into the mere supra-regional category. But I remain unconvinced that Chinese and Russian is as relatively insignificant as you are saying, especially in the context of the world today. Yes, the article definitely needs more sourcing, and you are right in posting up and challenging the other editors to improve the article and come up with better sources other then original research. I must say though, a lot of the things I wrote are paraphrased versions of what I remember from reading some academic texts on the subject, I just have a bad habit of not sourcing everything I write in the wake of my edits.

So, here are two sources I found which have specifically mentioned the term "world languages", and discussed the usage of that term:

Encyclopedia of bilingualism and bilingual education

Power, prestige, and bilingualism

The 9 languages named by them as "widely-accepted" world languages are: English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, German, Portuguese, Chinese, and interestingly Dutch as well.

Basically these two main sources delve on the topic of bilinguism, and along with George Weber's Top 10 Most Influential Languages article which has been cited on quite a few wiki articles on the subject of languages (and which I highly recommend that you read if you haven't already, it provides a lot of good background info and insight on what makes a language influential or internationally significant from an objective PoV), should form the backbone of the world language article's content since they focus on the topic or something similarly, that is why some languages are more significant or important then most others in a relative sense. But I will update the article later, as I still have my hands full with other projects. Haleth (talk) 03:35, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Mexican film

No worries. I've just created Mexican films of 2008. Perhaps you could help fill out the lists of Mexican films by year? Himalayan 13:57, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Missionary file deletions

Fine, I don't have time to fix it right now; will do something with it if I get around to it later. Someone ought to look at Dana Robert's work and put in a balancing statement from there, that would probably do something like what I was working towards, or better. BestDellaroux (talk) 17:56, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks--I just got another project added to my plate so it's going to have to wait!! Dellaroux (talk) 02:21, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

RE: Film categorisation

I suppose my removal of The Desert Within wasn't really necessary. I'm fine with you adding it back now. I'm not really "recategorizing", though. I'm moreso removing categories that just don't belong. Case in point, The Godfather Part III, which included Category:Catholic films. The only thing possibly Catholic in the film was characters disguising as priests. That is miscategorization, and is why I removed it. I may create the categories to mentioned at some point (I agree with your thoughts), but I've been doing some many things lately, it might get pushed to the back burner. :) Thanks for the notice, and feel free to notify me of any future issues you see in my editing. American Eagle (talk) 05:44, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

August 2010

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Letters to Father Jacob

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HYPHEN

"(there is no hyphen in his name. only english language sites incorrectly use it)"

You are 100% WRONG... change it again. --Hydao (talk) 20:45, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

It is Villas-Boas with hyphen, I know his younger sister and stuff. So please change it again or I'll do it. Phew.

--Hydao (talk) 21:02, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

P.S. there are Villas Boas and Villas-Boas. André is... Villas-Boas.

Proposed deletion of Joaquim Alexandre Oliveira Barbosa

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Jasmine Villegas

Hello, I removed your prod from the above article as I believe the person probably meets the notability guidelines. Thank you. Rotten regard Softnow 00:04, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

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