LANGUAGE
Is Brazilian Portuguese its own language? Brazil has little interest in finding out

Declaring Brazilian Portuguese its own language is more about politics than grammar. Illustration: EamesBot/Shutterstock
In Sintra, outside Lisbon, a road sign bars all traffic except bicycles and trens (the word Brazilians use for trains). An anti-immigration account on X "denounced" it as Brazilian Portuguese defacing Camões's language, since a Portuguese train is a comboio. The word trem, it turns out, has long existed in European Portuguese, where it means a horse-drawn carriage, precisely the kind that ferries tourists around Sintra. The panic was misplaced. Still, it raised an important question about identity…

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