Portuguese language Googled into Brazilian

Globalization has seemingly a rather twisted influence on languages. It all started from online chat-rooms where expressions of thoughts and emotions transformed into cute or devilish yellow round smilies. Since then, day by day words started losing vital vowels and consonants while new incomprehensible vocabulary emerging through mobile texting. Ok, yeah! Now you tell us, like we didn’t know.

What’s new though are the new consonants European Portuguese will be phasing in the next six years - k, w, y. Apparently the Portuguese parliament voted last week for adapting its national language to the more popular Brazilian Portuguese dialect. It seems that 80% of the world’s 230 million Portuguese speakers prefer to cut themselves some slack with confusing hyphens and silent consonants found affluent in the 2000 years old Romance language.

Although globalization plays an apparent role it isn’t the only influence; it is for the rapidly developing former colony and the influence of the Internet that made the choice to go “Brazilian” unavoidable. And that’s merely due as much to Brazil being the 5th most populous country, as to being a much stronger state in terms of culture and economy; on top of all that the fact that Brazilians outnumber Portuguese on the web by a staggering six to one. Since this disparity is set to widen in the close future and given the importance of the Internet as a medium of global intelligence and business, the adaptation was an one-way solution.

Well, it might be true that normally a European colonial power is expected to endorse their language version as the correct one when confronted on the matter by a colony. That's what makes it so remarkable though, this time happening the other way around. Obscure as it may sound, it was only 33,000 Portuguese who signed a petition protesting against it leaving politicians no choice but to decide that the new standardised language is to be taught in schools across Portugal, Brazil and even former Portuguese colonies like Angola and Mozambique.

Great, isn’t it?