"Portuguese is not spoken better in Coimbra or Lisbon"

It was thanks to the videos in which he explains the history behind words, as well as other peculiarities of the Portuguese language, that Marco Neves became known on social media. Every day, whether on Instagram or TikTok, the teacher and translator amazes his followers by revealing the secrets of expressions that are so familiar to speakers of the language of Camões.

In conversation with Notícias ao Minuto, he addressed the influence that the English language has - increasingly - on young people, the increase in the consumption of content from Brazil by younger people and the mistaken idea of ​​some who still think that Portuguese is spoken better in certain parts of the country, in this case Lisbon and Coimbra.

When did this passion for words arise?

When I was a child/teenager, my dream was to be a historian, but I always really liked languages. I ended up studying Languages ​​and Literature, but my passion for History never disappeared and, therefore, what I really like is the history of language and words.

Do your students give you ideas for videos you can record for Instagram?

Sometimes they do… I teach mainly in the area of ​​translation, which combines linguistics, history and also the more practical side. I teach students who are studying to be translators, but also Portuguese or English teachers. We talk about some subjects that are included in the videos, but in the end there is no direct connection.

How long have you been teaching?

Since 2011, it will be 14 years.

I have nothing against English, I think it's great that people know it, but it's worrying that we're reaching a point where young people only read in English. Do you notice any differences in the way students get to university?

I know that most of my colleagues would say that they are less prepared when they arrive, but this is such a strong trend… Of course, students change and have other interests. One thing that surprises me is that there are not as many people who are as comfortable with new technologies as people think younger people are. I see a lot of people aged 18/19 who have difficulty working with a computer, but not with a mobile phone.

As for the language - and this is my impression - students are reading more and more in English. My English colleagues say that students write better than they used to, and the Portuguese say that they are writing worse.

There is this curious point that worries me a little. I have nothing against English, I think it is great that people know it, but the fact that we are reaching a point where young people only read in English is worrying.

Why does this happen?

There is a more international community of interests. People want to have access to that book immediately, and the book comes out in English first. There are some countries that are trying to counter this by releasing translations at the same time or even before the original. Things are more accessible in English - and cheaper, that's also a factor.

We can complain a lot and stand here shouting that people should read more in Portuguese, but the only solution is to publish things in Portuguese that people want to read, and for the translations to come out quickly.

We have always had a prestigious language in Portugal. In the 16th century, when Camões wrote, it was Castilian; he imitated and used Castilian words. In this sense, it is also clear that expressions in English have become increasingly popular.

It's not the translators who are to blame for this, because they even take the time to look up the word, it's society in general, which, when communicating a lot in English, ends up using these words.

Turning to the historical part: we have always had a prestigious language in Portugal. In the 16th century, when Camões wrote, it was Castilian; he imitated and used Castilian words (I say Castilian because at the time no one spoke Spanish). Then it was French; from the 18th century onwards, it was the language that we all imitated.

We all learn English at school, which is good, but we have this natural tendency to really like a particular language. I have nothing against foreign words from the outset, because they have always happened, what I am saying is that we are on a very poor diet, we only borrow from English.

We have to be careful when using Portuguese words, knowing that in some cases it is inevitable that English words will be used. We have to be careful and not allow what has happened in other societies to happen, where we use so many words from a language that we suddenly find ourselves using the language. I may be exaggerating, but it happens.

Here next door in Spain - it's a very different situation - [but] those languages ​​other than Spanish, for example Galician, were spoken by almost 90% of the population a few years ago, but now it's less than half. People have been using Spanish more and more and have seen their own language almost disappear. We have to be careful that in a few years' time we don't have kids only speaking English among themselves.

In Portugal we have this mentality that ends up being accurate in the European context in which we speak a small language, little spoken in Europe. This makes us feel somewhat insecure and think that we have to speak other languages. It seems to me that there has always been an inferiority complex in relation to the Portuguese language, because it is not considered such a 'cool' language.

We have a certain mentality where we say out loud 'Portuguese is spoken by 200 million people', but we know that it is spoken mainly in South America, Brazil and Africa.

In Portugal we have this mentality that ends up being accurate in the European context in which we speak a small language, little spoken in Europe. This leads us to feel somewhat insecure and to think that we have to speak other languages.

People are very surprised when I say that there are thousands of people learning to speak Portuguese throughout Europe, and it's not just because of Brazil; many want to learn European Portuguese. In fact, when I go to Galicia or even here in Badajoz to talk to some students, they complain that the Portuguese don't let them speak Portuguese, because they are so used to the Spanish not wanting to speak Portuguese that we immediately switch to Spanish or 'Portunhol'.

Sometimes we also have to accept that our language, although not the most spoken in the world, is also not a language that is rarely spoken and that more people are interested in it. We have to have a little more pride (although it is a dangerous word).

Given the influence of Brazil and English (which has a much greater influence), the irritation only goes to Brazilian Portuguese. Speaking of Brazil, how do you see this tendency for children to speak using Brazilian expressions, gerunds, etc.

We have a superiority complex within the language and then we have an inferiority complex in relation to other languages. Given the influence of Brazil and English (which has a much greater influence), the irritation goes only to Brazilian Portuguese.

Brazilians create a lot of material for the internet. If the Portuguese think that kids are watching too many things in Brazilian Portuguese, there is only one solution: to do the same things in Portuguese from Portugal. So, create material and maybe the kids will follow suit.

We're going to have some expressions that will come in, I don't think we're going to have a different accent, it won't change like that, it's not because of videos that kids are going to be speaking with a different accent. How do you foresee the future in relation to the influence of Brazilian Portuguese on European Portuguese?

We're going to have some expressions that will come into play, I don't think we're going to have a different accent, it won't change like that, it's not because of videos that kids are going to be speaking with a different accent, they may have some influence, but the pronunciation of words is done through the group of friends and family. That's why the children of Brazilians here in general, I wouldn't say all of them, acquire a Portuguese accent.

It's not a concern when it comes to phonetics. It may happen in terms of expressions, but I'm also turning this a bit the other way around. We're living in the first time in the last 100 years when, despite everything, some Brazilians in Brazil listen to the Portuguese - they're few, it's very disproportionate - but because of the internet, there's a YouTuber here, another there, who's starting to be heard in Brazil. I don't have a very catastrophic view of this.

But there are people who have this catastrophic view. I now remember one of the videos in which Marco explained the meaning of "Brazilian Guiana", a joke that has been repeated so often in recent times.

[Laughs]. Yes, but that was to show that we can also have humor. Sometimes I tell Brazilians that we argue a lot about the language, but that proves that we still speak the same language. We are closer than we think. We can still communicate well.

In fact, we communicate so well that kids watch Brazilian videos; they don't do it because someone forces them to. We have this inferiority complex that if something is in English it's better, and kids don't have that. So if there's a video in English and in Brazilian Portuguese, of course they'll choose the second one. That's the only phenomenon behind the success of Brazilians among Portuguese kids.

Neither Coimbra nor Lisbon speak better. In fact, all pronunciations in the country are traditional, and those in the North are even older than those in the South. This difference is felt within the country itself, because there has always been a superiority complex regarding the accent of Lisbon in relation to that of the North and other regions of the country.

In terms of regional accents, I think we're a little better now. We're starting to respect each other more, but there's still this tendency for anyone who comes to Lisbon to work on the radio or television channel will almost naturally adopt a local accent. There's this idea that to speak in public we have to speak with a particular accent. This is still the remnants of this internal superiority complex that we think there's a much better way of speaking that's similar to the way we speak in Lisbon and Coimbra. Coimbra is always the subject of criticism, although this is debatable for several reasons, because it's not really the case for the entire population of Coimbra.

People talk about Coimbra because it was where the children of Lisbon residents went to study, so they included Coimbra in the list of places where people speak the best. But neither Coimbra nor Lisbon speak the best; they are simply the centres of power where the media was located, and so the way people speak in these areas ended up having a lot of influence and they reached the wrong conclusion that it is the correct way, when in fact all the pronunciations in the country are traditional and those in the north are even older than those in the south.

There have been countless cases of people in the media taking classes to lose their pronunciation.

They were probably called diction lessons, but a person can have any accent and have clear diction. And contrary to what people think, this is not the case in all countries. Even in England, the BBC today has all the accents and then some.

If Camões landed in Lisbon today and started speaking, based on the data we have, it is very likely that we would identify his pronunciation as being more from Beiras. People would say 'this person is not from Lisbon' and he was from Lisbon. So it is not even worth asking in which region of the country Portuguese is spoken best.

Exactly. The individual person may not speak well, but if we are talking about the pronunciation of a region, people are simply speaking as they learned.

I am sure that if Camões landed in Lisbon today and started speaking, based on the data we have, it is very likely that we would identify his pronunciation as being more from Beiras. People would say 'this person is not from Lisbon' and he was from Lisbon.

Since language is a living organism, as you say, there are words that, even if they are badly said, end up becoming that way over time.

Speakers decide for better or for worse. If there is something that people don't like to say, don't say it. Everything we have in Portuguese, the verb forms, the pronouns, are gradual changes over time since Latin and before. These changes, when they first appeared, were seen as errors. They are small errors that accumulate, and I know this irritates many people, but this is how languages ​​are created.

Would there be any rule that Marco would change in the Portuguese language?

Just to make teaching easier for foreigners, there is one issue: we have two participles - o pago and o pagado, acceptado and acceptado. In an alternative world, if I were the one deciding, I would perhaps clean up this rule a bit.

The New Orthographic Agreement was intended to clean up and make everything the same, but it changed the spelling at a time when almost everyone already knew how to write, which is why it naturally led to resistance. It changed the spelling, but it didn't solve the problem. For example, in relation to the New Orthographic Agreement, do you think the changes made sense?

This may be a contradictory opinion, but spelling is very different from the rules of the language; it is planned. Regardless of the agreements that have been created over time, [spelling] is based on a document that was commissioned during the First Republic, which had begun the previous year, and which sought to clean up Portuguese spelling, because it was chaotic and there were no fixed rules.

The New Orthographic Agreement was intended to clean up and make everything equal, but it changed the spelling at a time when almost everyone already knew how to write and, therefore, it naturally led to resistance. It changed the spelling, but it did not solve the problem.

Firstly, there are other differences between Portuguese from Portugal and Brazilian Portuguese - vocabulary, pronunciation and spelling were just a detail, and having changed them, many differences were maintained.

It created an even more complicated situation, because as Angola and Mozambique did not accept the New Agreement, we ended up with three spellings: at the moment we have the spelling of the agreement in Brazil, we have the spelling of the agreement in Portugal - which are not the same - and that of Angola, which kept the old spelling.

That's why I don't like the agreement very much, because it wasn't very useful, it wasn't as necessary as that and it ended up creating an even more complicated situation.

The work of a translator is currently becoming a work of revision, but curiously it is not an easier job, it usually requires more work.

As a teacher, how do you see the use of artificial intelligence in writing and translation? Do you think that your profession, that of a translator, could be under threat?

Machine translation began to be studied in the 1950s. It was thought that it could be done quickly, but later it was realized that translation is much more difficult and that languages ​​are complicated.

The truth is that over the last 20 years, through more advanced methods, automatic translation has managed to reach a point where it does a more reasonable job.

Translation today, in many cases of technical translation, is a post-editing task, that is, we have an initial phase of automatic translation and then correction by the translator… literary translation is another niche.

With artificial intelligence we are seeing that for English the quality of automatic translation is already sufficient to replace human translators in some cases of less important or less complex texts, but for Portuguese it is very rare.

Of course, if I have a news story in Norwegian, I'll put it in Google Translate or DeepL, but if it's going to be published in a Portuguese newspaper, I'll have to change it. The work of a translator is currently becoming a job of proofreading, but oddly enough, it's not an easier job; it usually requires more work.

All technological changes have their consequences, but what has not happened so far is the disappearance of translators. There is a joke among translators that goes: we are always five years away from disappearing, but they have never disappeared, they are always needed.

What about the Portuguese language?

Artificial intelligence has some consequences, sometimes a little strange. For example, we know that ChatGPT leads to using certain types of phrases or expressions and there are people who avoid these expressions.

There is a myth that AI uses a lot of dashes and there are people who say they don't want them so it doesn't look like they are using AI.

And at university?

If the tasks we are giving students can be done without any quality in ChatGPT, the problem lies with the tasks [laughs]. We have to integrate the tools themselves and explain what can and cannot be done, do exercises that go beyond what AI can do and one of the trends we are seeing in universities is the return of oral exams, all done live and with less writing.

And can ChatGPT help Portuguese people write better?

I think it can help the Portuguese in those particular cases, such as when, for example, we have to write a letter to the Tax Office, to Social Security or to make any request... Please note, I am not advising people to replace lawyers with ChatGPT, but I think it helps the Portuguese to communicate and translate what the public administration says.

Does Marco feel resistance from people in his videos? After all, everyone knows how to speak Portuguese…

We have this slightly false idea that we know a lot about the language, but we don't. This leads to some rather strange discussions.

I'll give you an example. We learn at school that there are five vowels, but we're talking about letters, but there are 14 vowels in spoken Portuguese. When I say that in European Portuguese (which Brazilian Portuguese has fewer) there are 14 vowels, people react very badly, because they think I'm saying something contrary to what the primary school teacher said. But a vowel has two meanings: one is the letter and the other is the vowel sound. The first time I said this in a video, the reactions were very negative, I was surprised.

What does speaking Portuguese well mean to Marco?

It's about doing what we want with Portuguese. If I want to write a letter to the tax authorities to solve a problem, I have to write that letter well. If I want to write a short story and make someone feel emotional, I have to write good Portuguese. Of course, in the midst of all this there are rules of etiquette and spelling, and although people focus a lot on them, they are a kind of veneer.

Good Portuguese means being able to communicate and express what we want with the resources we have. It means having enough vocabulary to explain things, to know the things we have in front of us. If we want to do something with the Portuguese language, we have a series of resources - vocabulary, intonation, gestures - that we can use.

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