"Fascinating..." CUT! Can't say that, Leonard, Take Two!
"Interesting..." CUT! C'mon, Leonard, try again, Take Three!
"Humans make illogical decisions..." CUT! Print it!
Posted on 10/02/2007 3:08:07 PM PDT by the invisib1e hand
By Carlos Caminada
Oct. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Brazil's Federal District Governor Jose Roberto Arruda "fired" the present participle from his administration, citing inefficiency.
"The present participle is hereby fired from all federal district entities," the governor wrote in a decree posted on the government's Web site last night. "As of today, it is forbidden as an excuse for INEFFICIENCY."
Banning the verb form, which ends in "ndo" in Portuguese ("ing" in English), was done to prevent government officials from using continuous tenses to obscure progress -- or the lack of it.
"I find it somewhat ludicrous," Dario Borim, chairman of the Department of Portuguese at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. "It's a matter for linguists to discuss not for politicians."
Decree No. 28.314 was issued to end vague promises by government officials, such as: "We'll be taking steps," Globo news agency reported, citing aides to Arruda it didn't identify by name.
Almost all of Brazil's 190 million citizens speak Portuguese, the world's seventh-most spoken language. More people speak Portuguese in South America than Spanish, the official language of the region's other major economies, including Argentina, Chile, and Colombia.
Seven years ago, former lower house president Aldo Rebelo sought to pass a bill prohibiting media and government agencies from using foreign words such as "show" and "kitchenette" to protect the language.
Arruda, an engineer by training, is a former lower house representative and was leader of the Senate for former president Fernando Henrique Cardosos's Brazilian Social Democracy Party.
The Federal Distric[t] encompasses Brasilia, the country's modernist capital built in the 1950's, and surrounding cities such as Taguatinga.
-- With reporting by Fred Strasser in New York. Editor: Barden (fjs)
To contact the reporter on this story:
Carlos Caminada in Sao Paolo at +55-11-3048-4545 or at ccaminada@bloomberg.net
Maybe the US could prohibit the vague “mistakes were made” comments we get from public officials.
an how about banning ANY made-up words? (like awareness)
The enemy was targeted and engaged...
Foreign fighters were observed and tracked...
The vessel's manifest and cargo was examined...
The Russian aircraft were intercepted and escorted...
Arghhhh!
Interesting.........OOPS!....Interest................
I wish our government would ban passive voice in all government communications.
That way, people would have to say: “I made a mistake” instead of “mistakes were made.”
or “we took steps” instead of “steps were taken.”
"Fascinating..." CUT! Can't say that, Leonard, Take Two!
"Interesting..." CUT! C'mon, Leonard, try again, Take Three!
"Humans make illogical decisions..." CUT! Print it!
Bump to show the Brasilian better half.
dictatorship shows its lighter side.
At my government workplace we are always “working on it” or “finalizing it” or “prioritizing.” This doesn’t mean that any work has actually been accomplished in the recent past or that anything has been accomplished. But the boss is soothed by the “-ing” sound and we can go back to surfing the ‘net (particularly Freeping).
The linguist’s pique is amusing.
Probably favored big government telling ordinary people how to live their lives.
Thought his intellectual identity trumped big government.
Now astonished to find that big government cares little aboutr his or her needs and preferences either.
That struck me, too. And I agree with your take on it.
You know the person's got to be pretty offended when it's someone from a Massachusetts university whining about a south american dictator wanna-be.
then, too, I wonder how hard the reporter had to work to find someone, anyone, with a "relevant credential" to comment.
I agree. There are numberless ways of speaking unclearly and deceitfully in Portuguese, English, or any other language. It is ludicrous to think that by preventing the use of one of those ways (the law or any other means of coercion, for instance) lawmakers will achieve their goals: to stop lies or half-truths. It is as if the law, for example, outlawed the verb “hate.” People shall not use the word “hate” or they will go to jail. Well, if they say “I hate to tell this, but I need you more than you think,” there is no hatred at all. There is love and dependency on the loved one. There is potentially some romantic honesty or dishonesty as well — who knows? To conclude, the “gerúndio” in Portuguese, like the “continuous tense” in English, can say something about an action taking place or not taking place. Whether an uttered or typed sentence is a lie has always been an issue that depends on grammatical structures and other linguistic rules, for sure, because all languages exits on principles of logic and understanding, but it is undeniably an issue that has a lot more than just grammar. It is an ethical problem. And people do not tackle ethical issues by changing grammar. People must change other people, instead. They must change the overall system of accountability, checks and balances. That is, jail or other type of punishment for thieves and liars who are unfortunately shielded by their power in society, not by the “continuous tenses” alone. Dário Borim, UMass Dartmouth
Hello. My name is Dario Borim. Please find my comments recently posted above. I hold a Ph.D. in Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Literature and Linguistics, after taking four courses in linguistics alone. I have read and written about language issues for 30 years. Who are you, fella? In case you’re interested in the issue, including the socio-linguistic history of the English language (only my second language), please Google my essay “The Taming of the Tongue.” You may disagree with me, but please do NOT act as if you were the authority and knew better than any other individual out there. Dario Borim, UMassd Dartmouth (Chair of the largest Department of Portuguese in the US.
Welcome to FR!
"If me be returnin, the Bosses will do terrible things to me! Tewwwwible things!"
while that may be a professional affront, it is my opinion that the graver concern isn't one of lacking professional respect, it's one of trampling human rights: i.e. the fiat removal of liberty by a petty oligarch.
That would be my reply, or at least the beginning of it, to such a professor.
I doubt I'll ever write or even read a paper on linguistics, but I know when government tells people how to speak (and by extension, how to think) that the horse is not only out of the barn with regard to abuse of authority, it's already miles down the road.
Perhaps the good professor might wish to move to Brazil and impose a few laws on his own... decree #1: Google my essay. Decree #2. Do NOT act as an authority...
I had two suggestions in response to the comment I read accordiung to which I had no credential to express an opinion on an essentially linguistic matter. They were NOT “decrees,” but suggestions for reading on the subject of language use (I said, if you are interested) and for an attitude of respect to the one you don’t know (an issue of basic human decency). I replied that way to a rude dismissal of a journalist’s capacity and to a similar treatment of one’s competence and background before knowing who that person was. This type of stingy wording, “go back to Brazil and be a dictator there” is an offensive, xenophobic take on matters where the speaker is too aggressive and resentful to make sense in a country made up by immigrants. I am against dictators of all kinds (obvious or otherwise), including those who think grammar must be imposed by lawmakers. I did not make fun of the governor himself but the law that is based on a terrible misconception of the fabric and role of language in society. Other lawmakers and administrators (not dictators)in Brazil, but also in France, have made the same mistake before. In France, two presidents did it while trying to outlaw the use of English words in French. One can read about it in “The Taming of the Tongue,” but a “paper in linguistics,” though written for the general public, might be too much waste of time for a bright fella with well-established knowledge in issues of language and society.
I hope you keep posting here. You have the hang of it.
May I suggest checking out the FreeRepublic HTML “Sandbox” thread and learning a few formatting tricks such as creating paragraphs? Most people read these threads and posts very quickly and the easier someone makes a post to read the better.
Also, no offense FRiend but we get a lot of people posting here who claim to be the actual individual referenced in a posted article ... so don’t be surprised if at first you are treated skeptically.
All that said, no one here minds being disagreed with (well there are a few hard cases)... so speak your mind.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts on a variety of issues.
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