It is not easy to understand why a full-grown man would climb into a ring, look a bull in the eye and dare it to charge him. But stranger things have been done in the name of "tradition."
At a ranch near Arthur, Ont., north of Fergus, as a Portuguese singer stomps about an outdoor arena, a series of bulls stumble out of red wooden crates to be taunted by some brave, and arguably foolish, men.
An audience jeers and cheers from the bleachers of the 213-metre-long ring, which is decorated with facades to mimic a Portuguese street. English is rarely heard.
"Bullfights belong to the story of the island," says Joe da Silva, a Portuguese-Canadian with a deep voice, referring to the tiny Portuguese landfall of Terceira – part of the Azores islands in the mid-Atlantic – where most of the spectator families have roots.
"This is the most strong tradition from back home. And the way we are doing things here, we are following 99.9 per cent."
In a remarkable feat of cultural perseverance – and victory over animal rights activists and reluctant politicians – bull runs have thrived in Southern Ontario for the last 20 years, staged at rural sites close enough to Mississauga, Brampton and Toronto to draw a crowd of Portuguese-Canadian families aching for home.
Monday 27 July 2009
Friday 17 July 2009
History of the Portuguese Language
Portuguese is one of the major languages of the world (the sixth most spoken language worldwide), spoken by about 200 million people on four continents. It belongs to a group of languages called “Romance” or “Neo-Latin” that evolved from Latin, the language of Latium in Ancient Italy, or more specifically, the city of Rome.
After the Roman invasion, Latin gradually became established in the Iberian peninsula and finally replaced the native languages. When the country of Portugal was founded, it adopted its own particular Romance, which was essentially Portuguese, as the national language. Further to the north, the region of Galicia (Spain) where the same Romance was spoken, remained politically subjugated to the kingdom of Leon and Castile, and even today Galician remains a regional dialect, under the official hegemony of Spanish.
There was always great regional variation in Latin vocabulary, depending on each region’s position with respect to Rome. The Iberian provinces were somewhat on the sidelines, and did not receive many of the lexical changes that were constantly created in Rome by the urban masses’ need for expression. Portuguese and Spanish maintain, for example, the traditional Latin verb comedere (comer in both Portuguese and Spanish), meaning “to eat”, while Italy and France adopted the new term manducare, which became mangiare and manger.
Another example is the Latin word for “cheese” (caseus), from which developed the Portuguese queijo and Spanish queso. In France and Italy however, caseus was replaced by formaticus, derived from forma, which was connected with a new process of making cheese. From this term evolved the French fromage, and Italian fromaggio. Factors like these explain why Portuguese and Castilian (Spanish) are the most similar of all the Romance languages.
The other groups that settled in what is now Portugal over the centuries had little effect on the language, although there is still a small number of words that go back to Celtic times (such as ontem, meaning “yesterday” which has the same origin as the Scottish Gaelic an d, and esquecer, meaning “to forget”), a few words of Germanic origin (such as roubar, meaning “to steal,” and guerrear, meaning “to wage war”), and about five hundred words introduced in Moorish times, especially those starting with the “al” prefix, such as almofada (”pillow”).
During the Age of Discovery, when Portugal established an overseas empire, the Portuguese language was heard in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Under regional influences, it absorbed a small number of words like jangada (”raft”) of Malay origin, and chá (”tea”), of Chinese origin. The Portuguese discoveries also had the opposite effect, and there are numerous Portuguese words in other languages. Some believe for example, that the word for “thank you” in Japanese (”arigato”), comes from the Portuguese obrigado.
Other languages that have influenced Portuguese include French, due to the infiltration of French manners and customs in Portugal during the tenth and eleventh centuries, when Frenchmen went to Portugal as pilgrims, courtiers, statesmen, scholars, and soldiers of fortune to help fight the Moors. There were also influences of Provençal, a language from the south of France, with words such as rua (”street”), similar to the French rue.
In Lisbon, Porto, most of Algarve, and other main tourist destinations, English is spoken fairly widely. Still, learning just a few simple Portuguese words certainly enhances a visit to Portugal. The Portuguese are proud of their language and do not take kindly to being addressed in Spanish, so visitors should take a little time to become familiar with some basic Portuguese vocabulary.
After the Roman invasion, Latin gradually became established in the Iberian peninsula and finally replaced the native languages. When the country of Portugal was founded, it adopted its own particular Romance, which was essentially Portuguese, as the national language. Further to the north, the region of Galicia (Spain) where the same Romance was spoken, remained politically subjugated to the kingdom of Leon and Castile, and even today Galician remains a regional dialect, under the official hegemony of Spanish.
There was always great regional variation in Latin vocabulary, depending on each region’s position with respect to Rome. The Iberian provinces were somewhat on the sidelines, and did not receive many of the lexical changes that were constantly created in Rome by the urban masses’ need for expression. Portuguese and Spanish maintain, for example, the traditional Latin verb comedere (comer in both Portuguese and Spanish), meaning “to eat”, while Italy and France adopted the new term manducare, which became mangiare and manger.
Another example is the Latin word for “cheese” (caseus), from which developed the Portuguese queijo and Spanish queso. In France and Italy however, caseus was replaced by formaticus, derived from forma, which was connected with a new process of making cheese. From this term evolved the French fromage, and Italian fromaggio. Factors like these explain why Portuguese and Castilian (Spanish) are the most similar of all the Romance languages.
The other groups that settled in what is now Portugal over the centuries had little effect on the language, although there is still a small number of words that go back to Celtic times (such as ontem, meaning “yesterday” which has the same origin as the Scottish Gaelic an d, and esquecer, meaning “to forget”), a few words of Germanic origin (such as roubar, meaning “to steal,” and guerrear, meaning “to wage war”), and about five hundred words introduced in Moorish times, especially those starting with the “al” prefix, such as almofada (”pillow”).
During the Age of Discovery, when Portugal established an overseas empire, the Portuguese language was heard in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Under regional influences, it absorbed a small number of words like jangada (”raft”) of Malay origin, and chá (”tea”), of Chinese origin. The Portuguese discoveries also had the opposite effect, and there are numerous Portuguese words in other languages. Some believe for example, that the word for “thank you” in Japanese (”arigato”), comes from the Portuguese obrigado.
Other languages that have influenced Portuguese include French, due to the infiltration of French manners and customs in Portugal during the tenth and eleventh centuries, when Frenchmen went to Portugal as pilgrims, courtiers, statesmen, scholars, and soldiers of fortune to help fight the Moors. There were also influences of Provençal, a language from the south of France, with words such as rua (”street”), similar to the French rue.
In Lisbon, Porto, most of Algarve, and other main tourist destinations, English is spoken fairly widely. Still, learning just a few simple Portuguese words certainly enhances a visit to Portugal. The Portuguese are proud of their language and do not take kindly to being addressed in Spanish, so visitors should take a little time to become familiar with some basic Portuguese vocabulary.
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