A video drifted into my feed yesterday by someone I’d never heard of before and it looked interesting so I listened to it while I was getting ready to go out. The chap who made the video is a linguist and he decided to weigh in on the controversial topic of pronouns and how they are being used, mainly in English, mainly by younger people in relatively affluent communities. If you don’t know why pronouns are controversial, well, consider yourself lucky, but basically whether we refer to people as he or she or something else, and under what circumstances is currently occupying a lot of social media and traditional media output. Frankly I’m baffled, but middle-aged people being baffled by stuff the youngs are obsessed with isn’t exactly news, is it? 🤷🏼
Anyway, as weird as it is in English, it’s even weirder in languages like portuguese where gender-specific pronouns are ascribed not only to people but to pens, apples, books and the concept of liberty*.
I’ve written a few posts about pronoun shifts a while ago um… Now where did I leave those? I started with this one, and a few people said the pun on the word “neuter” was problematic but that doesn’t seem to have stopped me repeating the crime a few weeks later when I really expanded on the subject here and then for a little reprise here.
Anyway if that kind of thing is something that interests you, I can recommend the whole video: it’s full of thought-provoking stuff. On the other hand, if you’re not, no worries because I only wanted to focus on a few seconds in the middle anyway. So, let me at least tell you why I decided to contradict him despite the fact that he is an expert and I am not.
At around 8 minutes and 25-ish seconds, he is discussing instances of relatively new pronouns that have been drafted into languages, relatively late in their development and he says “Portuguese has the impersonal ‘a gente'”. Except he says it in a Brazilian accent so it’s more like “a Genchee”.
Why, Brazilians? Why?
Gente is a feminine, singular noun that refers to a group of people but it’s true that portuguese speakers do use “a gente” as a stand-in for a group of people in place of “we”. It makes the grammar simpler because you don’t have to wrap your tongue around the nós form of the verb, you can just conjugate it in the third person singular – “a gente fala…” in place of “nós falamos”. It sounds a bit odd to English speakers but it works. As far as I can tell, it’s much more common in Brazil but it does exist in Portugal too. Of course it’s very informal, but I think it’s wrong to say it’s a pronoun. Even though it’s playing a similar role in the sentence – filling in in place of what could be a list of names, you could say the same about other collective nouns. Take “The family” as in “The family are getting together for Christmas” which could easily have been “We are getting together for Christmas”. Or what about “guys” in situations like “It’s just the guys, together again” or “hello guys, and welcome to another video”. Definitely not pronouns, right, but they are really fulfilling the same role as “a gente”.
Using nouns as stand-ins for people happens in formal speech too. You will almost certainly have heard people addressing each other as “o senhor” or “a senhora” or even “o doutor” Again, these are behaving in a fairly pronoun-like way, but they’re both nouns. You’re just talking to the person in the third person. “How is the gentleman?” instead of “How are you?” It’s the same kind of thing.
I felt like I was being a but of a reply guy, challenging someone in their academic discipline. Luckily we are both dudes, so I can’t be accused of mansplaining but even so, it’s a bit… Well, let’s say “hubristic”.
The Results Are In, You Bastards
So, I made a reddit poll to ask native speakers on r/português to tell me if I’m right in my thinking. To my huge annoyance, judging by the early results, ‘yes, it’s a pronoun” seems to be winning over “no, it’s just a noun”. It’s a pretty close result in Portugal but overwhelming in Brazil.
In my defence, democracy is overrated. But if that brilliant argument doesn’t convince you, the explanation someone gave is that although “gente” is a noun, “a gente” os technically known as “uma locução pronomial” with “the same value as the personal pronoun ‘nós'” só it’s not a pronoun per se, but it works like one. Meh, I can live with that form of words, I think.
Finally, a European speaker said he was taught never to use it as a pronoun because it was “extremamente errado” and whenever he used it his grandpa would say “A gente? Agente é da polícia!”
Preach it!
*Respectively: lady, lady, gentleman, lady, if you’re keeping score.
O domingo no Porto começou mais cedo do que o sábado. Acordámos às 8:00 e comemos o pequeno almoço no hotel. A Olivia e a Catarina visitaram a Livraria Lello e passámos a manhã a fazer compras turísticas. Também atravessemos o Rio Douro na Ponte Dom Luis I. A vista da Ponte era maravilhosa.
Enfim, chegou o tempo para voltarmos ao aeroporto. O peso das nossas malas quase dobrou por causa dos livros (comprei doze e a Catarina mais dez) e outras lembranças das nossas férias. O taxista conduziu mal, mas não me importei. Costume da condução horrível dos taxistas portugueses. Tentei aproveitei a ultima oportunidade de falar português mas não consegui de pensar em muitos assuntos além do tempo e dos sinais. Esta situação mudou quando aproximamo-nos do aeroporto. Ora, o aeroporto do Porto tem o nome do ex-presidente Francisco Sá Carneiro. O Sr Carneiro morreu num acidente de avião em 1980. A serio, não é uma piada: o nome do aeroporto comemora um acidente de avião! Aqueles portuenses tem um sentido de humor muito esquisito!
Existem varias teorias sobre este acidente. Algumas pessoas crêem que o Sr Carneiro foi assassinado pelos americanos porque opôs-se à presença americana nas ilhas portuguesas. A minha esposa é uma delas. Outras pessoas afirmam que o verdadeiro assassino foi Mário Soares (
O Segundo dia na cidade invicta começou tarde. Quando descemos as escadas, o pequeno almoço já tinha acabado mas uma camareira simpática trouxe-nos café e pasteis. Depois, a Catarina e a Olivia foram a uma loja de roupas e eu andei entre as varias livrarias a procurar livros interessantes e fáceis para ler. Por causa de estar sós, consegui praticar a minha “produção oral”. Fiz perguntas sobre os livros (um velho dono dum livraria de segunda mão zangou-se quando pedi-lhe falar mais devagar se faz favor… ups!), falei sobre as cores e tamanhos de calças de ganga no “C&A” (uma verdadeira surpresa: todas as lojas de C&A inglesas fecharam há anos!) e pedi direcções para o correio (enfim, o correio estava fechado mas havia uma máquina onde comprei um selo).
Passámos a tarde juntos a explorar a cidade. Almoçámos num mercado antigo, que tinha sido convertido num centro de artes. Experimentei uma francesinha (salsichas, carne de bife e fiambre dentro de qualquer tipo de massa, coberto de queijo e regado com molho picante….) e achei bom.
Naquela noite, fomos ao Coliseu do Porto para assistir um concerto dos Deolinda. A – DO – REEEEIIII!!!! A cantora, Ana Bacalhau é muito simpática, as suas contas foram engraçadas e claro a música foi perfeita. A minha esposa, que não os conhecia ficou um fã, e até a Olivia (que não ouve música além da banda sonora de “Hamilton” hoje em dia, e quase não fala português nenhuma) gostou muito do espectáculo.
“Era Uma Vez Um Cravo” é um livro escrito por José Jorge Letria sob a forma de um poema. Conta a história de um cravo na manhã do dia 25 de Abril de 1974. Uma florista ofereceu-o a um militar que passou pela frente da loja dela. Pô-lo na sua espingarda. Há muitos desenhos da vida lisboeta na madrugada da revolução: as praças, as pessoas com penteados e roupas típicas dos anos setenta… Mas até para mim, um cidadão de um outro país, o poema deu-me um sentido de emoções do povo: a alegria, o orgulho, o alívio de serem libertados enfim.
Luso 