{"id":10233,"date":"2011-07-06T07:00:01","date_gmt":"2011-07-06T07:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/2011\/07\/06\/the-historical-struggle-over-control-of-the-portuguese-language\/"},"modified":"2011-07-06T07:00:01","modified_gmt":"2011-07-06T07:00:01","slug":"the-historical-struggle-over-control-of-the-portuguese-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20110706-01\/?p=10233","title":{"rendered":"The historical struggle over control of the Portuguese language"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Portugal has been going through a rough patch. Its international stature has diminished over the years, its economy has always struggled to remain competitive, the government had to accept a bailout to avoid defaulting on its debt, and on top of it all, it is losing control of its own language.\n In Portugal, the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Portuguese_Language_Orthographic_Agreement_of_1990\"> latest round of Portuguese spelling reform<\/a> takes effect over a six-year transition period, leaving the Portuguese dismayed that <a href=\"http:\/\/seattletimes.nwsource.com\/html\/nationworld\/2004376336_portugese27.html\"> the spelling of their language is being driven by Brazil, a former colony<\/a>. I sympathize with the plight of the Portuguese, although I also understand the value of consistent spelling. (The rules for the English language are established <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Category:Language_regulators\"> not by any central authority<\/a> but rather are determined by convention.)\n I wonder if the U.K. feels the same way about its former colony.<\/p>\n<p> <b>Bonus chatter<\/b>: The <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.technet.com\/b\/terminology\/\"> Microsoft Language Portal Blog<\/a> reports that <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.technet.com\/b\/terminology\/archive\/2009\/01\/21\/portuguese-spelling-reform-in-brazil.aspx\"> Microsoft intends to phase in the spelling reform over a four-year period for Brazil-localized products<\/a>. A quick glance at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/Language\/en-US\/StyleGuides.aspx\"> Microsoft style guide for Portuguese (Portugal)<\/a> says that the spelling reform has yet to take effect among the Portugal-localized version of Microsoft products. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Portugal has been going through a rough patch. Its international stature has diminished over the years, its economy has always struggled to remain competitive, the government had to accept a bailout to avoid defaulting on its debt, and on top of it all, it is losing control of its own language. In Portugal, the latest [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[103],"class_list":["post-10233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-non-computer"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"<p>Portugal has been going through a rough patch. Its international stature has diminished over the years, its economy has always struggled to remain competitive, the government had to accept a bailout to avoid defaulting on its debt, and on top of it all, it is losing control of its own language. In Portugal, the latest [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}