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Comment by brunorsini | Hacker News Reader

As a Brazilian-American I often think Fernando Pessoa is the #1 thing one misses out on by not speaking Portuguese.

These things are highly subjective but he's easily my favorite 20th century poet. So creative, incredibly deep, yet so accessible. But as these things go, there's always a loss of fidelity in translation, particularly to non-Romance languages.

If anyone wants to tap straight into Pessoa's world with two flawless poems, you can't go wrong with "Tabacaria" (Tobacco Shop — https://www.ronnowpoetry.com/contents/pessoa/TobaccoShop.htm...) and "Poema em Linha Reta" (Poem in a Straight Line — https://thenewloud.tumblr.com/post/11328170683/poem-in-a-str...).

"If only I could eat chocolate / with as much truth as you do!"

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A thousand times this. Poema em Linha Reta was one of those things that opened my eyes about human nature when I met the author as a teenager.

> I often think Fernando Pessoa is the #1 thing one misses out on by not speaking Portuguese.

Curiously, I have this same thought whenever I read Pessoa.

I'm currently learning European Portuguese, and I can't wait to be able to read Pessoa in the original.

Also, I had no idea pessoa meant person. TIL!

Love that you're picking up a new language, but that sentence sounded oddly specific. It's akin to saying I'm learning Australian or British English as opposed to just English. Yes, there are vocab and sometimes grammatical differences (e.g. I lost the key vs I've lost the key), but it's 99% the same language.

I don't find it that odd. As I'm sure you know, there are fairly large differences in pronunciation. Larger than the differences between European and Latin American Spanish, for example. I read once somewhere that in Brazil, if a Portuguese person is being interviewed on TV (on the news, for example), often times they will add subtitles. I am also learning Portuguese and whenever I search for resources, I make sure they are for the Brazilian variety.

If you go to the OS language selection on your computer, you'll probably find 'Portuguese - BR' (Brazilian) and 'Portuguese - PT' (Portugal). Sometimes you'll find subtitles on Netflix described as either Brazilian Portuguese or Portugal's Portuguese. It's the same language, but the difference is way greater than australian and british english. Sentence structure varies, some vocabulary, etc.

As someone who is familiar with both, they're slowly becoming different languages. The pronounciation is radically different, the grammar has already differed in some pronouns and conjugations (e.g. gerund) for a long time, vocabulary differences are slowly accumulating and we'll see how orthography continues to evolve. We're not quite at the Scots vs. English point yet especially because of shared media but it won't surprise me if it doesn't take too much longer to surpass that.

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