*PresParticiple

[alcarilinque]

Brasilia Governor Bans Verb Form, Citing Inefficiency

Oct. 2 (Bloomberg) - Brazil's Federal District Governor Jose Roberto Arruda “fired” the present participle from his administration, citing inefficiency

Comments

[samoody]

click
Doesn't go very much further than from what the article you cited does.

Pretty interesting, all that. I am not sure how much more Brazilians rely on the gerund than the Portuguese... I know I can say they both rely on it a lot less than us, though. I hardly see how the restriction of a form of verb is going to increase efficiency. Politicians can find ways around this. :)

[paulistano]

Re: the present participle being used more in Brazil than in Portugual. It's true. A Brazilian would be more apt to say "Estou andando" while a Portuguese person would probably say "Estou a andar." Brazilians do use it every once in awhile, but really only to sound a bit fancier than normal.

It's one of those noticeable features that differs between the two versions of Portuguese

[jinty]

I heard a nice story from a Brazilian colleague of my dad's. She was in Portugal for a conference, and was waiting for the lift to arrive in the hotel. When it arrived, she said to the person inside the lift "Esta' subindo?" [going up?]. In reply, she got: "Nao, esta' parado" [No, it's stopped]! Obviously the person in the lift understood "subindo" as "in the act of going up at this moment"!

[nerd4live]

That's hilarious, hahahaha. Oh, Brazil.
This reminds me of that time my Portuguese professor told me there was some linguistic movement in the 70s (?) when Brazilians tried to pass their language off as "Brazilian" instead of "Portuguese" or "Brazilian Portuguese"
I think it was during one of their spelling reforms.