Desconstruindo três mitos persistentes sobre a língua portuguesa

Abstract

The Portuguese language is surrounded by myths. Some of them have serious consequences, like, for instance, the myth according to which the majority of the Brazilian women and men does not know Portuguese, which negatively affects their linguistic self-esteem. There are other myths that do not have serious consequences, such as the myth according to which the comma indicates a pause. Given the persistence of the myths about the Portuguese language, this article aims at contributing to the deconstruction of three of them. The first section is dedicated to the myth of the inexistence of the word presidenta, feminine form of the word presidente. It is shown that this word does exist and the sexist issue underlying it is problematized. The myth of the so called gerundismo, i.e. the syntactic structure IR + ESTAR + GERÚNDIO, is the topic of the second section. Its syntactic pertinence is explained and its semantic nature is made explicit. The third section tackles the alleged sexism of the Portuguese language. It is shown that, although the sexist Brazilian society prints its marks on the language, it is theoretically inconceivable to attribute a social trait to the grammatical system of a language, which, analogously, cannot be accused of being racist or homophobic.