Timeline for History and Reason of Portuguese accentuation marks
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
5 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 9, 2023 at 11:47 | comment | added | Ergative Man | Well, one could argue that it was "always necessary", because since Portuguese was what we call Galician-Portuguese in the Middle Ages there were already proparoxytones, paroxytones and oxytones, but they didn't need to do that, they new the words, they were native speakers. But as orthography was being refined and becoming easier for those who didn't know specific words to pronounce them correctly (and also to foreign people), it was gradually reaching what we have now. Portuguese had a whole other orthography in the beginning of the last century, very latinized. | |
| May 9, 2023 at 11:40 | comment | added | Janus Bahs Jacquet | @Bernardo It’s not ‘necessary’ as such. Other languages – like English – do all right without it. It’s makes it easier to read Portuguese and makes the spelling system more unambiguous, but it could be done away with without any serious negative impact. | |
| May 9, 2023 at 11:13 | comment | added | Bernardo Benini Fantin | Thanks a lot for you explanation. Now, is there any record of its first usage or how it came to be necessary? | |
| May 9, 2023 at 2:52 | comment | added | Janus Bahs Jacquet | Perhaps worth including that a tilde also indicates stress like circumflexes and acutes, except if there is also a circumflex or acute on a different syllable, in which case that takes priority. | |
| May 9, 2023 at 2:40 | history | answered | Ergative Man | CC BY-SA 4.0 |