Reflecting superficially on the orthographic reforms that the Portuguese language has gone through, the impression is that the language has become uglier, poorer, and sometimes confusing. It is always a pity for any language when “authorities” sit down to regulate it. It is as if the work of grammarians, who progressively record the mutations that the language undergoes, has no value whatsoever. The pattern, whose evolution is the work of centuries, is suddenly broken: time is scratched, and a “right” and a “wrong” are established, with the naive hope that a living language can be tamed by conventions… The result is something that sounds unnatural. The consolation is to know that, although abounding in defects, Portuguese is strong enough to overcome these deliriums and nonsenses…
Orthographic Reforms
