My family has a partial Brazilian background, and as a result of this I have been exposed to a fair amount of the Portuguese language.
I feel that Portuguese is a really interesting Romance Language because of how divergent it is compared to Italian or Spanish.
And the most unique feature it can claim is definitely the high prevalence of -ão endings (as in São Paulo).
It makes a sound that is linguistically quite singular, sounding somewhere between "ow" and "oh".
From a developmental standpoint though, I don't see a clear origin for this ending within Latin.
Is it possible that it could be a highly modified descendant of the Latin -us/-um endings?
(I recall that this was the answer to a similar question I had a while back about Romanian.)
Or is it just the Portuguese version of the -o endings we see so often in Italian and Spanish?
I would love to hear your thoughts on this!
Thanks,
Cornelius
I feel that Portuguese is a really interesting Romance Language because of how divergent it is compared to Italian or Spanish.
And the most unique feature it can claim is definitely the high prevalence of -ão endings (as in São Paulo).
It makes a sound that is linguistically quite singular, sounding somewhere between "ow" and "oh".
From a developmental standpoint though, I don't see a clear origin for this ending within Latin.
Is it possible that it could be a highly modified descendant of the Latin -us/-um endings?
(I recall that this was the answer to a similar question I had a while back about Romanian.)
Or is it just the Portuguese version of the -o endings we see so often in Italian and Spanish?
I would love to hear your thoughts on this!
Thanks,
Cornelius