----- Original Message -----From: Fritz SaxlSent: Friday, October 10, 2003 9:20 AMSubject: Re: [tied] Glen, regarding...I am a german who lives in Brazil and my children didn`t have any trouble to learn Portuguese, although they have been born from german parents. In my case, it was simply the question of where one has been brought up and where did he live afterwards. I speak Portuguese with a lot of accent and I still have some difficulties with it, since Portuguese, as the Brazilians who are members of this list can easily confirm, is a terribly difficult, complex and rich language, and learning it was for me a sensational experience. Anyone who can read Guimarães Rosa in the portuguese original will agree with me ;-) In his books language achieved such incredible results, that I have never seen anything close to it, for instance, in german literature. But this is not the question. What I want to say is that, in spite of my difficulties with Portuguese, and in spite of the complexity of Portuguese itself, my children speak Portuguese as if they were born from Brazilians: they have no accents or difficulties at all, and that is because they have been brought up in a country where the Portuguese is the primary tongue. So these questions on genetics must be carefully handled with if we do not want to go through simplifications which in fact are useful only for the political speeches.
Klaus.
<PCR> Your arrival in Brazil hardly altered the gene frequencies of the population.
Therefore, what you experienced was expected.
PatPATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE@...
(501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA
WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE: http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/
and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/proto-religion/indexR.html"Veit ec at ec hecc, vindgá meiði a netr allar nío,
geiri vndaþr . . . a þeim meiþi, er mangi veit,
hvers hann af rótom renn." (Hávamál 138)