# levo-te and te levo



## cheshire

(1) Levo-*te* ao cinema.
(2) *Te *levo ao cinema.​I learned that these two forms are possible for Brazilian. Which is normal for European Portugues? Are these freely interchangeable with one another for Brazilian?


----------



## Dom Casmurro

You are right. Both forms are possible in Brazilian Portuguese, even though the "te levo" option is not authorized by grammar norms governing pronoun placement. Since "te levo" is widely used in oral and informal conversation, as opposed to "levo-te", it has been tolerated as a sort of unavoidable "fact of life". And yes, they are freely interchangeable as you put it, but you can't expect anyone in Brazil saying "levo-te", for it sounds stiff and unnatural when uttered with a Brazilian accent. Among the Portuguese, there is only one acceptable way of saying it: "Levo-te".


----------



## Outsider

cheshire said:


> (1) Levo-*te* ao cinema.
> (2) *Te *levo ao cinema.​I learned that these two forms are possible for Brazilian. Which is normal for European Portugues?


Nr. 1.


----------



## cheshire

Thanks Outsider and D Casmurro!
Ate a logo.


----------



## edupa

Dom Casmurro said:


> Both forms are possible in Brazilian Portuguese, even though the "te levo" option is not authorized by grammar norms governing pronoun placement.


 

And, boy, are they slow to get with the program or what?!?!


----------



## Dom Casmurro

edupa said:


> And, boy, are they slow to get with the program or what?!?!


I don't think "they" should be expected to comply with grammar norms, if this is what you are implying when you say, "they are slow to get with the program". We have a conflict here between vox populi and grammar, and it looks pretty obvious to me that the former will be ruling for as long as it so wishes. The message that vox populi is conveying here is this: pronoun placement is a matter of sounding well, not of sounding right.


----------



## MOC

Dom Casmurro said:


> I don't think "they" should be expected to comply with grammar norms, if this is what you are implying when you say, "they are slow to get with the program". We have a conflict here between vox populi and grammar, and it looks pretty obvious to me that the former will be ruling for as long as it so wishes. The message that vox populi is conveying here is this: pronoun placement is a matter of sounding well, not of sounding right.


 
Knowing edupa's point of view on the issue, I'm pretty sure he means "grammar norms" are slow getting with the program, meaning grammar norms still don't refer to the way people talk, but to the way people are taught to (but rarely do) write/talk.


----------



## Dom Casmurro

MOC said:


> Knowing edupa's point of view on the issue, I'm pretty sure he means "grammar norms" are slow getting with the program, meaning grammar norms still don't refer to the way people talk, but to the way people are taught to (but rarely do) write/talk.


You must be right, so please disregard my last post, and Edupa, sorry about that.


----------



## edupa

Dom Casmurro said:


> We have a conflict here between vox populi and grammar, and it looks pretty obvious to me that the former will be ruling for as long as it so wishes.quote]
> 
> Oh, well, I know this might be like opening a can of worms. But, hey, I've got a reputation to live up to.
> 
> It is not that obvious when you look at the millions and millions of people who disregard what is written in a book some call grammar. And yet people close deals, set up businesses, make friends, make money, get married, travel around the world, oblivious for the most part to what is written in a book with an ISBN number on it.
> 
> With all due respect, it seems to me that you got it all backwards: a grammar book is a (feeble) attempt to record the language people actually use. And it's a daunting task for that matter, because every day new language pops up, new ways of saying things come into the scene which grammarians can't (and will not, which is worse) keep up with. And it's not like these self-professed grammarians are about to admit the ungodliness of their job either...
> 
> So, it's like a tug of war: a handful of grammarians on one side and the rest of the planet's population on the other. I wonder who wins...
> 
> 
> 
> Abraços


----------



## edupa

uchi.m said:


> This grammar issue may give rise to the (in)famous question: which came first, the egg or the chicken?


 
Language comes first, then grammar tries to box it. To no avail, or else language would die.

It's like asking people to stop breathing so that you can write in your book that human beings BY NATURE do not have the faculty of breathing. That's how nuts grammar books can get sometimes!

As far as I'm concerned, it's about time people wrote "Te levo", "Me passa o sal" and nobody flinched at it!

Abraços


----------



## Dom Casmurro

edupa said:


> Oh, well, I know this might be like opening a can of worms.
> 
> It is not that obvious...
> 
> With all due respect...


I have selected the three fragments above from your post #9 because they are typical language used by people when they disagree. I'm confused, because I couldn't agree more with your opinions, as the exchange between MOC and me (posts #7 and 8) makes clear. My post #8 even contains an apology to you, for having misinterpreted your post #5.


----------



## Denis555

All these discussions on pronoun placement make me very sad...

I don't know when the Portuguese grammar will understand this fact of life. Apart from _Portugal_, other latin languages don't see this as something incorrect but on the contrary as the only correct way:

Me chamo Denis (Brazilian Portuguese) <- "Incorrect" but the _only way used._
Mi chiamo Denis. (Italian) <- Correct and the only way used.
Me llamo Denis. (Spanish) <- Correct and the only way used.
Je m'appelle Denis (French) <- Correct and only way used.

This common feature must have been with us and our sister languages for a long, long time. So it seems to me very odd that it is regarded as "incorrect".

Edupa, I agree with you 101%!


----------



## mikatu

Dennis,
"Me Chamo" can be used in oral brazilian speak, but that's not correct. In portuguese you should write "Chamo-me" and that's the only way.
The brazilian people change the language because they speak very bad, and often those changes are transported to the written language.

About the diferences between the romance languages, portuguese use the "me" after the verb, if there are other latin languages that use it before that's great but we should leave the language like it is right now.


----------



## Vanda

> the brazilian people change the language because they speak very bad, and often those changes are transported to the written language.


Olá Mikatu,

Tenho uma pergunta: baseado em quem você diz que os brasileiros speak very bad? Você acabou de chegar ao fórum e não tem a mínima idéia do que já discutimos aqui sobre como os brasileiros *querem *falar o português *no país deles. *Para se dar bem nesta comunidade é bom que você tenha mais cuidado quando for julgar outros povos...


Brasileiros: não vamos discutir neste tópico sobre as diferenças do português falado no Brasil e o falado em Portugal, ok?  Essa discussão fica para os famosos tópicos já abertos...


----------



## Outsider

Welcome to the forum, Mikaku, but I must disagree with what you've just said.



mikatu said:


> About the diferences between the romance languages, portuguese use the "me" after the verb, if there are other latin languages that use it before that's great but we should leave the language like it is right now.


The language as it is now includes Brazilian Portuguese, where starting a sentence with a clitic pronoun like "me" is perfectly normal and in fact preferred. We should not live in an ivory tower, pretending that 10 million Portuguese can dictate how 180 million Brazilians should speak.

And you don't need to leave the Portuguese mainland, to find people who speak and write very bad*ly*. Why should our mistakes be excused, and theirs condemned?


----------



## mikatu

Vanda, please respect the rules, this is an english spoken post.

Outsider, you're right, but the problem is that portuguese form mainlaind, Africa and other places speak and talk the same way, but in Brazil the people writte the same way they speak, and that way the language start to change and to loose the stucture.

We don't want to change anything, and we will not change the rules. Just use the "me" after the verb and dont complain about the other languages!


----------



## Vanda

This is a Portuguese and any other language but Spanish forum. Please read the rules first!


----------



## uchi.m

It appears that now the can-of-worms season is open... 

Mikatu: why is the sentence _te levo_ an incorrect rendition? Plase make yourself clear because there are surely other forer@s who would like to know.


----------



## Outsider

mikatu said:


> We don't want to change anything, and we will not change the rules.


Who's "we"?! 



mikatu said:


> Just use the "me" after the verb and dont complain about the other languages!


Who are you talking to?


----------



## maralto

Em português de Portugal: afirmativa: Eu chamo-me Maria;negativa: Eu não me chamo Maria;interrogativa: Como te chamas? Por que te chamas Maria? Quando te chamam Maria?...e por aí fora, com todos os interrogativos há inversão do pronome objecto directo ou indirecto...existe também inversão do pronome com os chamados «pilotos do conjuntivo»: SE me chamarem Maria....; QUANDO te chamarem Maria...EMBORA te chamem Maria, etc...é apenas para lembrar, just to remember!

Maralto


----------



## MOC

mikatu said:


> Outsider, you're right, but the problem is that portuguese form mainlaind, Africa and other places speak and talk the same way, but in Brazil the people writte the same way they speak, and that way the language start to change and to loose the stucture.


 
When did English lose structure just because there are differences between UK english and US english? When did Spanish lose structure just because there are differences between south american spanish and european spanish? 

European Portuguese itself has evolved and the way we speak and write now isn't the same as it was years ago, so I suppose you think european portuguese is losing structure as well? If you think change is so bad, why do you speak modern european portuguese and not latin for instance?



mikatu said:


> We don't want to change anything, and we will not change the rules. Just use the "me" after the verb and dont complain about the other languages!


 
Please say "I" instead of "we" because you're speaking for yourself and not in the name of the whole portuguese population.


----------



## maralto

When we read Padre António Vieira(XXII  century) and Camões ( XVI century) we can see that there is almost no difference in the written language, concerning structure; these writers «fixed» the classical portuguese in those centuries. Brasil became independent in 1822 --Independência ou morte!--so, it had already a lot of time to do with the language all the differences they wanted to do, with so many influences from other languages, like italian,  german, and, of course, the languages of the natives...Brasil did not have anymore the «control» of the portuguese colonizadores, so the portuguese in Brasil was able to «grow» free...It did not happen so with the ex portuguese colonies in África...Their independence happened much later, after the 25 of April 1974...as we all know. So, the portuguese language structure there is more similar to ours (I am not talking about vocabulary)...Here, in Portugal, we still speak the «classical» portuguese, or, at least, we try to...

Maralto


----------



## Ayazid

maralto said:


> Here, in Portugal, we still speak the «classical» portuguese, or, at least, we try to...



Olá
I think that it would be more precise to say that colloquial European Portuguese is grammatically closer to the written formal language than Brazilian colloquial Portuguese. In my eyes the most prominent conservative feature of Brazilian Portuguese is the use of estar + gerund, instead of the standard European estar + a + infinitive, otherwise it seems to be rather innovative (I mean the colloquial language, not the written one which is pretty close to written European Portuguese). However, this is somehow off-topic, altough very interesting, maybe we could compare innovative and conservative features of both variants in a new thread


----------



## maralto

Olá,

_ In my eyes the most prominent conservative feature of Brazilian Portuguese is the use of estar + gerund, instead of the standard European estar + a + infinitive, _

I can not agree with you, Ayazid, the most proeminent difference between portuguese from Portugal and portuguese in Brasil is precisely how we insert the pronouns in a sentence: *Levo-te *and* te levo*...

We use the Gerund a lot here as well, except in the present/past continuous situation...I could  give you exemples of all the cases, if I had the time and space here...

yes, it could be interesting to compare both variants in a new thread...
M.


----------

