The Museum of the Portuguese Language is three stories. Floor one holds an exhibit of sculptures loosely associated with Portuguese words. Sometimes full sentences. Floor two is famous Brazilian novels. Floor three is poetry. This looks a lot like a museum of Brazilian Literature.
In a room on the second floor I find the only nod to linguistics. A kiosk is dedicated to each of the four regions which most heavily influenced the Portuguese language.
First kiosk: Africa. Awesome. Will they detail the process by which most agricultural terms in Portuguese came from Bantu speaking plantation slaves? What about the colonies in Africa? I have always wondered if Swahili names for commonly traded goods found their way into Portuguese. Perhaps I will finally find the answer?
Nope. The Africa kiosk just has some vases and tiki masks.
Really?
Next Kiosk: Europe. Ok, Africa was tough. Portuguese contact there was poorly documented until recently and so it's hard to separate carts from horses. European Portuguese, however, is well attested all the way back to its birth in 218 B.C. I remember from a linguistics class that Portugal's rulers spoke only Mozarabic for a while, and so the language took on an entire vocabulary set related to administration. But, because their relationship was all business, they adopted zero Mozarabic words relating to feelings or personal issues. But what about Spanish? Or Arabic? How did they influence Portuguese and vice versa?
Instead of answering my questions I am shown some unadorned Roman plates or something equally unmemorable. Portuguese did not come from only Latin! What about Visigothic? The letter 'ç' comes from Visigothic 'z'. You can't tell me they got a letter from their Visigothic kings and no other linguistic influence.
Next Kiosk: South American Indians. I walk past it without looking.
The linguistic family tree on the wall is the only piece of linguistics in this whole building. Unfortunately its makers seem to think "Languages from Asia" is a language family. Geographical grouping of language families!? What kind of a lazy ignorant knucklehead signed off on that? Not a linguist, that's who.
Years ago I was in a Library. They had chronologically ordered ship logs from Portuguese explorers in the Amazon River. Going forward in time you could see changes in the grammar, different conjugations becoming more popular, and new words appearing. It was awesome.
Then I went to the Museum of the Portuguese Language. It was less awesome.
I feel like I just went to the Air and Space museum but instead of spacesuits and science they had an interpretive dance troupe reenacting the cow jumping over the moon to the Star Wars Soundtrack.
