Described by Brazilian poet Olavo Bilac as “the last flower of Latium, wild and beautiful”, the Portuguese language is about to change. As of 1st January 2009, the reform of its spelling begins to be implemented in Brazil over a four year adaptation period until the new rules are completely enforced. The same rules will eventually be implemented in Portugal, where the changes will be phased during the next six years, and also in the other 6 countries where Portuguese is an official language: Angola, Cape Verde, East Timor, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe. The latest Portuguese orthographic agreement was signed in 1990 by seven out of eight Portuguese speaking countries. It intends to unify the two current orthographic standards and was meant to go into effect after all signatory countries had ratified it. However, by the end of the decade only Brazil, Cape Verde, and Portugal had done so, although in Portugal the change was passed into law only in May 2008. Brazil, which has nearly 80% of the Portuguese speakers in the world, is the first to implement it. The spelling changes will affect about 1.6% of the words in the European norm (also adopted in Africa) and 0.5% in the Brazilian spelling. Across the Lusophone world, many linguists, philologists, politicians, journalists, writers, translators – and of course bloggers – do not quite understand the need for, or agree with, the international treaty meant to improve the language's international status through a single official orthography. The debate is a heated one, but most bloggers seem to be on the same side. “A sign in both Chinese and Portuguese in Macau, China. Actually, “主教座堂辦公室” (in Chinese) or “Cartório Da Sé” (in Portuguese) means “The Office of the Cathedral.” By Wikimedia. Starting with Portugal two petitions (1 and 2) collecting thousands of signatures calling for the suspension of the implementation are being evaluated by the National Assembly. There, the reform is perceived as a “abraziliament” of the language with no real advantage for the other countries. It is also claimed that the new spelling rules disagree with the way the Portuguese people pronounce words. A Portuguese citizen who has grown up in Macau, Ricardo José [pt] has taken an extreme decision: Um país não é um hino ou um desenho numa bandeira. Um país é a sua língua e é a sua cultura. E se um conjunto de políticos se arroga o direito de interferir na língua que é minha, contra aquilo que caracteriza a cultura dos cidadãos dum país, servindo interesses que não os dos portugueses, então repudio-os, porque já não são mais políticos de Portugal. A partir de hoje e para sempre, se este acordo não tiver retrocesso, o meu voto será sempre público e será sempre o mesmo: votarei em branco. In fact, for what has become known as Brazilian Portuguese, changes will be kept to a minimum, and some bloggers have adopted them already [pt]. However, the majority of people are not happy with the reform either. A doctor of the Portuguese language, Marcelo Leite [pt], for one, seems to agree with the views of the blogger above, adding that the reform was an agreement which has much more to do with political and economic interests than language issues. Na verdade, fizemos a comunidade lusófona engolir a maioria das regras para se unificar em nome de uma unidade lingüística que, assim como o Godot, de Becket, fica sob uma árvore esperando. Podemos até escrever do mesmo jeito, mas o que nos faz tão distantes, tão distintos não está na grafia das palavras, mas em uma herança cultural que, fora a língua, nos separa por mais de um oceano. E acho que essa diferença é que é o legal da coisa. Eugênio Costa Almeida [pt], from Angola, agrees with the Brazilian blogger that a game of power is at play and wonders how this reform can be implemented in language prolific Africa: Como será que a CPLP vai descalçar esta bota, bem apertada, quando há países que ainda nem ratificaram a nova ortografia, como Angola e Moçambique, sendo que o primeiro, ao contrário de Moçambique e Guiné-Bissau, já tem quase mais falantes em português que nas próprias línguas nacionais. Talking about Mozambique, Nyikiwa [pt] thought that the country should stop models that much of the time are not in line with their reality: A questão do acordo ortográfico, quanto a mim mostra claramente que a população não é consultada, nem ouvida. A população apenas serve para votar.