Portuguese: A Reference Manual by Sheila R Ackerling and Rebecca Jones-Kellogg (review)

The grammar book Portuguese: A Reference Manual, by Sheila R. Ackerling and Rebecca Jones-Kellogg, was published by the University of Texas Press in 2011. The book was first written as a grammar supplement to complement information presented in other Portuguese textbooks at the university level. Following the economic development of Brazil, the Portuguese language has become more attractive and the teaching materials currently available are insufficient to address the various needs of the growing market. Additionally, the few textbooks already published often do not encompass all the information that non-natives should have access to when learning Portuguese. For that reason, it is important to have a reference grammar text, such as the one presented here, as it provides information lacking elsewhere.

The book offers a useful and comprehensive account of standard Portuguese. For those who are interested in learning how to use formal Portuguese language, this book is a great asset. Each subsection of the book addresses a specific grammar topic, ranging from the spelling system to English and Spanish cognates and grammatical categories. Since pronunciation is one of the features that distinguishes Portuguese and Spanish the most, a thorough description of Portuguese pronunciation is also provided. The book incorporates changes established by the Novo Acordo Ortográfico da Língua Portuguesa signed by the Portuguese-speaking countries a few years ago. As Portuguese textbooks are quite scarce in the market, it is good to have a helpful and reliable source to solve the doubts that students or even Portuguese professors might have. Readers will not be disappointed if they expect to learn the detailed aspects of formal Portuguese.

Following the trend and tradition in North American universities, the book adopts mostly Brazilian Portuguese grammar and vocabulary. Differences between European and Brazilian Portuguese are also addressed whenever relevant. Additionally, the book focuses on “standard Portuguese” over other regional or non-standard dialects. However straightforward this might seem, the definition of which variant of Portuguese is standard in the multifaceted reality of Lusophone countries is controversial. Given aspects such as different immigration influences, socioeconomic inequalities, and even circumstantial and variable aspects of the social interaction, it may be troublesome to decide which Portuguese variant should be considered standard. Portuguese grammar books often lay on a prescriptive approach, rather than a descriptive one. Books that have such a grammar approach often gather examples from literary books written by classic literature authors from the nineteenth century. Those books teach a form of Portuguese that most people (even literate people such as Portuguese university professors) do not use, even in formal situations. In sum, there is a huge gap between formal Portuguese (as presented in grammar books) and the way people write and speak in real life, including formal interactions.

Considering this lack of a clear-cut distinction between standard and non-standard Portuguese, it must be mentioned that one of the downsides of this reference grammar text is that several topics addressed by the book represent an excessively formal, maybe obsolete, version of Portuguese. Although all those rules are indeed presented in prestigious prescriptive grammar books, they do not always represent an accurate sample of how to speak or write in Portuguese in real interactions. As the book was intended to be a guide for the Portuguese language in all Lusophone countries, it is reasonable to expect that it present grammar topics as they should be used. However, because the book aims to be used also by scholars whose focus is Lusophone culture and literature, it is certainly an important reference to understand the form of Portuguese adopted by literary texts. Understanding formal Portuguese is certainly valuable, but ideally the book could make more references to real life usage, instead of focusing mostly on prescriptive analysis.

In sum, the book might be a good option for Portuguese students and professors, as long as they keep in mind the issue of the various nuances that the Portuguese...