What's your Brazil name?

[Geezer57]

If you mean how it's pronounced, then it's like "sh" in "shell" or "shark". Cê-cedilha (ç) is used only before "a" and "o".

That doesn't seem quite right, at least for Brazilian Portutuguese (maybe in Portugal?). From this site (http://www.deltatranslator.com/delta/pronounce.htm ):

ç — before an a, o or u — pronounced like the s in several

Now I only spent 10 years growing up in Brazil (São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro), so don't claim to be any sort of authority on the language (high-school level at best), but think I have a "more than casual" ear for its proper pronunciation. That "sh" just didn't sound right for Brazil - maybe Portugal?

I went back in 2000 for a school reunion (my wife's first overseas trip!), and was pleasantly surprized at how easily it came back to me after all those intervening years. When you're young and learn a new language, you keep it for life. Such a shame that the public school systems here in the U.S.A. seldom start students on foreign languages until they're in their teens, usually in high school. Much better to start them in kindergarten.

P.S. that www.minimalsworld.net/BrazilName/brazilian.shtml link appears to be down right now.

[L'Impresario]

Yes, I don´t know what I was thinking heh
Another thing that shows my mental haziness at the time, I didn´t include "u" in the vowels that appear after a "ç" because I couldn't think of a single word containing such a syllable. Yeah, açúcar anyone:p

There are many differences in pronounciation between Brazilian and European Portuguese, and even grammar, but here it isn't the case. To be precise, there are pronounciation differences even between São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

[Geezer57]

Yes, I don´t know what I was thinking heh
Another thing that shows my mental haziness at the time, I didn´t include "u" in the vowels that appear after a "ç" because I couldn't think of a single word containing such a syllable. Yeah, açúcar anyone:p

There are many differences in pronounciation between Brazilian and European Portuguese, and even grammar, but here it isn't the case. To be precise, there are pronounciation differences even between São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

Agreed, there are differences in the ways Paulistas (São Paulo) and Cariocas (Rio de Janeiro) speak, but they're subtle. Most foreigners (non-portuguese speaking) wouldn't be able to tell the difference. For a more extreme example, talk to a "Baihano"! Most of my years in Brazil were in São Paulo & Rio, but I vacationed for several weeks in Salvador, Bahia. There the regional accents were quite extreme.

I also spent some time on a Portuguese cruise liner, staffed almost 100% by European Portuguese natives. The difference in accents between them and Brazilians was quite distinct, even to a (then) novice Portuguese speaker. But all were most charming at the time, so I've always wanted to visit Portugal.

L'Impresario, what have some of your Portuguese-related experiences been>

[L'Impresario]

Well, it's a strange thing that during the last years, whenever I go for my monthly+ stay in a european city every August I end up hanging out with Brazilians (met Brasilienses, Paulistas and Cariocas, heard that people to the north of Minas Gerais are quite different heh), but never been to Brazil or Portugal - although in Paris opposite to the apartment I lived in was a portuguese bar, Portuguese have taken over the place. And as I speak spanish pretty good and I was also interested in galician, I was actually starting to communicate in portuñol.

Later on, it took me about a month to learn the grammar and basic brazilian and portuguese pronounciation, and now I'm going through the various dialects and doing a bit of studying on the unique infinitivo pessoal, the futuro de subjuntivo and its connection with the subjunctive mood in Spanish and French. It's really fascinating that Portuguese retains so many grammatical nuances from the Middle Ages, compared to the other romance languages.

I'm also quite fortunate to study with a person that has graduated from Universidade de Coimbra (among other iberian institutions) and in addition has travelled and worked extensively in Brazil and Latin America in general, thus being able to show me exactly any dialect differentiations, plus provide some good info on the native languages' influence on Portuguese and Spanish (given that he speaks quite a few of them, like Tupi, Guaraní, Quechua etc).

Regarding the differences between Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, one of the most characteristic ones is the final "z', in Fluminense (Rio d. Jan) it is pronounced like a "sh", while in most other regions, São Paulo included, you hear a "s".
I think tho that there's pretty much uniformity in Brazil, apart from the regions where there are other languages at use nearby. When they aren't talking very colloquially, you can get accustomed more easily to Brazilian speech than Portuguese, although I dare say that being fluent in French helps a lot with the latter. And from a Greek-speaker's point of view, Portuguese sound very funny. At times you think that they 're dragged straight out of the province, with their "hillybilly" accent and all heh

[Geezer57]

Fascinating! Thanks for sharing that.

[Brutus]

hmm, I seem to be either "Brutaldo" (with Org name ) or "Wetereiro" (real name).