Portuguese parents are worried because their children are learning Brazilian

[buritobr]

Brazil has 213M inhabitants. Portugal has 10M, the population of the municipality of São Paulo. So, Brazil is the biggest Portuguese speaking country. Portugal has a higher per capita income, but there are at least 60M Brazilians who have income similar to the Portuguese one. So, most of the Portuguese speaking content in the Internet is in Brazilian Portuguese and not European Portuguese.
An article in a Portuguese newspaper told that the Portuguese parents are worried because due to the Covid restrictions, their children stayed at home watching Youtube videos produced by Brazilians. They started to speak like the Brazilians: speaking "grama" instead of "relva" (for grass), "ônibus" instead of "autocarro" (for bus), "geladeira" instead of "frigorífico" (for refrigerator).
A Portuguese teacher told this concern is not new. There was already influence of Brazilian Portuguese in Portugal through the TV soap operas. There were also the Walt Disney comics, whose translation in Portuguese was done in Brazilian Portuguese.

The link to the article (in Portuguese, for those who understand) https://www.dn.pt/sociedade/ha-criancas-portuguesas-que-so-falam-brasileiro-14292845.html

[buritobr]

It’s sad to me to read this because you don’t see that kind of stuff happening in the anglophone world, the British embraced and get along with people using the US English pretty well for example. Too bad the lusophone community as a whole isn’t as united.

Canadians are prickly when they see product labels spelled in the US convention rather than the British/Canadian convention. So much so, that writing in the US convention leads to embarrassment.

Here's a question for Brazilians: the British accent (stereotypical "proper" one) is seen as sexy in the US, so that a British man visiting a bar in the US is sure to pick up lots of ladies. Is the same thing true in Brazil with the Portuguese accent?

Yes, I think we have similar view. And I propose a rule: in English speaking films dubbed in Portuguese, British English actors and actresses should be dubbed in Portuguese from Portugal.

[buritobr]

Some historians consider the hypothesis that the language spoken in Portugal in the Middle Ages and in the early Modern Age was close to Brazilian Portuguese. The modern European Portuguese was created in the late Modern Age, when Portuguese people started to speak in a fancier way. Of course, there is no recording of people speaking centuries ago. But there are some clues. The poems of Luís de Camões (1524-1580) have a much better melody when spoken in Brazilian Portuguese than in modern European Portuguese.

There is also this hypothesis concerning English. The language spoken in England in the Middle Ages and in the early Modern Age might be close to the American English.