Parabéns Leanna for scoring a perfect 20/20!!

First of all, I have to say that I was extremely impressed by both the volume and quality of the responses that came in from all of you lovely readers out there. A true testament both to the vigor with which you all pursue knowledge of the Portuguese language and to your pure ability, the results were stellar.

I hope that this little contest also tells you all that I am always eager to hear from you, the readers, both in the comments on the blog and through email. I hope to be able to better serve you and your specific interests as the blog looks forward to 2008.

Though I won’t review the entire contest answer-by-answer, I will discuss a couple of points of interest. 1) Regarding the differences between Brazilian and European Portuguese: there are in fact some grammatical differences between the two. Some verbal constructions such as the present progressive are formed differently: estou estudando as opposed to estou a estudar, for example. Many people noted the difference in accent, which is certainly quite evident. 2) You all seem to have quite a wide range of musical tastes, and a large knowledge of samba instruments! 3) Question #18 (‘How do people in Sampa say ‘Dude?’) tripped a lot of people up. To clarify, Sampa is São Paulo, so acceptable answers would be meu or mano. Cara is fairly common outside of Rio, but is considered to be the property of the ‘carioca’ speech (though I did accept it for this question). Gajo as far as I know it is very European, and not used in Brazil; it was a pretty common response to this question.

Thanks again to all the readers of the Portuguese Blog!