The authors are pretty clearly trying to draw only from European Portuguese sources - I feel like there's a fairly widespread attitude here that the language is being overwhelmed by the sheer number of Brazilian speakers (which there is obviously at least some truth to).
I don't necessarily personally feel like preserving European Portuguese in amber is a worthwhile goal (anymore than it is productive for Brits to be prickly about the meteoric rise of US English)
Man, there’s an attitude up here in trás-os-montes that the rest of Portugal has spoken unrecognisable trash for a century. It took me years to realise I’d learned hilariously antique Portuguese by moving there.
Then again, if you go to Miranda de Douro, they’ll say the rest of Portugal has been talking nonsense for the last 700 years, so the purists at least always have their concents to retreat to if they so choose.
> I don't necessarily personally feel like preserving European Portuguese in amber is a worthwhile goal (anymore than it is productive for Brits to be prickly about the meteoric rise of US English).
That's easy to say when you're not on the other end of US defaultism.
To be fair, it is only natural: Portuguese itself only came to be because the Roman Empire conquered the Lusitan land [1], a lot of English comes from Norman French from the Norman conquest [2], the Americas didn't speak European languages until 500 years ago or so, etc.
If you give enough time, all languages will change, and some of them because of major political changes/conquests
I'm not saying that is good nor that is bad, looking through the anthropology lens there's no value judgement.
Besides, differently from your shocking examples, cultures and languages don't "die" as you seem to imply, they evolve, and that part is natural and not bad or good. Portuguese (and English) will change we liking it or not
I don't necessarily personally feel like preserving European Portuguese in amber is a worthwhile goal (anymore than it is productive for Brits to be prickly about the meteoric rise of US English)