Lack of periods in month abbreviations in Brazilian Portuguese

Lack of periods in month abbreviations in Brazilian Portuguese

[EpicTux123]

Hello there!

In my native language, Brazilian Portuguese, the most common (and presumably correct due to the Portuguese Language Orthographic Agreement of 1990) usage of month abbreviations is to end them with periods.

For example, for an equivalency in English to better understand this issue, we would use:

January = Jan.
October = Oct.
November = Nov.
December = Dec.

And so on. While I can't say for sure about the English language, I'm almost certain that in Brazilian Portuguese not having the periods is considered incorrect or, at least, seems wrong to native speakers.

I noticed that we don't have periods when using the command "ls -la [directory]". Example:

$ LC_ALL=pt_BR.UTF-8 ls -la /sys/kernel/

Months will be abbreviated in the output without the corresponding periods.
Spacing isn't a problem, because when using:

$ LC_ALL=zh_CN.UTF-8 ls -la /sys/kernel/

The spaces are bigger.

Here are some links that corroborate with what I said (they are in the Brazilian Portuguese language):
- https://ciberduvidas.iscte-iul.pt/consultorio/perguntas/as-abreviaturas-dos-meses-dos-anos-segundo-o-novo-acordo-ortografico/30221
- https://www.dicio.com.br/abreviaturas-lista-de-abreviacoes/
- http://www.revisoeserevisoes.pro.br/gramatica/abreviaturas-dos-meses/

The Portuguese Language Orthographic Agreement of 1990 went into effect by force of law in Brazil in 2016. The current language database (archive) for it is dated 29 June 2000 according to the "locale -a -v" command.

I am using Fedora Linux 41.

Thanks for your attention.

Re: Lack of periods in month abbreviations in Brazilian Portuguese

[Mike FABIAN]

EpicTux123 via Libc-locales <libc-locales@sourceware.org> さんはかきました:

> Hello there!
>
> In my native language, Brazilian Portuguese, the most common (and
> presumably correct due to the Portuguese Language Orthographic
> Agreement of 1990) usage of month abbreviations is to end them with
> periods.
>
> For example, for an equivalency in English to better understand this issue, we would use:
>
> January = Jan.
> October = Oct.
> November = Nov.
> December = Dec.

CLDR has this:

https://github.com/unicode-org/cldr/blob/main/common/main/pt.xml#L1985

			<calendar type="gregorian">
				<months>
					<monthContext type="format">
						<monthWidth type="abbreviated">
							<month type="1">jan.</month>
							<month type="2">fev.</month>
							<month type="3">mar.</month>
							<month type="4">abr.</month>
							<month type="5">mai.</month>
							<month type="6">jun.</month>
							<month type="7">jul.</month>
							<month type="8">ago.</month>
							<month type="9">set.</month>
							<month type="10">out.</month>
							<month type="11">nov.</month>
							<month type="12">dez.</month>
						</monthWidth>

I.e. with the dots, but starting with lowercase letters.

(pt is Brazilian Portuguese in CLDR, see: https://github.com/unicode-org/cldr/blob/main/common/main/pt_BR.xml)

> And so on. While I can't say for sure about the English language, I'm
> almost certain that in Brazilian Portuguese not having the periods is
> considered incorrect or, at least, seems wrong to native speakers.
>
> I noticed that we don't have periods when using the command "ls -la [directory]". Example:
>
> $ LC_ALL=pt_BR.UTF-8 ls -la /sys/kernel/
>
> Months will be abbreviated in the output without the corresponding periods.
> Spacing isn't a problem, because when using:
>
> $ LC_ALL=zh_CN.UTF-8 ls -la /sys/kernel/
>
> The spaces are bigger.
>
> Here are some links that corroborate with what I said (they are in the Brazilian Portuguese language):
> - https://ciberduvidas.iscte-iul.pt/consultorio/perguntas/as-abreviaturas-dos-meses-dos-anos-segundo-o-novo-acordo-ortografico/30221
> - https://www.dicio.com.br/abreviaturas-lista-de-abreviacoes/
> - http://www.revisoeserevisoes.pro.br/gramatica/abreviaturas-dos-meses/
>
> The Portuguese Language Orthographic Agreement of 1990 went into
> effect by force of law in Brazil in 2016. The current language
> database (archive) for it is dated 29 June 2000 according to the
> "locale -a -v" command.
>
> I am using Fedora Linux 41.
>
> Thanks for your attention.



-- 
Mike FABIAN <mfabian@redhat.com>
睡眠不足はいい仕事の敵だ。

Re: Lack of periods in month abbreviations in Brazilian Portuguese

[EpicTux123]

Regarding lowercase vs. uppercase letters, as far as I'm aware, Portuguese from Portugal uses month names with initial uppercase, while Brazilian Portuguese uses initial lowercase.

And thanks for the information from Unicode. I didn't know "pt" was "pt-BR". Normally, I see distinctions such as "pt-PT" and "pt-BR", and never "pt" alone.

-------

Another thing I noticed, and I believe it can also be discussed here. In Brazil, we use dates in the Day-Month-Year format.
So, for instance, we don't say something like "the 25th of December". Rather, we say "25 of December" (cardinal instead of ordinal in pronunciation).
Because of that, I think it's a bit strange to see date formatted in the "ls" command (and similar commands) as "month DAY".

For example, using "LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 ls -la /sys/kernel/" says "Dec 25", which is fine for American English, but the order feels a bit off for other languages.
Is there any standard that I'm not aware of that specifies that "ls" and similar commands should always follow the "month DAY" order?