Systemic hypercorrection exclusive to European Portuguese (PT-PT)

Gemini API
1

Dear Google AI Engineering and Localization Teams,

I am writing to report a critical linguistic bug that strictly affects the European Portuguese (PT-PT) standard. It is vital to separate this from Brazilian Portuguese (PT-BR), as the error is deeply rooted in a misinterpretation of historical Portuguese orthography used exclusively in Portugal.

The model is persistently generating severe hypercorrections by adding an artificial double “c” before the “-ção” suffix. It is writing non-existent words such as “circulacção”, “ligacção”, and “libertacção”. The correct, universally accepted European Portuguese forms are “circulação”, “ligação”, and “libertação”.

Here is the exact linguistic explanation to help your development team isolate and fix this bug:

  1. The PT-PT Origin Conflict: Before the 1990 Orthographic Agreement, Portugal used a silent “c” in a specific set of words (e.g., “acção”, “direcção”) to open the preceding vowel sound. The agreement eliminated these silent consonants, changing them to “ação” and “direção”.
  2. The Algorithmic Confusion: The AI has blended pre-1990 PT-PT data with current texts discussing spelling changes. As a result, the model has created a false rule, applying the old “-cção” suffix to words that never had a double “c” at any point in the history of European Portuguese.
  3. The Etymological Rule: Words like “ligação” (from the verb ligar), “circulação” (from circular), and “libertação” (from libertar) all originate from first-conjugation verbs ending in “-ar”. In Portuguese etymology, nouns born from “-ar” verbs never, under any spelling standard (past or present), accept a double “c”.

Proposed Linguistic Guardrail for the PT-PT Locale:
To fix this, the model needs a token-verification constraint for European Portuguese: If a noun ending in the “-ção” phoneme is derived from a base verb ending in “-ar”, the system must strictly enforce a single “c” (“-ção”). The double “c” string must be hard-blocked for this specific verbal class in the PT-PT language pack.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter and for your continuous support in keeping European Portuguese accurate.

Kind regards,
Pedro Pais / p.........@gmail.com