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There are various differences between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese, such as the dropping of the Portuguese verb conjugation, second-person conjugations (and, in some dialects, of the grammatical person, second-person pronoun itself) in everyday usage and the use of subject pronouns () as direct objects.
Brazil, due to its continental size and the immigration to Brazil that colonized and populated the country for centuries, has different dialects throughout the national territory, even so it is perfectly possible for a Brazilian to understand a different dialect from the other end of the country, because writing is the same, and often the pronunciation is the same, just changing the sound of some letter or group of letters, like what happens too in the different Regions of the United States. And as for Portuguese from 
''Fluminense''
— A broad dialect with many variants spoken in the states of Rio de Janeiro (state), Rio de Janeiro, Espírito Santo and neighbouring eastern regions of Minas Gerais. ''Fluminense'' formed in these previously ''caipira''-speaking areas due to the gradual influence of European migrants, causing many people to distance their speech from their original dialect and incorporate new terms. ''Fluminense'' is sometimes referred to as ''carioca'', however ''carioca'' is a more specific term referring to the accent of the Greater Rio de Janeiro area by speakers with a ''fluminense'' dialect. # ''Gaúcho dialect, Sulriograndense or Gaúcho'' — in Rio Grande do Sul, similar to ''sulista''. There are many distinct accents in Rio Grande do Sul, mainly due to the heavy influx of European immigrants of diverse origins who have settled in colonies throughout the state, and to the proximity to Hispanosphere, Spanish-speaking nations. The ''gaúcho'' word in itself is a Spanish loanword into Portuguese of obscure Indigenous languages of the Americas, Indigenous Amerindian origins. # ''Mineiro'' — Minas Gerais (not prevalent in the Triângulo Mineiro). As the ''fluminense'' area, its associated region was formerly a sparsely populated land where ''caipira'' was spoken, but Minas Gerais#History, the discovery of gold and gems made it the most prosperous Brazilian region, which attracted Portuguese colonists and commoners from other parts of Brazil along with their African slaves. South-southwestern, Zona da Mata (Minas Gerais), southeastern and northern areas of the state have fairly distinctive speech, actually approximating to ''caipira'', ''fluminense'' (popularly called, often pejoratively, ''carioca do brejo'', "marsh carioca") and ''baiano'' respectively. Areas including and surrounding Belo Horizonte have a distinctive accent. #''Nordestino''
ref name="ReferenceB">Note: the speaker of this sound file is from Rio de Janeiro, and he is talking about his experience with ''nordestino'' and ''nortista'' accents. — more marked in the Sertão (7), where, in the 19th and 20th centuries and especially in the area including and surrounding the ''sertão'' (the dry land after Agreste) of Pernambuco and southern Ceará, it could sound less comprehensible to speakers of other Portuguese dialects than Galician or Rioplatense Spanish, and nowadays less distinctive from other variants in the metropolitan cities Zona da Mata, along the coasts. It can be divided in two regional variants: one that includes the northern Maranhão and southern of Piauí and another that goes from Ceará to Alagoas. # ''Nortista'' or ''amazofonia'' — Most of Amazon Basin states i.e. North Region, Brazil, Northern Brazil. Before the 20th century, most people from the ''nordestino'' area fleeing the droughts and their associated poverty settled here, so it has some similarities with the Portuguese dialect there spoken. The speech in and around the cities of Belém and Manaus has a more European flavor in phonology, prosody and grammar.
# ''Paulistano dialect, Paulistano'' — Variants spoken around Greater São Paulo in its maximum definition and more easterly areas of São Paulo state, as well perhaps "educated speech" from anywhere in São Paulo (state), the state of São Paulo (where it coexists with ''caipira''). ''Caipira'' is the hinterland sociolect of much of the Centro-Sul, Central-Southern half of Brazil, nowadays conservative only in the rural areas and associated with them, that has a historically prestige (sociolinguistics), low prestige in cities as Rio de Janeiro, Curitiba, Belo Horizonte, and until some years ago, in São Paulo itself. Sociolinguistics, or what by times is described as 'linguistic discrimination, linguistic prejudice', often correlated with Class discrimination, classism, is a polemic topic in the entirety of the country since the times of Adoniran Barbosa#Musical production, Adoniran Barbosa. Also, the "Paulistano" accent was heavily influenced by the presence of immigrants in the city of São Paulo, especially the Italians.
# ''Sertanejo'' — Center-West Region, Brazil, Center-Western states, and also much of Tocantins and Rondônia. It is closer to ''mineiro'', ''caipira'', ''nordestino'' or ''nortista'' depending on the location.
# ''Sulista'' — The variants spoken in the areas between the northern regions of Rio Grande do Sul and southern regions of São Paulo state, encompassing most of South Region, Brazil, southern Brazil. The city of Curitiba does have a fairly distinct accent as well, and a relative majority of speakers around and in Florianópolis also speak this variant (many speak ''florianopolitano'' or ''manezinho da ilha'' instead, related to the European Portuguese dialects spoken in Azores and Madeira). Speech of northern Paraná is closer to that of inland São Paulo.
# ''Florianopolitan dialect, Florianopolitano'' — Variants heavily influenced by European Portuguese spoken in Florianópolis city (due to a heavy immigration movement from Portugal, mainly its Autonomous regions of Portugal, insular regions) and much of its metropolitan area, Grande Florianópolis, said to be a continuum between those whose speech most resemble ''sulista'' dialects and those whose speech most resemble ''fluminense'' and European ones, called, often pejoratively, ''manezinho da ilha''.
# ''Carioca'' — Not a dialect, but sociolects of the ''fluminense'' variant spoken in an area roughly corresponding to Greater Rio de Janeiro. It appeared after locals came in contact with the Portuguese aristocracy amidst the Transfer of the Portuguese Court to Brazil, Portuguese royal family fled in the early 19th century. There is actually a continuum between vernacular countryside accents and the ''carioca'' sociolect, and the educated speech (in Portuguese ''norma culta'', which most closely resembles other Brazilian Portuguese standards but with marked recent Portuguese influences, the nearest ones among the country's dialects along ''florianopolitano''), so that not all people native to the state of Rio de Janeiro speak the said sociolect, but most ''carioca'' speakers will use the standard variant not influenced by it that is rather uniform around Brazil depending on context (emphasis or formality, for example).
# ''Brasiliense'' — used in Brasília and its metropolitan area. It is not considered a dialect, but more of a regional variant – often deemed to be closer to ''fluminense'' than the dialect commonly spoken in most of Goiás, ''sertanejo''.
# ''Arco do desflorestamento'' or '':pt:Dialeto da serra amazônica, serra amazônica'' — Known in its region as the "accent of the migrants," it has similarities with ''caipira'', ''sertanejo'' and often ''sulista'' that make it differing from ''amazofonia'' (in the opposite group of Brazilian dialects, in which it is placed along ''nordestino'', ''baiano'', ''mineiro'' and ''fluminense''). It is the most recent dialect, which appeared by the settlement of families from various other Brazilian regions attracted by the cheap land offer in recently Deforestation, deforested areas.
# ''Recifense'' — used in Recife and its metropolitan area.
According to some contemporary Brazilian linguists (Bortoni, Kato, Mattos e Silva, Perini, and most recently, with great impact, Bagno), Brazilian Portuguese may be a highly diglossia, diglossic language. This theory claims that there is an L-variant (termed "Brazilian Vernacular"), which would be the mother tongue of all Brazilians, and an H-variant (standard Brazilian Portuguese) acquired through schooling.
L-variant represents a simplified form of the language (in terms of grammar, but not of phonetics) that could have evolved from 16th-century Portuguese, influenced by Amerindian (mostly Tupi Antigo, Tupi) and
Brazilian Portuguese (' ), also Portuguese of Brazil (', ) or South American Portuguese (') is the set of
The written language taught in Brazilian
The written Brazilian standard differs from the European one to about the same extent that written American English differs from written British English. The differences extend to spelling, lexicon, and grammar. However, with the entry into force of the Orthographic Agreement of 1990 in Portugal and in Brazil since 2009, these differences were drastically reduced.
Several Brazilian writers have been awarded with the highest prize of the Portuguese language. The
The linguistic situation of the BP informal speech in relation to the standard language is controversial. There are authors (Bortoni, Kato, Mattos e Silva, Bagno, Perini) who describe it as a case of
gerund_
In_linguistics,_a_gerund_(_abbreviated_)_is_any_of_various__nonfinite_verb_forms_in_various_languages;_most_often,_but_not_exclusively,_one_that_functions_as_a_noun._In__English,_it_has_the_properties_of_both_verb_and_noun,_such_as_being_modifiab_...
,_as_in_Brazil.
varieties
Variety may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats
* Variety (radio)
* Variety show, in theater and television
Films
* ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont
* ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...
of the Portuguese language
Portuguese ( or, in full, ) is a western Romance language of the Indo-European language family, originating in the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. It is an official language of Portugal, Brazil, Cape Verde, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau and ...
native to Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
and the most influential form of Portuguese worldwide. It is spoken by almost all of the 214 million inhabitants of Brazil and spoken widely across the Brazilian diaspora
The Brazilian diaspora is the migration of Brazilians to other countries, a mostly recent phenomenon that has been driven mainly by economic recession and hyperinflation that afflicted Brazil in the 1980s and early 1990s, and since 2014, by the p ...
, today consisting of about two million Brazilians who have emigrated to other countries. With a population of over 214 million, Brazil is by far the world's largest Portuguese-speaking nation and the only one in the Americas
The Americas, which are sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North and South America. The Americas make up most of the land in Earth's Western Hemisphere and comprise the New World.
Along with th ...
.
Brazilian Portuguese differs, particularly in phonology and prosody, from varieties spoken in Portugal
Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...
and Portuguese-speaking African countries. In these latter countries, the language tends to have a closer connection to contemporary European Portuguese, partly because Portuguese colonial rule ended much more recently there than in Brazil, partly due to the heavy indigenous and African influence on Brazilian Portuguese. Despite this difference between the spoken varieties, Brazilian and European Portuguese differ little in formal writing and remain mutually intelligible. However, due to the two reasons mentioned above, the gap between the written, formal language and the spoken language is much wider in Brazilian Portuguese than in European Portuguese.
In 1990, the Community of Portuguese Language Countries
The Community of Portuguese Language Countries ( Portuguese: ''Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa''; abbreviated as the CPLP), also known as the Lusophone Commonwealth (''Comunidade Lusófona''), is an international organization and pol ...
(CPLP), which included representatives from all countries with Portuguese as the official language, reached an agreement on the reform of the Portuguese orthography to unify the two standards then in use by Brazil on one side and the remaining Portuguese-speaking countries on the other. This spelling reform went into effect in Brazil on 1 January 2009. In Portugal, the reform was signed into law by the President on 21 July 2008 allowing for a 6-year adaptation period, during which both orthographies co-existed. All of the CPLP countries have signed the reform. In Brazil, this reform has been in force since January 2016. Portugal and other Portuguese-speaking countries have since begun using the new orthography.
Regional varieties of Brazilian Portuguese, while remaining mutually intelligible, may diverge from each other in matters such as vowel pronunciation and speech intonation.
History
Portuguese language in Brazil
The existence of Portuguese in Brazil is a legacy of the Portuguese colonization of the Americas. The first wave of Portuguese-speaking immigrants settled in Brazil in the 16th century, but the language was not widely used then. For a time Portuguese coexisted with Língua Geral, a lingua franca based onAmerindian languages
Over a thousand indigenous languages are spoken by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. These languages cannot all be demonstrated to be related to each other and are classified into a hundred or so language families (including a large numbe ...
that was used by the Jesuit missionaries, as well as with various African languages
The languages of Africa are divided into several major language families:
* Niger–Congo or perhaps Atlantic–Congo languages (includes Bantu and non-Bantu, and possibly Mande and others) are spoken in West, Central, Southeast and Souther ...
spoken by the millions of slaves brought into the country between the 16th and 19th centuries. By the end of the 18th century, Portuguese had affirmed itself as the national language. Some of the main contributions to that swift change were the expansion of colonization to the Brazilian interior, and the growing numbers of Portuguese settlers, who brought their language and became the most important ethnic group in Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
.
Beginning in the early 18th century, Portugal
Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...
's government made efforts to expand the use of Portuguese throughout the colony, particularly because its consolidation in Brazil would help guarantee to Portugal the lands in dispute with Spain
, image_flag = Bandera de España.svg
, image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg
, national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond")
, national_anthem = (English: "Royal March")
, i ...
(according to various treaties signed in the 18th century, those lands would be ceded to the people who effectively occupied them). Under the administration of the Marquis of Pombal
Count of Oeiras () was a Portuguese title of nobility created by a royal decree, dated July 15, 1759, by King Joseph I of Portugal, and granted to Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, head of the Portuguese government.
Later, through another roy ...
(1750–1777), Brazilians started to favour the use of Portuguese, as the Marquis expelled the Jesuit missionaries (who had taught Língua Geral) and prohibited the use of Nhengatu
The Nheengatu language (Tupi: , nheengatu rionegrino: ''yẽgatu'', nheengatu tradicional: ''nhẽẽgatú'' e nheengatu tapajoawara: ''nheẽgatu''), often written Nhengatu, is an indigenous language of the Tupi–Guarani languages, Tupi-Guaran ...
, or Lingua Franca.
The failed colonization attempts by the French in Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a ...
during the 16th century and the Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
in the Northeast during the 17th century had negligible effects on Portuguese. The substantial waves of non-Portuguese-speaking immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (mostly from Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...
, Spain
, image_flag = Bandera de España.svg
, image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg
, national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond")
, national_anthem = (English: "Royal March")
, i ...
, Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
, Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...
, Japan and Lebanon
Lebanon ( , ar, لُبْنَان, translit=lubnān, ), officially the Republic of Lebanon () or the Lebanese Republic, is a country in Western Asia. It is located between Syria to Lebanon–Syria border, the north and east and Israel to Blue ...
) were linguistically integrated into the Portuguese-speaking majority within a few generations, except for some areas of the three southernmost states ( Paraná, Santa Catarina, and Rio Grande do Sul), in the case of Germans, Italians and Slavics, and in rural areas of the state of São Paulo
São Paulo (, ; Portuguese for ' Saint Paul') is the most populous city in Brazil, and is the capital of the state of São Paulo, the most populous and wealthiest Brazilian state, located in the country's Southeast Region. Listed by the Ga ...
(Italians and Japanese).
Nowadays the overwhelming majority of Brazilians speak Portuguese as their mother tongue, with the exception of small, insular communities of descendants of European (German, Polish, Ukrainian, and Italian) and Japanese immigrants, mostly in the South and Southeast as well as villages and reservations inhabited by Amerindians
The Indigenous peoples of the Americas are the inhabitants of the Americas before the arrival of the European settlers in the 15th century, and the ethnic groups who now identify themselves with those peoples.
Many Indigenous peoples of the Am ...
. And even these populations make use of Portuguese to communicate with outsiders and to understand television and radio broadcasts, for example. Moreover, there is a community of Brazilian Sign Language
Brazilian Sign Language ( pt, Língua Brasileira de Sinais ) is the sign language used by deaf communities of urban Brazil. It is also known in short as Libras () and variously abbreviated as LSB, LGB or LSCB (; "Brazilian Cities Sign Language" ...
users whose number is estimated by '' Ethnologue'' to be as high as 3 million.
Loanwords
The development of Portuguese in Brazil (and consequently in the rest of the areas where Portuguese is spoken) has been influenced by other languages with which it has come into contact, mainly in the lexicon: first theAmerindian languages
Over a thousand indigenous languages are spoken by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. These languages cannot all be demonstrated to be related to each other and are classified into a hundred or so language families (including a large numbe ...
of the original inhabitants, then the various African languages
The languages of Africa are divided into several major language families:
* Niger–Congo or perhaps Atlantic–Congo languages (includes Bantu and non-Bantu, and possibly Mande and others) are spoken in West, Central, Southeast and Souther ...
spoken by the slaves, and finally those of later European and Asian immigrants. Although the vocabulary is still predominantly Portuguese, the influence of other languages is evident in the Brazilian lexicon, which today includes, for example, hundreds of words of Tupi–Guarani origin referring to local flora and fauna; numerous West Africa
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, M ...
n Yoruba words related to foods, religious concepts, and musical expressions; and English terms from the fields of modern technology and commerce. Although some of these words are more predominant in Brazil, they are also used in Portugal and other countries where Portuguese is spoken.
Words derived from the Tupi language are particularly prevalent in place names (''Itaquaquecetuba
Itaquaquecetuba, also simply called Itaquá, is a municipality in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. It is part of the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo. The population is 375,011 (2020 est.) in an area of . It sits at an elevation of .
The municip ...
,'' ''Pindamonhangaba
Pindamonhangaba is a municipality in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, located in the Paraíba Valley, between the two most active production and consumption regions in the country, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. It is accessible by the Via Dutra ( ...
,'' '' Caruaru'', ''Ipanema
Ipanema () is a neighbourhood located in the South Zone of the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, between Leblon and Arpoador. The beach at Ipanema became known internationally with the popularity of the bossa nova jazz song, "The Girl from Ipa ...
'', '' Paraíba''). The native languages also contributed the names of most of the plants and animals found in Brazil (and most of these are the official names of the animals in other Portuguese-speaking countries as well), including ''arara'' (" macaw"), ''jacaré'' ("South American caiman
A caiman (also cayman as a variant spelling) is an alligatorid belonging to the subfamily Caimaninae, one of two primary lineages within the Alligatoridae family, the other being alligators. Caimans inhabit Mexico, Central and South America f ...
"), ''tucano'' ("toucan
Toucans (, ) are members of the Neotropical near passerine bird family Ramphastidae. The Ramphastidae are most closely related to the American barbets. They are brightly marked and have large, often colorful bills. The family includes five g ...
"), ''mandioca'' ("cassava
''Manihot esculenta'', commonly called cassava (), manioc, or yuca (among numerous regional names), is a woody shrub of the spurge family, Euphorbiaceae, native to South America. Although a perennial plant, cassava is extensively cultivated ...
"), ''abacaxi'' ("pineapple
The pineapple (''Ananas comosus'') is a tropical plant with an edible fruit; it is the most economically significant plant in the family Bromeliaceae. The pineapple is indigenous to South America, where it has been cultivated for many centuri ...
"), and many more. However, many Tupi–Guarani toponyms did not derive directly from Amerindian expressions, but were in fact coined by European settlers and Jesuit missionaries
, image = Ihs-logo.svg
, image_size = 175px
, caption = ChristogramOfficial seal of the Jesuits
, abbreviation = SJ
, nickname = Jesuits
, formation =
, founders ...
, who used the ''Língua Geral'' extensively in the first centuries of colonization. Many of the Amerindian words entered the Portuguese lexicon as early as in the 16th century, and some of them were eventually borrowed into other European languages.
African languages
The languages of Africa are divided into several major language families:
* Niger–Congo or perhaps Atlantic–Congo languages (includes Bantu and non-Bantu, and possibly Mande and others) are spoken in West, Central, Southeast and Souther ...
provided hundreds of words as well, especially in certain semantic domains, as in the following examples, which are also present in Portuguese:
* Food: ''quitute'', ''quindim
Quindim ( — or ) is a popular Brazilian baked dessert with Portuguese heritage, made chiefly from sugar, egg yolks and ground coconut. It is a custard and usually presented as an upturned cup with a glistening surface and intensely yellow ...
'', ''acarajé
Àkàrà (Yoruba)(English: Bean cake Hausa: kosai, Portuguese: Acarajé () is a type of fritter made from cowpeas or beans (black eye peas). It is found throughout West African, Caribbean, and Brazilian cuisines. The dish is traditionally encoun ...
'', ''moqueca
Moqueca ( or depending on the dialect, also spelled muqueca) is a Brazilian seafood stew. Moqueca is typically made with shrimp or fish as a base with tomatoes, onions, garlic, lime and coriander. The name moqueca comes from the term ''mu'keka ...
'';
* Religious concepts: ''mandinga'', ''macumba
''Makumba'' () is a term that has been used to describe various religions of the African diaspora found in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. It is sometimes considered by non-practitioners to be a form of witchcraft or black magic.
The ...
'', ''orixá'' (" orisha"), ''axé'';
* Afro-Brazilian music: '' samba'', ''lundu'', ''maxixe'', ''berimbau
The berimbau () is a single-string percussion instrument, a musical bow, originally from Africa, that is now commonly used in Brazil.
The berimbau would eventually be incorporated into the practice of the Afro-Brazilian martial art ''capoeir ...
'';
* Body-related parts and conditions: ''banguela'' ("toothless"), ''bunda'' ("buttocks"), ''capenga'' ("lame"), ''caxumba'' ("mumps");
* Geographical features: ''cacimba'' ("well"), ''quilombo'' or ''mocambo'' ("runaway slave settlement"), ''senzala'' ("slave quarters");
* Articles of clothing: ''miçanga'' ("beads"), ''abadá'' ("capoeira
Capoeira () is an Afro-Brazilian martial art that combines elements of dance, acrobatics, music and spirituality. Born of the melting pot of enslaved Africans, Indigenous Brazilians and Portuguese influences at the beginning of the 16th cent ...
or dance uniform"), ''tanga'' ("loincloth, thong");
* Miscellaneous household concepts: ''cafuné'' ("caress on the head"), ''curinga'' (" joker card"), ''caçula'' ("youngest child," also ''cadete'' and ''filho mais novo''), and ''moleque'' ("brat, spoiled child," or simply "child," depending on the region).
Although the African slaves had various ethnic origins, by far most of the borrowings were contributed (1) by Bantu languages (above all, Kimbundu, from Angola
, national_anthem = " Angola Avante"()
, image_map =
, map_caption =
, capital = Luanda
, religion =
, religion_year = 2020
, religion_ref =
, coordina ...
, and Kikongo
Kongo or Kikongo is one of the Bantu languages spoken by the Kongo people living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo, Gabon and Angola. It is a tonal language. It was spoken by many of those who were taken from th ...
from Angola and the area that is now the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in ...
), and (2) by Niger-Congo languages, notably Yoruba/Nagô, from what is now Nigeria
Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...
, and Jeje/ Ewe, from what is now Benin
Benin ( , ; french: Bénin , ff, Benen), officially the Republic of Benin (french: République du Bénin), and formerly Dahomey, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east, Burkina Faso to the nort ...
.
There are also many loanwords from other European languages, including English, French, German, and Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional Ita ...
. In addition, there is a limited set of vocabulary from Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
.
Portuguese has borrowed a large number of words from English. In Brazil, these are especially related to the following fields (note that some of these words are used in other Portuguese-speaking countries):
* Technology and science: ''app'', ''mod'', ''layout'', ''briefing'', ''designer'', ''slideshow'', '' mouse'', ''forward'', ''revolver'', ''relay'', ''home office'', ''home theater'', ''bonde'' ("streetcar, tram," from 1860s company bonds), ''chulipa'' (also ''dormente'', "sleeper"), ''bita'' ("beater," railway settlement tool), ''breque'' ("brake"), ''picape/pick-up'', ''hatch'', ''roadster'', ''SUV'', ''air-bag'', ''guincho'' ("winch"), ''tilburí'' (19th century), ''macadame'', ''workshop'';
* Commerce and finance: ''commodities'', ''debênture'', ''holding'', ''fundo hedge'', ''angel'', ''truste'', ''dumping'', ''CEO'', ''CFO'', ''MBA'', ''kingsize'', ''fast food'' (), ''delivery service'', ''self service'', ''drive-thru'', ''telemarketing'', ''franchise'' (also ''franquia''), '' merchandising'', ''combo'', ''check-in'', ''pet shop'', ''sex shop'', ''flat'', ''loft'', ''motel'', ''suíte'', ''shopping center/mall'', ''food truck'', ''outlet'', ''tagline'', ''slogan'', ''jingle'', ''outdoor'', "outboard" (), ''case'' (advertising), ''showroom'';
* Sports: ''surf'', ''skating'', ''futebol'' ( "soccer", or the calque ''ludopédio''), ''voleibol'', ''wakeboard'', ''gol'' ("goal"), ''goleiro'', ''quíper'', ''chutar'', ''chuteira'', ''time'' ("team," ), ''turfe'', ''jockey club'', ''cockpit'', ''box'' (Formula 1), ''pódium'', ''pólo'', ''boxeador'', ''MMA'', ''UFC'', ''rugby'', ''match point'', ''nocaute'' ("knockout"), ''poker'', ''iate club'', ''handicap'';
* Miscellaneous cultural concepts: ''okay'', ''gay
''Gay'' is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term originally meant 'carefree', 'cheerful', or 'bright and showy'.
While scant usage referring to male homosexuality dates to the late 1 ...
'', ''hobby'', ''vintage'', ''jam session'', ''junk food'', ''hot dog'', ''bife'' or ''bisteca'' ("steak"), ''rosbife'' ("roast beef"), ''sundae'', ''banana split'', ''milkshake'', (protein) ''shake'', ''araruta'' ("arrowroot"), ''panqueca'', ''cupcake'', ''brownie'', ''sanduíche'', ''X-burguer'', ''boicote'' ("boycott"), ''pet'', ''Yankee'', ''happy hour'', '' lol'', ''nerd'' , ''geek'' (sometimes , but also ), ''noob'', ''punk'', ''skinhead'' (), '' emo'' (), ''indie'' (), ''hooligan'', ''cool'', ''vibe'', ''hype'', ''rocker'', ''glam'', ''rave'', ''clubber'', ''cyber'', ''hippie'', ''yuppie'', ''hipster'', ''overdose'', ''junkie'', ''cowboy'', ''mullet'', ''country'', ''rockabilly'', ''pin-up'', ''socialite'', ''playboy'', ''sex appeal
Sex is the trait that determines whether a sexually reproducing animal or plant produces male or female gametes. Male plants and animals produce smaller mobile gametes (spermatozoa, sperm, pollen), while females produce larger ones (ova, oft ...
'', '' striptease'', ''after hours'', ''drag queen'', ''go-go boy'', '' queer'' (as in "queer lit"), ''bear'' (also the calque ''urso''), ''twink'' (also ''efebo''/ ephebe), ''leather (dad)'', ''footing'' (19th century), ''piquenique'' (also ''convescote''), ''bro'', ''rapper'', ''mc'', ''beatbox'', ''break dance'', ''street dance'', ''free style'', ''hang loose'', ''soul'', ''gospel'', ''praise'' (commercial context, music industry), ''bullying'' , ''stalking'' , ''closet'', ''flashback'', ''check-up'', ''ranking'', ''bondage'', ''dark'', ''goth'' (''gótica''), ''vamp'', ''cueca boxer'' or ''cueca slip'' (male underwear), ''black tie'' (or ''traje de gala/cerimônia noturna''), ''smoking'' ("tuxedo"), ''quepe'', ''blazer'', ''jeans'', ''cardigã'', ''blush'', ''make-up artist'', ''hair stylist'', ''gloss labial'' (hybrid, also ''brilho labial''), ''pancake'' ("facial powder," also ''pó de arroz''), ''playground'', ''blecaute'' ("blackout"), ''script'', ''sex symbol'', ''bombshell'', ''blockbuster'', ''multiplex'', ''best-seller'', ''it-girl'', ''fail'' (web context), ''trolling'' (''trollar''), ''blogueiro'', ''photobombing'', ''selfie'', ''sitcom'', ''stand-up comedy'', ''non-sense'', ''non-stop'', '' gamer'', '' camper'', ''crooner'', ''backing vocal'', ''roadie'', ''playback'', ''overdrive'', ''food truck'', ''monster truck'', ''picape/pick-up'' (DJ), ''coquetel'' ("cocktail"), ''drinque'', ''pub'', ''bartender'', ''barman'', ''lanche'' ("portable lunch"), ''underground'' (cultural), ''flop'' (movie/TV context and slang), ''DJ'', ''VJ'', ''haole
''Haole'' (; Hawaiian ) is a Hawaiian term for individuals who are not Native Hawaiian, and is applied to people primarily of European ancestry. Background
The origins of the word predate the 1778 arrival of Captain James Cook, as recorded in s ...
'' (slang, brought from Hawaii by surfers).
Many of these words are used throughout the Lusosphere
Lusophones ( pt, Lusófonos) are ethnic group, peoples that speak Portuguese language, Portuguese as a native language, native or as common second language and nations where Portuguese features prominently in society. Comprising an estimated 270 m ...
.
French has contributed to Portuguese words for foods, furniture, and luxurious fabrics, as well as for various abstract concepts. Examples include ''hors-concours'', ''chic'', ''metrô'', ''batom'', ''soutien'', ''buquê'', ''abajur'', ''guichê'', ''içar'', ''chalé'', ''cavanhaque'' (from Louis-Eugène Cavaignac
Louis-Eugène Cavaignac (; 15 October 1802 – 28 October 1857) was a French people, French general and politician who served as Cabinet of General Cavaignac, head of the executive power of France between June and December 1848, during the French ...
), ''calibre'', ''habitué'', ''clichê'', ''jargão'', ''manchete'', ''jaqueta'', ''boîte de nuit'' or ''boate'', ''cofre'', ''rouge'', ''frufru'', ''chuchu'', ''purê'', ''petit gâteau'', ''pot-pourri'', ''ménage'', ''enfant gâté'', ''enfant terrible'', ''garçonnière'', ''patati-patata'', ''parvenu'', ''détraqué'', ''enquête'', ''equipe'', ''malha'', ''fila'', ''burocracia'', ''birô'', ''affair'', ''grife'', ''gafe'', ''croquette'', ''crocante'', ''croquis'', ''femme fatale'', ''noir'', ''marchand'', ''paletó'', ''gabinete'', ''grã-fino'', ''blasé'', ''de bom tom'', ''bon-vivant'', ''guindaste'', ''guiar'', ''flanar'', ''bonbonnière'', ''calembour'', ''jeu de mots'', ''vis-à-vis'', ''tête-à-tête'', ''mecha'', ''blusa'', ''conhaque'', ''mélange'', ''bric-brac'', ''broche'', ''pâtisserie'', ''peignoir'', ''négliglé'', ''robe de chambre'', ''déshabillé'', ''lingerie'', ''corset'', ''corselet'', ''corpete'', ''pantufas'', ''salopette'', ''cachecol'', ''cachenez'', ''cachepot'', ''colete'', ''colher'', ''prato'', ''costume'', ''serviette'', ''garde-nappe'', ''avant-première'', ''avant-garde'', ''debut'', ''crepe'', ''frappé'' (including slang), ''canapé'', ''paetê'', ''tutu'', ''mignon'', ''pince-nez'', ''grand prix'', ''parlamento'', ''patim'', ''camuflagem'', ''blindar'' (from German), ''guilhotina'', ''à gogo'', ''pastel'', ''filé'', ''silhueta'', ''menu'', ''maître d'hôtel'', ''bistrô'', ''chef'', ''coq au vin'', ''rôtisserie'', ''maiô'', ''bustiê'', ''collant'', ''fuseau'', ''cigarette'', ''crochê'', ''tricô'', ''tricot'' ("pullover, sweater"), ''calção'', ''culotte'', ''botina'', ''bota'', ''galocha'', ''scarpin'' (ultimately Italian), ''sorvete'', ''glacê'', ''boutique'', ''vitrine'', ''manequim'' (ultimately Dutch), ''machê'', ''tailleur'', ''echarpe'', ''fraque'', ''laquê'', ''gravata'', ''chapéu'', ''boné'', ''edredom'', ''gabardine'', ''fondue'', ''buffet'', ''toalete'', ''pantalon'', ''calça Saint-Tropez'', ''manicure'', ''pedicure'', ''balayage'', ''limusine'', ''caminhão'', ''guidão'', ''cabriolê'', ''capilé'', ''garfo'', ''nicho'', ''garçonete'', ''chenille'', ''chiffon'', ''chemise'', ''chamois'', ''plissê'', ''balonê'', ''frisê'', ''chaminé'', ''guilhochê'', ''château'', ''bidê'', ''redingote'', ''chéri(e)'', ''flambado'', ''bufante'', ''pierrot'', ''torniquete'', ''molinete'', ''canivete'', ''guerra'' (Occitan), ''escamotear'', ''escroque'', ''flamboyant'', ''maquilagem'', ''visagismo'', ''topete'', ''coiffeur'', ''tênis'', ''cabine'', ''concièrge'', ''chauffeur'', ''hangar'', ''garagem'', ''haras'', ''calandragem'', ''cabaré'', ''coqueluche'', ''coquine'', ''coquette'' (''cocotinha''), ''galã'', ''bas-fond'' (used as slang), ''mascote'', ''estampa'', ''sabotagem'', ''RSVP'', ''rendez-vous'', ''chez...'', ''à la carte'', ''à la ...'', ''forró, forrobodó'' (from 19th-century ''faux-bourdon'').
Brazilian Portuguese tends to adopt French suffixes as in ''aterrissagem'' (Fr. ''atterrissage'' "landing viation), differently from European Portuguese (cf. Eur.Port. ''aterragem''). Brazilian Portuguese (BP) also tends to adopt culture-bound concepts from French. That is the difference between BP ''estação'' ("station") and EP ''gare'' ("train station," Portugal also uses ''estação''). BP ''trem'' is from English ''train'' (ultimately from French), while EP ''comboio'' is from Fr. ''convoi''. An evident example of the dichotomy between English and French influences can be noted in the use of the expressions ''know-how'', used in a technical context, and ''savoir-faire'' in a social context. Portugal uses the expression ''hora de ponta'', from French ''l'heure de pointe'', to refer to the "rush hour," while Brazil has ''horário de pico, horário de pique'' and ''hora do rush''. Both ''bilhar'', from French ''billiard'', and the phonetic adaptation ''sinuca'' are used interchangeably for "snooker."
Contributions from German and Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional Ita ...
include terms for foods, music, the arts, and architecture.
From German, besides strudel
A strudel (, ) is a type of layered pastry with a filling that is usually sweet, but savoury fillings are also common. It became popular in the 18th century throughout the Habsburg Empire. Strudel is part of Austrian cuisine but is also comm ...
, pretzel, bratwurst
Bratwurst () is a type of German sausage made from pork or, less commonly, beef or veal. The name is derived from the Old High German ''Brätwurst'', from ''brät-'', finely chopped meat, and ''Wurst'', sausage, although in modern German it is o ...
, kuchen (also ''bolo cuca''), sauerkraut (also spelled ''chucrute'' from French ''choucroute'' and pronounced ), wurstsalat
Wurstsalat (German, literally ''sausage salad'') is a tart sausage salad prepared with distilled white vinegar, oil and onions. A variation of the recipe adds strips of pickled gherkin. It is generally made from boiled sausage like Lyoner, st ...
, sauerbraten, Oktoberfest
The Oktoberfest (; bar, Wiesn, Oktobafest) is the world's largest Volksfest, featuring a beer festival and a travelling carnival. It is held annually in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. It is a 16- to 18-day folk festival running from mid- or ...
, biergarten
A beer garden (German: ''Biergarten'') is an outdoor area in which beer and food are served, typically at shared tables shaded by trees.
Beer gardens originated in Bavaria, of which Munich is the capital city, in the 19th century, and remain co ...
, ''zelt'', Osterbaum, Bauernfest, Schützenfest, ''hinterland'', ''Kindergarten'', ''bock'', ''fassbier'' and ''chope'' (from ''Schoppen''), there are also abstract terms from German such as ''Prost'', ''zum wohl'', ''doppelgänger'' (also ''sósia''), ''über'', ''brinde'', ''kitsch'', ''ersatz'', ''blitz'' ("police action"), and possibly ''encrenca'' ("difficult situation," perhaps from Ger. ''ein Kranker'', "a sick person"). ''Xumbergar'', ''brega'' (from marshal Friedrich Hermann Von Schönberg), and ''xote'' (musical style and dance) from ''schottisch''. A significant number of beer brands in Brazil are named after German culture-bound concepts and place names because the brewing process was brought by German immigrants.
Italian loan words and expressions, in addition to those that are related to food or music, include ''tchau'' (''" ciao"''), ''nonna'', ''nonnino'', ''imbróglio'', ''bisonho'', ''entrevero'', '' panetone'', ''colomba'', ''è vero'', ''cicerone'', ''male male'', ''capisce'', ''mezzo'', ''va bene'', ''ecco'', ''ecco fatto'', ''ecco qui'', ''caspita'', ''schifoso'', ''gelateria'', ''cavolo'', ''incavolarsi'', ''pivete'', ''engambelar'', ''andiamo via'', ''tiramisu
Tiramisu ( it, tiramisù , from , "pick me up" or "cheer me up") is a coffee-flavoured Italian dessert. It is made of ladyfingers (savoiardi) dipped in coffee, layered with a whipped mixture of eggs, sugar, and mascarpone cheese, flavoured w ...
'', ''tarantella
() is a group of various southern Italian folk dances originating in the regions of Calabria, Campania and Puglia. It is characterized by a fast upbeat tempo, usually in time (sometimes or ), accompanied by tambourines. It is among the mo ...
'', '' grappa'', ''stratoria''. Terms of endearment of Italian origin include ''amore'', ''bambino/a'', ''ragazzo/a'', ''caro/a mio/a'', ''tesoro'', and ''bello/a''; also ''babo'', ''mamma'', ''baderna'' (from ''Marietta Baderna''), ''carcamano'', ''torcicolo'', ''casanova'', ''noccia'', ''noja'', ''che me ne frega'', ''io ti voglio tanto bene'', and ''ti voglio bene assai''.
Fewer words have been borrowed from Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
. The latter borrowings are also mostly related to food and drink or culture-bound concepts, such as ''quimono'', from Japanese kimono, ''karaokê'', ''yakisoba'', ''temakeria'', ''sushi bar'', ''mangá'', ''biombo'' (from Portugal) (from ''byó bu sukurín'', "folding screen"), ''jó ken pô'' or ''jankenpon'' ("rock-paper-scissors
Rock paper scissors (also known by other orderings of the three items, with "rock" sometimes being called "stone," or as Rochambeau, roshambo, or ro-sham-bo) is a hand game originating in China, usually played between two people, in which each p ...
," played with the Japanese words being said before the start), ''saquê'', ''sashimi'', ''tempurá'' (a lexical "loan repayment" from a Portuguese loanword in Japanese), ''hashi'', ''wasabi'', ''johrei'' (religious philosophy), ''nikkei'', ''gaijin'' ("non-Japanese"), ''issei
is a Japanese-language term used by ethnic Japanese in countries in North America and South America to specify the Japanese people who were the first generation to immigrate there. are born in Japan; their children born in the new country are ...
'' ("Japanese immigrant"), as well as the different descending generations ''nisei
is a Japanese-language term used in countries in North America and South America to specify the ethnically Japanese children born in the new country to Japanese-born immigrants (who are called ). The are considered the second generation, ...
'', ''sansei
is a Japanese and North American English term used in parts of the world such as South America and North America to specify the children of children born to ethnic Japanese in a new country of residence. The '' nisei'' are considered the second ...
'', '' yonsei'', ''gossei'', ''rokussei'' and ''shichissei''. Other Japanese loanwords include racial terms, such as ''ainoko'' ("Eurasian") and '' hafu'' (from English ''half''); work-related, socioeconomic, historical, and ethnic terms limited to some spheres of society, including ''koseki'' ("genealogical research"), ''dekassegui'' ("dekasegi
Dekasegi ( pt, decassegui, decasségui, , ) is a term that is used in Brazil to refer to people, primarily Japanese Brazilians, who have migrated to Japan, having taken advantage of Japanese citizenship or '' nisei visa'' and immigration laws to w ...
"), ''arubaito'', ''kaizen'', ''seiketsu'', ''karoshi'' ("death by work excess"), ''burakumin
is a name for a low-status social group in Japan. It is a term for ethnic Japanese people with occupations considered as being associated with , such as executioners, undertakers, slaughterhouse workers, butchers, or tanners.
During Japan's ...
'', ''kamikaze'', ''seppuku'', ''harakiri'', ''jisatsu'', ''jigai'', and ''ainu''; martial arts terms such as ''karatê'', ''aikidô'', ''bushidô'', ''katana'', ''judô'', ''jiu-jítsu'', ''kyudô'', ''nunchaku
is a traditional Okinawan martial arts weapon consisting of two sticks (traditionally made of wood), connected to each other at their ends by a short metal chain or a rope. It is approximately 30 cm (sticks) and 1 inch (rope). A person w ...
'', and ''sumô''; terms related to writing, such as ''kanji'', ''kana'', ''katakana'', ''hiragana'', and ''romaji''; and terms for art concepts such as ''kabuki'' and ''ikebana''. Other culture-bound terms from Japanese include ''ofurô'' ("Japanese bathtub"), ''Nihong'' ("target news niche and websites"), ''kabocha
Kabocha (; from Japanese カボチャ, 南瓜) is a type of winter squash, a Japanese variety of the species ''Cucurbita maxima.'' It is also called kabocha squash or Japanese pumpkin in North America. In Japan, "''kabocha''" may refer to eithe ...
'' (type of pumpkin introduced in Japan by the Portuguese), ''reiki
is a Japanese form of energy healing, a type of alternative medicine. Reiki practitioners use a technique called ''palm healing'' or ''hands-on healing'' through which a " universal energy" is said to be transferred through the palms of the ...
'', and ''shiatsu
''Shiatsu'' ( ; ) is a form of Japanese bodywork based on concepts in traditional Chinese medicine such as qi meridians. Having been popularized in the twentieth century by Tokujiro Namikoshi (1905–2000), ''shiatsu'' derives from the older ...
''. Some words have popular usage while others are known for a specific context in specific circles. Terms used among Nikkei descendants include ''oba-chan'' ("grandma"); ''onee-san'', ''onee-chan'', ''onii-san'', and ''onii-chan''; toasts and salutations such as ''kampai'' and ''banzai''; and some honorific
An honorific is a title that conveys esteem, courtesy, or respect for position or rank when used in addressing or referring to a person. Sometimes, the term "honorific" is used in a more specific sense to refer to an honorary academic title. It ...
suffixes of address such as ''chan'', ''kun'', ''sama'', ''san'', and ''senpai''.
Chinese contributed a few terms such as ''tai chi chuan
Tai chi (), short for Tai chi ch'üan ( zh, s=太极拳, t=太極拳, first=t, p=Tàijíquán, labels=no), sometimes called " shadowboxing", is an internal Chinese martial art practiced for defense training, health benefits and meditation. T ...
'' and ''chá'' ("tea"), also in European Portuguese.
The loan vocabulary includes several calques
In linguistics, a calque () or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language whi ...
, such as ''arranha-céu'' ("skyscraper," from French ''gratte-ciel'') and ''cachorro-quente'' (from English ''hot dog'') in Portuguese worldwide.
Other influences
Use of the reflexive ''me'', especially in São Paulo and the South, is thought to be an Italianism, attributed to the large Italian immigrant population, as are certain prosodic features, including patterns of intonation and stress, also in the South andSoutheast
The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sepa ...
.
Other scholars, however, notably Naro & Scherre, have noted that the same or similar processes can be observed in the European variant, as well as in many varieties of Spanish, and that the main features of Brazilian Portuguese can be traced directly from 16th-century European Portuguese. In fact, they find many of the same phenomena in other Romance languages, including Aranese Occitan, French, Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional Ita ...
and Romanian; they explain these phenomena as due to natural Romance drift.
Naro and Scherre affirm that Brazilian Portuguese is not a "decreolized" form, but rather the "nativization
Nativization is the process through which in the virtual absence of native speakers, a language undergoes new phonological, morphological, syntactical, semantic and stylistic changes, and gains new native speakers. This happens necessarily when a ...
" of a "radical Romanic" form. They assert that the phenomena found in Brazilian Portuguese are inherited from Classical Latin and Old Portuguese.
According to another linguist, vernacular Brazilian Portuguese is continuous with European Portuguese, while its phonetics are more conservative in several aspects, characterizing the nativization of a koiné formed by several regional European Portuguese varieties brought to Brazil, modified by natural drift.
Written and spoken languages
The written language taught in Brazilian school
A school is an educational institution designed to provide learning spaces and learning environments for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is sometimes comp ...
s has historically been based by law on the standard of Portugal
Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...
and until the 19th century, Portuguese writers often were regarded as models by some Brazilian authors and university professors. However, this aspiration to unity was severely weakened in the 20th century by nationalist movements in literature and the arts, which awakened in many Brazilians a desire for a national style uninfluenced by the standards of Portugal. Later, agreements were reached to preserve at least an orthographic unity throughout the Portuguese-speaking world, including the African and Asian variants of the language (which are typically more similar to EP, due to a Portuguese presence lasting into the second half of the 20th century).
On the other hand, the spoken language was not subject to any of the constraints that applied to the written language, and consequently Brazilian Portuguese sounds different from any of the other varieties of the language. Brazilians, when concerned with pronunciation, look to what is considered the national standard variety, and never to the European one. This linguistic independence was fostered by the tension between Portugal and the settlers (immigrants) in Brazil from the time of the country's de facto settlement, as immigrants were forbidden to speak freely in their native languages in Brazil for fear of severe punishment by the Portuguese authorities. Lately, Brazilians in general have had some exposure to European speech, through TV and music. Often one will see Brazilian actors working in Portugal and Portuguese actors working in Brazil.
Modern Brazilian Portuguese has been highly influenced by other languages introduced by immigrants through the past century, specifically by German, Italian and Japanese immigrants. This high intake of immigrants not only caused the incorporation and/or adaptation of many words and expressions from their native language into local language, but also created specific dialects, such as the German ''Hunsrückisch'' dialect in the South of Brazil.
Formal writing
The written Brazilian standard differs from the European one to about the same extent that written American English differs from written British English. The differences extend to spelling, lexicon, and grammar. However, with the entry into force of the Orthographic Agreement of 1990 in Portugal and in Brazil since 2009, these differences were drastically reduced.
Several Brazilian writers have been awarded with the highest prize of the Portuguese language. The Camões Prize
The Camões Prize (Portuguese, ''Prémio Camões'', ), named after Luís de Camões, is the most important prize for literature in the Portuguese language. It is awarded annually by the Portuguese ''Direção-Geral do Livro, dos Arquivos e das Bi ...
awarded annually by Portuguese and Brazilians is often regarded as the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in Literature for works in Portuguese.
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, João Guimarães Rosa
João Guimarães Rosa (; 27 June 1908 – 19 November 1967) was a Brazilian novelist, short story writer and diplomat.
Rosa only wrote one novel, '' Grande Sertão: Veredas'' (known in English as ''The Devil to Pay in the Backlands''), a revoluti ...
, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Graciliano Ramos
Graciliano Ramos de Oliveira () (October 27, 1892 – March 20, 1953) was a Brazilian modernist writer, politician and journalist. He is known worldwide for his portrayal of the precarious situation of the poor inhabitants of the Brazilian ''sert ...
, João Cabral de Melo Neto, Cecília Meireles, Clarice Lispector, José de Alencar, Rachel de Queiroz, Jorge Amado, Castro Alves, Antonio Candido
Antonio Candido de Mello e Souza (July 24, 1918 – May 12, 2017) was a Brazilian writer, professor, sociologist, and literary critic. As a critic of Brazilian literature, he is regarded as having been one of the foremost scholars on the subject ...
, Autran Dourado, Rubem Fonseca, Lygia Fagundes Telles and Euclides da Cunha
Euclides da Cunha (, January 20, 1866 – August 15, 1909) was a Brazilian journalist, sociologist and engineer. His most important work is '' Os Sertões'' (''Rebellion in the Backlands''), a non-fictional account of the military expeditions ...
are Brazilian writers recognized for writing the most outstanding work in the Portuguese language.
Spelling differences
The Brazilian spellings of certain words differ from those used in Portugal and the other Portuguese-speaking countries. Some of these differences are merely orthographic, but others reflect true differences in pronunciation. Until the implementation of the 1990 orthographic reform, a major subset of the differences related to the consonant clusters ''cc'', ''cç'', ''ct'', ''pc'', ''pç'', and ''pt''. In many cases, the letters ''c'' or ''p'' in syllable-final position have become silent in all varieties of Portuguese, a common phonetic change in Romance languages (cf. Spanish ''objeto'', French ''objet''). Accordingly, they stopped being written in BP (compareItalian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional Ita ...
spelling standards), but continued to be written in other Portuguese-speaking countries. For example, the word ''acção'' ("action") in European Portuguese became ''ação'' in Brazil, European ''óptimo'' ("optimum") became ''ótimo'' in Brazil, and so on, where the consonant was silent both in BP and EP, but the words were spelled differently. Only in a small number of words is the consonant silent in Brazil and pronounced elsewhere or vice versa, as in the case of BP ''fato'', but EP ''facto''. However, the new Portuguese language orthographic reform led to the elimination of the writing of the silent consonants also in the EP, making now the writing system virtually identical in all of the Portuguese-speaking countries.
However, BP has retained those silent consonants in a few cases, such as ''detectar'' ("to detect"). In particular, BP generally distinguishes in sound and writing between ''secção'' ("section" as in ''anatomy'' or ''drafting'') and ''seção'' ("section" of an organization); whereas EP uses ''secção'' for both senses.
Another major set of differences is the BP usage of ''ô'' or ''ê'' in many words where EP has ''ó'' or ''é'', such as BP ''neurônio'' / EP ''neurónio'' ("neuron") and BP ''arsênico'' / EP ''arsénico'' ("arsenic"). These spelling differences are due to genuinely different pronunciations. In EP, the vowels ''e'' and ''o'' may be open (''é'' or ''ó'') or closed (''ê'' or ''ô'') when they are stressed before one of the nasal consonants ''m'', ''n'' followed by a vowel, but in BP they are always closed in this environment. The variant spellings are necessary in those cases because the general Portuguese spelling rules mandate a stress diacritic in those words, and the Portuguese
diacritics also encode vowel quality.
Another source of variation is the spelling of the sound before ''e'' and ''i''. By Portuguese spelling rules, that sound can be written either as ''j'' (favored in BP for certain words) or ''g'' (favored in EP). Thus, for example, we have BP ''berinjela ''/ EP ''beringela'' ("eggplant").
Language register – formal vs. informal
The linguistic situation of the BP informal speech in relation to the standard language is controversial. There are authors (Bortoni, Kato, Mattos e Silva, Bagno, Perini) who describe it as a case of diglossia
In linguistics, diglossia () is a situation in which two dialects or languages are used (in fairly strict compartmentalization) by a single language community. In addition to the community's everyday or vernacular language variety (labeled ...
, considering that informal BP has developed, both in phonetics
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...
and grammar
In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes domain ...
, in its own particular way.
Accordingly, the formal register of Brazilian Portuguese has a written and spoken form. The written formal register (FW) is used in almost all printed media and written communication, is uniform throughout the country and is the "Portuguese" officially taught at school. The spoken formal register (FS) is essentially a phonetic rendering of the written form. (FS) is used in very formal situations, such as speeches or ceremonies or when reading directly out of a text. While (FS) is necessarily uniform in lexicon and grammar, it shows noticeable regional variations in pronunciation.
Characteristics of informal Brazilian Portuguese
The main and most general (i.e. not considering various regional variations) characteristics of the informal variant of BP are the following. While these characteristics are typical of Brazilian speech, some may also be present to varying degrees in other Lusophone areas, particular in Angola, Mozambique and Cabo Verde, which frequently incorporate certain features common to both the South American and European varieties. Although these characteristics would be readily understood in Portugal due to exposure to Brazilian media, other forms are preferred there (except the points concerning "estar" and "dar"). * dropping the first syllable of the verb ''estar'' (" tatal/incidentalto be") throughout the conjugation (''ele tá'' ("he's") instead of ''ele está'' ("he is"), ''nós táva(mos/mo)'' ("we were") instead of ''nós estávamos'' ("we were")); * dropping prepositions before subordinate and relative clauses beginning with conjunctions (''Ele precisa que vocês ajudem'' instead of ''Ele precisa de que vocês ajudem''); * replacing ''haver'' when it means "to exist" with ''ter'' ("to have"): ''Tem muito problema na cidade'' ("There are many problems in the city") is much more frequent in speech than ''Há muitos problemas na cidade.'' * lack of third-person object pronouns, which may be replaced by their respective subject pronouns or omitted completely (''eu vi ele'' or even just ''eu vi'' instead of ''eu o vi'' for "I saw him/it") * lack of second-person verb forms (except for some parts of Brazil) and, in various regions, plural third-person forms as well. For example ''tu cantas'' becomes ''tu canta'' or ''você canta'' (Brazilian uses the pronoun "você" a lot but "tu" is more localized. Some states never use it but in some locales such as Rio Grande do Sul, "você" is almost never used in informal speech, with "tu" being used instead, using both second and third-person forms depending on the speaker) * lack of the relative pronoun ''cujo/cuja'' ("whose"), which is replaced by ''que'' ("that/which"), either alone (the possession being implied) or along with a possessive pronoun or expression, such as ''dele/dela'' (''A mulher cujo filho morreu'' ("the woman whose son died") becomes ''A mulher que o filho elamorreu'' ("the woman that erson died")) * frequent use of the pronoun ''a gente'' ("people") with 3rd p. sg verb forms instead of the 1st p. pl verb forms and pronoun ''nós'' ("we/us"), though both are formally correct and ''nós'' is still much used. * obligatory proclisis in all cases (always ''me disseram'', rarely ''disseram-me''), as well as use of the pronoun between two verbs in a verbal expression (always ''vem me treinando'', never ''me vem treinando'' or ''vem treinando-me'') * contracting certain high-frequency phrases, which is not necessarily unacceptable in standard BP (''para'' > ''pra''; ''dependo de ele ajudar'' > ''dependo 'dele' ajudar''; ''com as'' > ''cas''; ''deixa eu ver'' > ''xo vê/xeu vê''; ''você está'' > ''cê tá'' etc.) * preference for ''para'' over ''a'' in the directional meaning (''Para onde você vai?'' instead of ''Aonde você vai?'' ("Where are you going?")) * use of certain idiomatic expressions, such as ''Cadê o carro?'' instead of ''Onde está o carro?'' ("Where is the car?") * lack of indirect object pronouns, especially ''lhe'', which are replaced by ''para'' plus their respective personal pronoun (''Dê um copo de água para ele'' instead of ''Dê-lhe um copo de água'' ("Give him a glass of water"); ''Quero mandar uma carta para você'' instead of ''Quero lhe mandar uma carta'' ("I want to send you a letter")) * use of ''aí'' as a pronoun for indefinite direct objects (similar to French 'en'). Examples: ''fala aí'' ("say it"), ''esconde aí'' ("hide it"), ''pera aí'' (''espera aí'' = "wait a moment"); * impersonal use of the verb ''dar'' ("to give") to express that something is feasible or permissible. Example: ''dá pra eu comer?'' ("can/may I eat it?"); ''deu pra eu entender'' ("I could understand"); ''dá pra ver um homem na foto'' instead of ''pode ver-se um homem na foto'' ("it's possible to see a man in the picture") *though often regarded as "uneducated" by language purists, some regions and social groups tend to avoid "redundant" plural agreement in article-noun-verb sequences in the spoken language, since the plural article alone is sufficient to express plurality. Examples: ''os menino vai pra escola'' ("the luralboy goes to school") rather than ''os meninos vão para a escola'' ("the boys go to school"). Gender agreement, however, is always made even when plural agreement is omitted: ''os menino esperto'' (the smart boys) vs. ''as menina esperta'' (the smart girls). * Use of a contraction of the imperative form of the verb "to look" ("olhar" = olha = ó) suffixed to adverbs of the place "aqui" and "ali" ("here" and "there") when directing someone's attention to something: "Olha, o carro dele 'ta ali-ó" (Look, his car's there/that's where his car is). When this is spoken reproduced in subtitles for audiovisual media, it is usually written in the non-contracted form ("aqui olha"), modern pronunciation notwithstanding.Grammar
Syntactic and morphological features
Topic-prominent language
Modernlinguistic
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
studies have shown that Brazilian Portuguese is a topic-prominent or topic- and subject-prominent language. Sentences with topic are extensively used in Portuguese, perhaps more in Brazilian Portuguese most often by means of turning an element (object or verb) in the sentence into an introductory phrase, on which the body of the sentence constitutes a comment (topicalization), thus emphasizing it, as in ''Esses assuntos eu não conheço bem,'' literally, "These subjects I don't know hem
A hem in sewing is a garment finishing method, where the edge of a piece of cloth is folded and sewn to prevent unravelling of the fabric and to adjust the length of the piece in garments, such as at the end of the sleeve or the bottom of the g ...
well" (although this sentence would be perfectly acceptable in Portugal as well). In fact, in the Portuguese language, the anticipation of the verb or object at the beginning of the sentence, repeating it or using the respective pronoun referring to it, is also quite common, e.g. in ''Essa menina, eu não sei o que fazer com ela'' ("This girl, I don't know what to do with her") or ''Com essa menina eu não sei o que fazer'' ("With this girl I don't know what to do"). The use of redundant pronouns for means of topicalization is considered grammatically incorrect, because the topicalized noun phrase, according to traditional European analysis, has no syntactic function. This kind of construction, however, is often used in European Portuguese. Brazilian grammars traditionally treat this structure similarly, rarely mentioning such a thing as ''topic''. Nevertheless, the so-called anacoluthon has taken on a new dimension in Brazilian Portuguese. The poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade once wrote a short ''metapoema'' (a ''metapoem'', i. e., a poem about poetry, a specialty for which he was renowned) treating the concept of ''anacoluto'':
In colloquial language, this kind of ''anacoluto'' may even be used when the subject itself is the topic, only to add more emphasis to this fact, e.g. the sentence ''Essa menina, ela costuma tomar conta de cachorros abandonados'' ("This girl, she usually takes care of abandoned dogs"). This structure highlights the topic, and could be more accurately translated as "As for this girl, she usually takes care of abandoned dogs."
The use of this construction is particularly common with compound subject A compound subject consists of two or more individual noun phrases coordinated to form a single, longer noun phrase. Compound subjects cause many difficulties in compliance with grammatical agreement between the subject and other entities (verbs, p ...
s, as in, e.g., ''Eu e ela, nós fomos passear'' ("She and I, we went for a walk"). This happens because the traditional syntax (''Eu e ela fomos passear'') places a plural-conjugated verb immediately following an argument in the singular, which may sound unnatural to Brazilian ears. The redundant pronoun thus clarifies the verbal inflection in such cases.
Progressive
Portuguese makes extensive use of verbs in the progressive aspect, almost as in English. Brazilian Portuguese seldom has the present continuous construct ''estar a'' + infinitive, which, in contrast, has become quite common in European over the last few centuries. BP maintains the Classical Portuguese form of continuous expression, which is made by ''estar'' +gerund
In linguistics, a gerund ( abbreviated ) is any of various nonfinite verb forms in various languages; most often, but not exclusively, one that functions as a noun. In English, it has the properties of both verb and noun, such as being modifiab ...
.
Thus, Brazilians will always write ''ela está dançando'' ("she is dancing"), not ''ela está a dançar''. The same restriction applies to several other uses of the gerund: BP uses ''ficamos conversando'' ("we kept on talking") and ''ele trabalha cantando'' ("he sings while he works"), but rarely ''ficamos a conversar'' and ''ele trabalha a cantar'' as is the case in most varieties of EP.
BP retains the combination ''a'' + infinitive for uses that are not related to continued action, such as ''voltamos a correr'' ("we went back to running"). Some varieties of EP amely_from_Alentejo,_Algarve,_Açores_(Azores),_and_Madeira.html" ;"title="Alentejo.html" ;"title="amely from amely_from_Alentejo,_Algarve,_Açores_(Azores),_and_Madeira">Alentejo.html"_;"title="amely_from_Alentejo">amely_from_Alentejo,_Algarve,_Açores_(Azores),_and_Madeiraalso_tend_to_feature_''estar''_+__Personal_pronouns
_=Syntax
= In_general,_the_dialects_that_gave_birth_to_Portuguese_had_a_quite_flexible_use_of_the_object_pronouns_in_the_proclitic_or_enclitic_positions._In_Classical_Portuguese,_the_use_of_proclisis_was_very_extensive,_while,_on_the_contrary,_in_modern_European_Portuguese_the_use_of_enclisis_has_become_indisputably_majoritary. Brazilians_normally_place_the_pronoun.html" ;"title="Alentejo">amely from Alentejo, Algarve, Açores (Azores), and Madeira">Alentejo.html" ;"title="amely from Alentejo">amely from Alentejo, Algarve, Açores (Azores), and Madeiraalso tend to feature ''estar'' +gerund
In linguistics, a gerund ( abbreviated ) is any of various nonfinite verb forms in various languages; most often, but not exclusively, one that functions as a noun. In English, it has the properties of both verb and noun, such as being modifiab ...
, as in Brazil.
Personal pronouns
=Syntax
= In general, the dialects that gave birth to Portuguese had a quite flexible use of the object pronouns in the proclitic or enclitic positions. In Classical Portuguese, the use of proclisis was very extensive, while, on the contrary, in modern European Portuguese the use of enclisis has become indisputably majoritary. Brazilians normally place the pronoun">object pronoun before the verb (proclitic position), as in ''ele me viu'' ("he saw me"). In many such cases, the proclisis would be considered awkward or even grammatically incorrect in EP, in which the pronoun is generally placed after the verb ( enclitic position), namely ''ele viu-me''. However, formal BP still follows EP in avoiding starting a sentence with a proclitic pronoun; so both will write ''Deram-lhe o livro'' ("They gave him/her the book") instead of ''Lhe deram o livro'', though it will seldom be spoken in BP (but would be clearly understood). However, in verb expressions accompanied by an object pronoun, Brazilians normally place it amid the auxiliary verb and the main one (''ela vem me pagando'' but not ''ela me vem pagando'' or ''ela vem pagando-me''). In some cases, in order to adapt this use to the standard grammar, some Brazilian scholars recommend that ''ela vem me pagando'' should be written like ''ela vem-me pagando'' (as in EP), in which case the enclisis could be totally acceptable if there would not be a factor of proclisis. Therefore, this phenomenon may or not be considered improper according to the prescribed grammar, since, according to the case, there could be a factor of proclisis that would not permit the placement of the pronoun between the verbs (e.g. when there is a negative adverb near the pronoun, in which case the standard grammar prescribes proclisis, ''ela não me vem pagando'' and not ''ela não vem-me pagando''). Nevertheless, nowadays, it is becoming perfectly acceptable to use a clitic between two verbs, without linking it with a hyphen (as in ''poderia se dizer'', or ''não vamos lhes dizer'') and this usage (known as: ''pronome solto entre dois verbos'') can be found in modern(ist) literature, textbooks, magazines and newspapers likeFolha de S.Paulo
''Folha de S.Paulo'' (sometimes spelled ''Folha de São Paulo''), also known as simply ''Folha'' (, ''Sheet''), is a Brazilian daily newspaper founded in 1921 under the name ''Folha da Noite'' and published in São Paulo by the Folha da Manhã c ...
and O Estadão (see in-house style manuals of these newspapers, available on-line, for more details).
=Contracted forms
= BP rarely uses the contracted combinations of direct and indirect object pronouns which are sometimes used in EP, such as ''me'' + ''o'' = ''mo'', ''lhe'' + ''as'' = ''lhas''. Instead, the indirect clitic is replaced by preposition + strong pronoun: thus BP writes ''ela o deu para mim'' ("she gave it to me") instead of EP ''ela deu-mo''; the latter most probably will not be understood by Brazilians, being obsolete in BP.=Mesoclisis
= The mesoclitic placement of pronouns (between the verb stem and its inflection suffix) is viewed as archaic in BP, and therefore is restricted to very formal situations or stylistic texts. Hence the phrase ''Eu dar-lhe-ia'', still current in EP, would be normally written ''Eu lhe daria'' in BP. Incidentally, a marked fondness for enclitic and mesoclitic pronouns was one of the many memorable eccentricities of former Brazilian PresidentJânio Quadros
Jânio da Silva Quadros (; January 25, 1917 – February 16, 1992) was a Brazilian lawyer and Politics of Brazil, politician who served as the 22nd president of Brazil from January 31 to August 25, 1961, when he resigned from office. He als ...
, as in his famous quote ''Bebo-o porque é líquido, se fosse sólido comê-lo-ia'' ("I drink it iquorbecause it is liquid, if it were solid I would eat it")
Preferences
There are many differences between formal written BP and EP that are simply a matter of different preferences between two alternative words or constructions that are both officially valid and acceptable.Simple versus compound tenses
A few synthetic tenses are usually replaced by compound tenses, such as in: :future indicative: ''eu cantarei'' (simple), ''eu vou cantar'' (compound, ''ir'' + infinitive) :conditional: ''eu cantaria'' (simple), ''eu iria/ia cantar'' (compound, ''ir'' + infinitive) :past perfect: ''eu cantara'' (simple), ''eu tinha cantado'' (compound, ''ter'' + past participle) Also, spoken BP usually uses the verb ''ter'' ("own", "have", sense of possession) and rarely ''haver'' ("have", sense of existence, or "there to be"), especially as an auxiliary (as it can be seen above) and as a verb of existence. :written: ''ele havia/tinha cantado'' (he had sung) :spoken: ''ele tinha cantado'' :written: ''ele podia haver/ter dito'' (he might have said) :spoken: ''ele podia ter dito'' This phenomenon is also observed in Portugal.Differences in formal spoken language
Phonology
In many ways, Brazilian Portuguese (BP) isconservative
Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization in ...
in its phonology. That also is true of Angolan and São Tomean Portuguese, as well as other African dialects. Brazilian Portuguese has eight oral vowels, five nasal vowels, and several diphthongs
A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech ...
and triphthongs, some oral and some nasal.
Vowels
* In vernacular varieties, the diphthong is typically monophthongized to , e.g. ''sou'' > . * In vernacular varieties, the diphthong is usually monophthongized to , depending on the speaker, e.g. ''ferreiro'' > . The reduction ofvowel
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
s is one of the main phonetic characteristics of Portuguese generally, but in Brazilian Portuguese the intensity and frequency of that phenomenon varies significantly.
Vowels in Brazilian Portuguese generally are pronounced more openly than in European Portuguese, even when reduced. In syllables that follow the stressed syllable, ⟨o⟩ is generally pronounced as , ⟨a⟩ as , and ⟨e⟩ as . Some varieties of BP follow this pattern for vowels ''before'' the stressed syllable as well.
In contrast, speakers of European Portuguese pronounce unstressed ⟨a⟩ primarily as , and they elision, elide some unstressed vowels or reduce them to a short, near-close near-back unrounded vowel , a sound that does not exist in BP. Thus, for example, the word ''setembro'' is in BP, but in European Portuguese.
The main difference among the dialects of Brazilian Portuguese is the frequent presence or absence of open vowels in unstressed syllables. In dialects of the South Region, Brazil, South and Southeast
The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sepa ...
, unstressed ⟨e⟩ and ⟨o⟩ (when they are not reduced to and ) are pronounced as the close-mid vowels and . Thus, ''operação'' (operation) and ''rebolar'' (to shake one's body) may be pronounced and . Open-mid vowels can occur only in the stressed syllable. An exception is in the formation of diminutives or augmentatives. For example, ''cafézinho'' (demitasse coffee) and ''bolinha'' (little ball) are pronounced with open-mid vowels although these vowels are not in stressed position.
Meanwhile, in accents of the Northeast Region, Brazil, Northeast and North Region, Brazil, North, in patterns that have not yet been much studied, the open-mid vowels and can occur in unstressed syllables in a large number of words. Thus, the above examples would be pronounced and .
Another difference between Northern/Northeastern dialects and Southern/Southeastern ones is the pattern of nasalization of vowels before ⟨m⟩ and ⟨n⟩. In all dialects and all syllables, orthographic ⟨m⟩ or ⟨n⟩ followed by another consonant represents nasalization of the preceding vowel. But when the ⟨m⟩ or ⟨n⟩ is syllable-initial (i.e. followed by a vowel), it represents nasalization only of a preceding ''stressed'' vowel in the South and Southeast, as compared to nasalization of ''any'' vowel, regardless of stress, in the Northeast and North. A famous example of this distinction is the word ''banana'', which a Northeasterner would pronounce , while a Southerner would pronounce .
Vowel nasalization in some dialects of Brazilian Portuguese is very different from that of French, for example. In French, the nasalization extends uniformly through the entire vowel, whereas in the Southern-Southeastern dialects of Brazilian Portuguese, the nasalization begins almost imperceptibly and then becomes stronger toward the end of the vowel. In this respect it is more similar to the nasalization of Hindi-Urdu phonology, Hindi-Urdu (see Anusvara). In some cases, the nasal archiphoneme even entails the insertion of a nasal consonant such as (compare ), as in the following examples:
* ''banco''
* ''tempo''
* ''pinta''
* ''sombra''
* ''mundo''
* ''fã''
* ''bem''
* ''vim''
* ''bom''
* ''um''
* ''mãe''
* ''pão''
* ''põe''
* ''muito''
Consonants
= Palatalization of /di/ and /ti/
= One of the most noticeable tendencies of modern BP is the palatalization (sound change), palatalization of and by most regions, which are pronounced and (or and ), respectively, before . The word ''presidente'' "president," for example, is pronounced in these regions of Brazil but in Portugal. The pronunciation probably began inRio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a ...
and is often still associated with this city but is now standard in many other states and major cities, such as Belo Horizonte and Salvador, Bahia, Salvador, and it has spread more recently to some regions of São Paulo (because of migrants from other regions), where it is common in most speakers under 40 or so.
It has always been standard in Brazil's Japanese people, Japanese community since it is also a feature of Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
. The regions that still preserve the unpalatalized and are mostly in the Northeast and South of Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
by the stronger influence from European Portuguese (Northeast), and from Italian and Argentine Spanish (South).
= Palatalization of /li/ and /ni/
= Another common change that differentiates Brazilian Portuguese from other dialects is the palatalization (phonetics), palatalization of and followed by the vowel , yielding and . ''menina'', "girl" ; ''Babilônia'', "Babylon" ; ''limão'', "lemon" ; ''sandália'', "sandal" .= Epenthetic glide before final /s/
= A change that is in the process of spreading in BP and perhaps started in the Northeast is the insertion of after stressed vowels before at the end of a syllable. It began in the context of (''mas'' "but" is now pronounced in most of Brazil, making it homophonous with ''mais'' "more"). Also, the change is spreading to other final vowels, and at least in the Northeast and the Southeast, the normal pronunciation of ''voz'' "voice" is . Similarly, ''três'' "three" becomes , making it rhyme with ''seis'' "six" ; this may explain the common Brazilian replacement of ''seis'' with ''meia'' ("half", as in "half a dozen") when pronouncing phone numbers.=Epenthesis in consonant clusters
= BP tends to break up consonant clusters, if the second consonant is not , , or , by inserting an epenthesis, epenthetic vowel, , which can also be characterized, in some situations, as a schwa. The phenomenon happens mostly in the pretonic position and with the consonant clusters ''ks'', ''ps'', ''bj'', ''dj'', ''dv'', ''kt'', ''bt'', ''ft'', ''mn'', ''tm'' and ''dm'': clusters that are not very common in the language ("afta": ; "opção" : > ). However, in some regions of Brazil (such as some Northeastern dialects), there has been an opposite tendency to reduce the unstressed vowel into a very weak vowel so ''partes'' or ''destratar'' are often realized similarly to and . Sometimes, the phenomenon occurs even more intensely in unstressed posttonic vowels (except the final ones) and causes the reduction of the word and the creation of new consonant clusters ("prática" ; "máquina" ; "abóbora" ; "cócega" ).=L-vocalization and suppression of final r
= Syllable-final is pronounced , and syllable-final is uvularized to or weakened to in the North Region, Brazil, North and Northeast Region, Brazil, Northeast, while the state ofSão Paulo
São Paulo (, ; Portuguese for ' Saint Paul') is the most populous city in Brazil, and is the capital of the state of São Paulo, the most populous and wealthiest Brazilian state, located in the country's Southeast Region. Listed by the Ga ...
and the South conserve apical varieties of these phonemes. This, along with other adaptations, sometimes results in rather striking transformations of common loanwords.
The brand name "McDonald's," for example, is rendered , and the word "rock" (the music) is rendered as . (Both initial and doubled are pronounced in BP as , as is syllable-final .) Given that historical and no longer appear in syllable-final position (having been replaced by nasalization of the preceding vowel), these varieties of BP have come to strongly favor open syllables.
A related aspect of BP is the suppression of phrase-final , even in formal speech. In most of Brazil, in formal situations, it may still be pronounced, as or , at the end of a phrase. (Meanwhile, within a phrase where the following word begins with a vowel, it is pronounced as an apical flap: .) Thus, verb infinitives like ''matar'' and ''correr'' in final position are normally pronounced and . (But compare "matar o tempo" .) The same suppression also happens occasionally in EP, but much less often than in BP. (''Compare: linking r in non-rhotic English dialects'').
=Nasalization
= Nasalization is very common in many BP dialects and is especially noticeable in vowels before or before by a vowel. For the same reason, open vowels (which are not normally under nasalization in Portuguese) cannot occur before or in BP, but can in EP. That sometimes affects the spelling of words. For example, ''harmónico'' "harmonic" is ''harmônico'' in BP. It also can affect verbal paradigms: Portuguese distinguishes ''falamos'' "we speak" from 'falámos' "we spoke," but in BP, it is written and pronounced ''falamos'' for both. Related is the difference in pronunciation of the consonant represented by ''nh'' in most BP dialects. It is always in Portuguese, but in some regions of Brazil, it represents a nasalized semivowel , which nasalizes the preceding vowel as well: ''manhãzinha'' ("early morning").=Palatalization of final /s/
= European Portuguese consistently realizes syllable-final and as palatal and , while most dialects of BP maintain them as dentals. Whether such a change happens in BP is highly variable according to dialect. Rio de Janeiro (state), Rio de Janeiro and a few states in the Northeast are particularly known for such pronunciation;São Paulo
São Paulo (, ; Portuguese for ' Saint Paul') is the most populous city in Brazil, and is the capital of the state of São Paulo, the most populous and wealthiest Brazilian state, located in the country's Southeast Region. Listed by the Ga ...
, on the other hand, along with most other Brazilian dialects, is particularly known for lacking it.
In the Northeast, it is more likely to happen before a consonant than word-finally, and it varies from region to region. Some dialects (such as that of Pernambuco) have the same pattern as Rio, while in several other dialects (such as that of Ceará), the palatal and replace and only before the consonants and .
=Other phonetic changes
= Several sound changes that historically affected European Portuguese were not shared by BP. Consonant changes in European Portuguese include the weakening of , , and to fricative , , and , while in BP these phonemes are maintained as stops in all positions. A vowel change in European Portuguese that does not occur in BP is the lowering of to before palatal sounds (, , , , and ) and in the diphthong ''em'' , which merges with the diphthong ''ãe'' normally, but not in BP.Differences in the informal spoken language
There are various differences between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese, such as the dropping of the Portuguese verb conjugation, second-person conjugations (and, in some dialects, of the grammatical person, second-person pronoun itself) in everyday usage and the use of subject pronouns () as direct objects.
Grammar
Spoken Brazilian Portuguese usage differs from Standard Portuguese usage. The differences include the placement of clitic pronouns and, in Brazil, the use of subject pronouns as objects in the third person. Nonstandard verb inflections are also common in colloquial Brazilian Portuguese.Affirmation and negation
Spoken Portuguese rarely uses the affirmation adverb sim ("yes") in informal speech. Instead, the usual reply is a repetition of the verb of the question (as in the Insular Celtic, Celtic languages): BP: :'' — Você foi na/à/pra biblioteca?'' :'' — Fui.'' or :'' — Tu foste/foi na/à/pra biblioteca?'' :'' — Fui.'' Translation :"Have you gone to the library yet?" :"Yes, I went there." In BP, it is common to form a Yes-no question, yes/no question as a declarative sentence followed by the tag question ''não é?'' ("isn't it?"), contracted in informal speech to ''né?'' (compare English "He is a teacher, isn't he?"). The affirmative answer to such a question is a repetition of the verb ''é'': BP: — ''Ele não fez o que devia, né?'' ("He didn't do what he should have, did he?") — ''É.'' ("Right, he didn't.") or — ''Ela já foi atriz, né?'' ("She had already been an actress, hadn't she?") — ''É.'' ("She already had.") Or – ''É, sim, ela já foi.'' (If a longer answer is preferred.) It is also common to negate statements twice for emphasis, with ''não'' ("no") before and after the verb: BP: :'' — Você fala inglês?'' :'' — Não falo, não.'' :"Do you speak English?" :"I don't speak [it], no." Sometimes, even a triple negative is possible: :'' — Você fala inglês?'' :'' — Não. Não falo, não'' :"Do you speak English?" :"No. I don't speak it, no." In some regions, the first "não" of a "não...não" pair is pronounced . In some cases, the redundancy of the first ''não'' results in its omission, which produces an apparent reversal of word order: BP: '' — Você fala inglês?'' :'' — Falo não.'' ("[I] speak not") Translation :"Do you speak English?" :"No, I don't."Imperative
Standard Portuguese forms a command according to the grammatical person of the subject (who is ordered to do the action) by using either the imperative form of the verb or the present subjunctive. Thus, one should use different inflections according to the pronoun used as the subject: ''tu'' ('you', the grammatical second person with the imperative form) or ''você'' ('you', the grammatical third person with the present subjunctive): :''Tu és burro, cala a boca! (cala-te)'' :''Você é burro, cale a boca! (cale-se)'' :"You are stupid, shut your mouth! (shut up)" Currently, several dialects of BP have largely lost the second-person pronouns, but even they use the second-person imperative in addition to the third-person present subjunctive form that should be used with ''você'': :BP: ''Você é burro, cale a boca!'' OR :BP: ''Você é burro, cala a boca!'' (considered grammatically incorrect, but completely dominant in informal language) Brazilian Portuguese uses the second-person imperative forms even when referring to ''você'' and not ''tu'', in the case of the verb ''ser'' 'to be (permanently)' and ''estar'' 'to be (temporarily)', the second-person imperative ''sê'' and ''está'' are never used; the third-person subjunctive forms ''seja'' and ''esteja'' may be used instead. The negative command forms use the subjunctive mood, subjunctive present tense forms of the verb. However, as for the second person forms, Brazilian Portuguese traditionally does not use the subjunctive-derived ones in spoken language. Instead, they employ the imperative forms: "Não anda," rather than the grammatically correct "Não andes." As for other grammatical persons, there is no such phenomenon because both the positive imperative and the negative imperative forms are from their respective present tense forms in the subjunctive mood: ''Não jogue papel na grama'' (Don't throw paper on the grass); ''Não fume'' (Don't smoke).Deictics
In spoken Brazilian Portuguese, the first two adjectives/pronouns usually merge: :''Esse'' 'this (one)' [near the speaker] / 'that (one)' [near the addressee] :''Aquele'' 'that (one)' [away from both] Example: :''Essa é minha camiseta nova.'' (BP) :This is my new T-shirt. Perhaps as a means of avoiding or clarifying some ambiguities created by the fact that "este" ( > ) and "esse" have merged into the same word, informal BP often uses the demonstrative pronoun with some adverb that indicates its placement in relation to the addressee: if there are two skirts in a room and one says, ''Pega essa saia para mim'' (Take this skirt for me), there may be some doubt about which of them must be taken so one may say ''Pega essa aí'' (Take this one there near you") in the original sense of the use of "essa", or ''Pega essa saia aqui'' (Take this one here).Personal pronouns and possessives
=''Tu'' and ''você''
= In many dialects of BP, você (formal "you") replaces tu (informal "you"). The object pronoun, however, is still te (). Also, other forms such as ''teu'' (possessive), ti (postprepositional), and contigo ("with you") are still common in most regions of Brazil, especially in areas in which ''tu'' is still frequent. Hence, the combination of object ''te'' with subject ''você'' in informal BP: ''eu te disse para você ir'' (I told you that you should go). In addition, in all the country, the imperative forms may also be the same as the formal second-person forms, but it is argued by some that it is the third-person singular indicative which doubles as the imperative: ''fala o que você fez'' instead of ''fale o que você fez'' ("say what you did"). In areas in which você has largely replaced tu, the forms ''ti/te'' and ''contigo'' may be replaced by ''você'' and ''com você''. Therefore, either ''você'' (following the verb) or ''te'' (preceding the verb) can be used as the object pronoun in informal BP. A speaker may thus end up saying "I love you" in two ways: ''eu amo você'' or ''eu te amo''. In parts of the Northeast, most specifically in the states of Piauí and Pernambuco, it is also common to use the indirect object pronoun ''lhe'' as a second-person object pronoun: ''eu lhe amo''. In parts of the South, in most of the North and most of the Northeast, and in the city of Santos (São Paulo), Santos, the distinction between semi-formal 'você' and familiar 'tu' is still maintained, and object and possessive pronouns pattern likewise. In the Paraná (state), Paraná state capital, Curitiba, 'tu' is not generally used. InRio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a ...
and minor parts of the Northeast (interior of some states and some speakers from the coast), both ''tu'' and ''você'' (and associated object and possessive pronouns) are used interchangeably with little or no difference (sometimes even in the same sentence). In Salvador, Bahia, Salvador, tu is never used and is replaced by você.
Most Brazilians who use ''tu'' use it with the third-person verb: ''tu vai ao banco.'' "Tu" with the second-person verb can still be found in Maranhão, Pernambuco, Piauí, Santa Catarina, and in the Portuguese language#Brazil, Amazofonia dialect region (e.g. Manaus, Belém).
A few cities in Rio Grande do Sul (but in the rest of the state speakers may or may not use it in more formal speech), mainly near the border with Uruguay, have a slightly different pronunciation in some instances (''tu vieste'' becomes ''tu viesse''), which is also present in Santa Catarina and Pernambuco. In the states of Pará and Amazonas, ''tu'' is used much more often than ''você'' and is always accompanied by a second-person verb ("tu queres", tu "viste").
In São Paulo City, São Paulo, the use of "tu" in print and conversation is no longer very common and is replaced by "você". However, São Paulo is now home to many immigrants of Northeastern origin, who may employ "tu" quite often in their everyday speech. ''Você'' is predominant in most of the Southeastern and Center Western regions; it is almost entirely prevalent in the states of Minas Gerais (apart from portions of the countryside, such as the region of São João da Ponte, where "tu" is also present) and Espírito Santo, but "tu" is frequent in Santos, São Paulo, Santos and all coastal region of São Paulo state as well as some cities in the countryside.
In most of Brazil "você" is often reduced to even more contracted forms, resulting ''ocê'' (mostly in the Caipira dialect) and, especially, ''cê'' because ''vo-'' is an unstressed syllable and so is dropped in rapid speech.
=2nd person singular conjugation in Brazilian Portuguese
= The table for 2nd person singular conjugation in Brazilian Portuguese is presented below:=Third-person direct object pronouns
= In spoken informal registers of BP, the third-person object pronouns 'o', 'a', 'os', and 'as' are virtually nonexistent and are simply left out or, when necessary and usually only when referring to people, replaced by stressed subject pronouns like ''ele'' "he" or ''isso'' "that": ''Eu vi ele'' "I saw him" rather than ''Eu o vi''.=''Seu'' and ''dele''
= When ''você'' is strictly a second-person pronoun, the use of possessive ''seu/sua'' may turn some phrases quite ambiguous since one would wonder whether seu/sua refers to the second person ''você'' or to the third person ''ele/ela''. BP thus tends to use the third-person possessive 'seu' to mean "your" since ''você'' is a third-person pronoun and uses 'dele', 'dela', 'deles', and 'delas' ("of him/her/them" and placed after the noun) as third-person possessive forms. If no ambiguity could arise (especially in narrative texts), ''seu'' is also used to mean 'his' or 'her'. Both forms ('seu' or 'dele(s) /dela(s)') are considered grammatically correct in Brazilian Portuguese.=Definite article before possessive
= In Portuguese, one may or may not include the definite article before a possessive pronoun (''meu livro'' or ''o meu livro'', for instance). The variants of use in each dialect of Portuguese are mostly a matter of preference: it does not usually mean a dialect completely abandoned either form. In Southeastern Brazilian Portuguese, especially in the standard dialects of the cities ofRio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a ...
and São Paulo, the definite article is normally used as in Portugal, but many speakers do not use it at the beginning of the sentence or in titles: ''Minha novela'', ''Meu tio matou um cara''.
In Northeastern BP dialects and in Central and Northern parts of the state of Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a ...
(starting from Niterói), rural parts of Minas Gerais, and all over Espírito Santo State, speakers tend to but do not always drop the definite article, but both ''esse é o meu gato'' and ''esse é meu gato'' are likely in speech.
Formal written Brazilian Portuguese tends, however, to omit the definite article in accordance with prescriptive grammar rules derived from Classical Portuguese even if the alternative form is also considered correct, but many teachers consider it inelegant.
=Syntax
= Some of the examples on the right side of the table below are colloquial or regional in Brazil. Literal translations are provided to illustrate how word order changes between varieties. Word order in the first Brazilian Portuguese example is frequent in European Portuguese. Similar to the subordinate clauses like ''Sabes que eu te amo'' "You know ''that I love you,''" but not in simple sentences like "I love you." However, in Portugal, an object pronoun would never be placed at the start of a sentence, as in the second example. The example in the bottom row of the table, with its deletion of "redundant" inflections, is considered ungrammatical, but it is nonetheless dominant in Brazil throughout all social classes.Use of prepositions
Just as in the case of English, whose various dialects sometimes use different prepositions with the same verbs or nouns (''stand in/on line, in/on the street''), BP usage sometimes requires prepositions that would not be normally used in Portuguese for the same context.=''Chamar de''
= ''Chamar'' 'call' is normally used with the preposition ''de'' in BP, especially when it means 'to describe someone as': :''Chamei ele de ladrão.'' (BP) :I called him a thief.=''Em'' with verbs of movement
= When movement to a place is described, BP uses ''em'' (contracted with an article, if necessary): :''Fui na praça.'' (BP) :I went to the square. [temporarily] In BP, the preposition ''para'' can also be used with such verbs with no difference in meaning: :''Fui para a praça.'' (BP) :I went to the square. [definitively]Dialects
Brazil, due to its continental size and the immigration to Brazil that colonized and populated the country for centuries, has different dialects throughout the national territory, even so it is perfectly possible for a Brazilian to understand a different dialect from the other end of the country, because writing is the same, and often the pronunciation is the same, just changing the sound of some letter or group of letters, like what happens too in the different Regions of the United States. And as for Portuguese from Portugal
Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...
, it's the same thing about the difference in accent between English from United States and English from United Kingdom.
# ''Caipira dialect, Caipira'' — Spoken in the states of São Paulo
São Paulo (, ; Portuguese for ' Saint Paul') is the most populous city in Brazil, and is the capital of the state of São Paulo, the most populous and wealthiest Brazilian state, located in the country's Southeast Region. Listed by the Ga ...
(mostly in the countryside and rural areas); southern Minas Gerais, northern Paraná (state), Paraná and southeastern Mato Grosso do Sul. Depending on the vision of what constitutes ''caipira'', Triângulo Mineiro, border areas of Goiás and the remaining parts of Mato Grosso do Sul are included, and the frontier of ''caipira'' in Minas Gerais is expanded further northerly, though not reaching metropolitan Belo Horizonte. It is often said that ''caipira'' appeared by decreolization of the Old Tupi, língua brasílica and the related língua geral paulista, then spoken in almost all of what is now São Paulo, a former lingua franca in most of the contemporary Centro-Sul of Brazil before the 18th century, brought by the ''bandeirantes'', interior pioneers of Colonial Brazil, closely related to its northern counterpart Nheengatu language, Nheengatu, and that is why the dialect shows many general differences from other variants of the language. It has striking remarkable differences in comparison to other Brazilian dialects in phonology, prosody and grammar, often Social stigma, stigmatized as being strongly associated with a Prestige (sociolinguistics), substandard variant, now mostly rural.
# North coast Portuguese, ''Cearense'' or ''Costa norte'' — is a dialect spoken more sharply in the states of Ceará and Piauí. The variant of Ceará includes fairly distinctive traits it shares with the one spoken in Piauí, though, such as distinctive regional phonology and vocabulary (for example, a debuccalization process stronger than that of Portuguese, a different system of the vowel harmony that spans Brazil from ''fluminense'' and ''mineiro'' to ''amazofonia'' but is especially prevalent in ''nordestino'', a very coherent coda sibilant palatalization as those of Portugal and Rio de Janeiro but allowed in fewer environments than in other accents of ''nordestino'', a greater presence of dental stop palatalization to palato-alveolar in comparison to other accents of ''nordestino'', among others, as well as a great number of archaic Portuguese words).
# ''Baiano'' — Found in Bahia. Similar to ''nordestino'', it has a very characteristic Stress timing, syllable-timed rhythm and the greatest tendency to pronounce unstressed vowels as open-mid and .
# ''Fluminense''— A broad dialect with many variants spoken in the states of Rio de Janeiro (state), Rio de Janeiro, Espírito Santo and neighbouring eastern regions of Minas Gerais. ''Fluminense'' formed in these previously ''caipira''-speaking areas due to the gradual influence of European migrants, causing many people to distance their speech from their original dialect and incorporate new terms. ''Fluminense'' is sometimes referred to as ''carioca'', however ''carioca'' is a more specific term referring to the accent of the Greater Rio de Janeiro area by speakers with a ''fluminense'' dialect. # ''Gaúcho dialect, Sulriograndense or Gaúcho'' — in Rio Grande do Sul, similar to ''sulista''. There are many distinct accents in Rio Grande do Sul, mainly due to the heavy influx of European immigrants of diverse origins who have settled in colonies throughout the state, and to the proximity to Hispanosphere, Spanish-speaking nations. The ''gaúcho'' word in itself is a Spanish loanword into Portuguese of obscure Indigenous languages of the Americas, Indigenous Amerindian origins. # ''Mineiro'' — Minas Gerais (not prevalent in the Triângulo Mineiro). As the ''fluminense'' area, its associated region was formerly a sparsely populated land where ''caipira'' was spoken, but Minas Gerais#History, the discovery of gold and gems made it the most prosperous Brazilian region, which attracted Portuguese colonists and commoners from other parts of Brazil along with their African slaves. South-southwestern, Zona da Mata (Minas Gerais), southeastern and northern areas of the state have fairly distinctive speech, actually approximating to ''caipira'', ''fluminense'' (popularly called, often pejoratively, ''carioca do brejo'', "marsh carioca") and ''baiano'' respectively. Areas including and surrounding Belo Horizonte have a distinctive accent. #
''Nordestino''ref name="ReferenceB">Note: the speaker of this sound file is from Rio de Janeiro, and he is talking about his experience with ''nordestino'' and ''nortista'' accents. — more marked in the Sertão (7), where, in the 19th and 20th centuries and especially in the area including and surrounding the ''sertão'' (the dry land after Agreste) of Pernambuco and southern Ceará, it could sound less comprehensible to speakers of other Portuguese dialects than Galician or Rioplatense Spanish, and nowadays less distinctive from other variants in the metropolitan cities Zona da Mata, along the coasts. It can be divided in two regional variants: one that includes the northern Maranhão and southern of Piauí and another that goes from Ceará to Alagoas. # ''Nortista'' or ''amazofonia'' — Most of Amazon Basin states i.e. North Region, Brazil, Northern Brazil. Before the 20th century, most people from the ''nordestino'' area fleeing the droughts and their associated poverty settled here, so it has some similarities with the Portuguese dialect there spoken. The speech in and around the cities of Belém and Manaus has a more European flavor in phonology, prosody and grammar.
# ''Paulistano dialect, Paulistano'' — Variants spoken around Greater São Paulo in its maximum definition and more easterly areas of São Paulo state, as well perhaps "educated speech" from anywhere in São Paulo (state), the state of São Paulo (where it coexists with ''caipira''). ''Caipira'' is the hinterland sociolect of much of the Centro-Sul, Central-Southern half of Brazil, nowadays conservative only in the rural areas and associated with them, that has a historically prestige (sociolinguistics), low prestige in cities as Rio de Janeiro, Curitiba, Belo Horizonte, and until some years ago, in São Paulo itself. Sociolinguistics, or what by times is described as 'linguistic discrimination, linguistic prejudice', often correlated with Class discrimination, classism, is a polemic topic in the entirety of the country since the times of Adoniran Barbosa#Musical production, Adoniran Barbosa. Also, the "Paulistano" accent was heavily influenced by the presence of immigrants in the city of São Paulo, especially the Italians.
# ''Sertanejo'' — Center-West Region, Brazil, Center-Western states, and also much of Tocantins and Rondônia. It is closer to ''mineiro'', ''caipira'', ''nordestino'' or ''nortista'' depending on the location.
# ''Sulista'' — The variants spoken in the areas between the northern regions of Rio Grande do Sul and southern regions of São Paulo state, encompassing most of South Region, Brazil, southern Brazil. The city of Curitiba does have a fairly distinct accent as well, and a relative majority of speakers around and in Florianópolis also speak this variant (many speak ''florianopolitano'' or ''manezinho da ilha'' instead, related to the European Portuguese dialects spoken in Azores and Madeira). Speech of northern Paraná is closer to that of inland São Paulo.
# ''Florianopolitan dialect, Florianopolitano'' — Variants heavily influenced by European Portuguese spoken in Florianópolis city (due to a heavy immigration movement from Portugal, mainly its Autonomous regions of Portugal, insular regions) and much of its metropolitan area, Grande Florianópolis, said to be a continuum between those whose speech most resemble ''sulista'' dialects and those whose speech most resemble ''fluminense'' and European ones, called, often pejoratively, ''manezinho da ilha''.
# ''Carioca'' — Not a dialect, but sociolects of the ''fluminense'' variant spoken in an area roughly corresponding to Greater Rio de Janeiro. It appeared after locals came in contact with the Portuguese aristocracy amidst the Transfer of the Portuguese Court to Brazil, Portuguese royal family fled in the early 19th century. There is actually a continuum between vernacular countryside accents and the ''carioca'' sociolect, and the educated speech (in Portuguese ''norma culta'', which most closely resembles other Brazilian Portuguese standards but with marked recent Portuguese influences, the nearest ones among the country's dialects along ''florianopolitano''), so that not all people native to the state of Rio de Janeiro speak the said sociolect, but most ''carioca'' speakers will use the standard variant not influenced by it that is rather uniform around Brazil depending on context (emphasis or formality, for example).
# ''Brasiliense'' — used in Brasília and its metropolitan area. It is not considered a dialect, but more of a regional variant – often deemed to be closer to ''fluminense'' than the dialect commonly spoken in most of Goiás, ''sertanejo''.
# ''Arco do desflorestamento'' or '':pt:Dialeto da serra amazônica, serra amazônica'' — Known in its region as the "accent of the migrants," it has similarities with ''caipira'', ''sertanejo'' and often ''sulista'' that make it differing from ''amazofonia'' (in the opposite group of Brazilian dialects, in which it is placed along ''nordestino'', ''baiano'', ''mineiro'' and ''fluminense''). It is the most recent dialect, which appeared by the settlement of families from various other Brazilian regions attracted by the cheap land offer in recently Deforestation, deforested areas.
# ''Recifense'' — used in Recife and its metropolitan area.
Diglossia
According to some contemporary Brazilian linguists (Bortoni, Kato, Mattos e Silva, Perini, and most recently, with great impact, Bagno), Brazilian Portuguese may be a highly diglossia, diglossic language. This theory claims that there is an L-variant (termed "Brazilian Vernacular"), which would be the mother tongue of all Brazilians, and an H-variant (standard Brazilian Portuguese) acquired through schooling.
L-variant represents a simplified form of the language (in terms of grammar, but not of phonetics) that could have evolved from 16th-century Portuguese, influenced by Amerindian (mostly Tupi Antigo, Tupi) and African languages
The languages of Africa are divided into several major language families:
* Niger–Congo or perhaps Atlantic–Congo languages (includes Bantu and non-Bantu, and possibly Mande and others) are spoken in West, Central, Southeast and Souther ...
, while H-variant would be based on 19th-century European Portuguese (and very similar to Standard European Portuguese, with only minor differences in orthography, spelling and grammar usage).
Mário A. Perini, a Brazilian linguist, even compares the depth of the differences between L- and H- variants of Brazilian Portuguese with those between Standard Spanish and European Portuguese. However, his proposal is not widely accepted by either grammarians or academics. Milton M. Azevedo wrote a chapter on diglossia in his monograph: ''Portuguese language (A linguistic introduction)'', published by Cambridge University Press in 2005.
Usage
From this point of view, the L-variant is the spoken form of Brazilian Portuguese, which should be avoided only in very formal speech (court interrogation, political debate) while the H-variant is the written form of Brazilian Portuguese, avoided only in informal writing (such as song lyrics, love letters, intimate friends correspondence). Even language professors frequently use the L-variant while explaining students the structure and usage of the H-variant; in essays, nevertheless, all students are expected to use H-variant. The L-variant may be used in songs, movies, soap operas, sitcoms and other television shows, although, at times, the H-variant is used in historic films or soap operas to make the language used sound more 'elegant' or 'archaic'. The H-variant used to be preferred when dubbing foreign films and series into Brazilian Portuguese, but nowadays the L-variant is preferred, although this seems to lack evidence. Movie subtitles normally use a mixture of L- and H-variants, but remain closer to the H-variant. Most literary works are written in the H-variant. There would have been attempts at writing in the L-variant (such as the masterpiece ''Macunaíma'' by Brazilian modernist Mário de Andrade and ''Grande Sertão: Veredas'' by João Guimarães Rosa), but, presently, the L-variant is claimed to be used only in dialogue. Still, many contemporary writers like using the H-variant even in informal dialogue. This is also true of translated books, which never use the L-variant, only the H one. Children's books seem to be more L-friendly, but, again, if they are translated from another language (''The Little Prince'', for instance) they will use the H-variant only.Prestige
This theory also posits that the matter of diglossia in Brazil is further complicated by forces of political and cultural bias, though those are not clearly named. Language is sometimes a tool of social exclusion or social choice. Mário A. Perini, a Brazilian linguist, has said:"There are two languages in Brazil. The one we write (and which is called "Portuguese"), and another one that we speak (which is so despised that there is not a name to call it). The latter is the mother tongue of Brazilians, the former has to be learned in school, and a majority of population does not manage to master it appropriately.... Personally, I do not object to us writing Portuguese, but I think it is important to make clear that Portuguese is (at least in Brazil) only a written language. Our mother tongue is not Portuguese, but Brazilian Vernacular. This is not a slogan, nor a political statement, it is simply recognition of a fact.... There are linguistic teams working hard in order to give the full description of the structure of the Vernacular. So, there are hopes, that within some years, we will have appropriate grammars of our mother tongue, the language that has been ignored, denied and despised for such a long time."According to Milton M. Azevedo (Brazilian linguist):
"The relationship between Vernacular Brazilian Portuguese and the formal prescriptive variety fulfills the basic conditions of Ferguson's definition [of diglossia]...[...] Considering the difficulty encountered by vernacular speakers to acquire the standard, an understanding of those relationships appears to have broad educational significance. The teaching of Portuguese has traditionally meant imparting a prescriptive formal standard based on a literary register (Cunha 1985: 24) that is often at variance with the language with which students are familiar. As in a diglossic situation, vernacular speakers must learn to read and write in a dialect they neither speak nor fully understand, a circumstance that may have a bearing on the high dropout rate in elementary schools..."According to Bagno (1999), the two variants coexist and intermingle quite seamlessly, but their status is not clear-cut. Brazilian Vernacular is still frowned upon by most grammarians and language teachers. Some of this minority, of which Bagno is an example, appeal to their readers by their ideas that grammarians would be detractors of the termed Brazilian Vernacular, by naming it a "corrupt" form of the "pure" standard, an attitude which they classify as "linguistic prejudice". Their arguments include the postulate that the Vernacular form simplifies some of the intricacies of standard Portuguese (verbal conjugation, pronoun handling, plural forms, etc.). Bagno denounces the prejudice against the vernacular in what he terms the "8 Myths": # There is a striking uniformity in Brazilian Portuguese # A large number of Brazilians speak Portuguese poorly while in Portugal people speak it very well # Portuguese is difficult to learn and speak # People that have had poor education can't speak anything correctly # In the state of Maranhão people speak a better Portuguese than elsewhere in Brazil # We should speak as closely as possible to the written language # The knowledge of grammar is essential to the correct and proper use of a language # To master Standard Portuguese is the path to social promotion In opposition to the "myths", Bagno counters that: # The uniformity of Brazilian Portuguese is just about what linguistics would predict for such a large country whose population has not, generally, been literate for centuries and which has experienced considerable foreign influence, that is, this uniformity is more apparent than real. # Brazilians speak Standard Portuguese poorly because they speak a language that is sufficiently different from Standard Portuguese so that the latter sounds almost "foreign" to them. In terms of comparison, it is easier for many Brazilians to understand someone from a Spanish-speaking South American country than someone from Portugal because the spoken varieties of Portuguese on either side of the Atlantic have diverged to the point of nearly being mutually unintelligible. # No language is difficult for those who speak it. Difficulty appears when two conditions are met: the standard language diverges from the vernacular and a speaker of the vernacular tries to learn the standard version. This divergence is the precise reason why spelling and grammar reforms happen every now and then. # People with less education can speak the vernacular or often several varieties of the vernacular, and they speak it well. They might, however, have trouble in speaking Standard Portuguese, but this is due to lack of experience rather than to any inherent deficiency in their linguistic mastery. # The people of Maranhão are not generally better than fellow Brazilians from other states in speaking Standard Portuguese, especially because that state is one of the poorest and has one of the lowest literacy rates. # It is the written language that must reflect the spoken and not vice versa: it is not the tail that wags the dog. # The knowledge of grammar is intuitive for those who speak their native languages. Problems arise when they begin to study the grammar of a foreign language. # Rich and influential people themselves often do not follow the grammatical rules of Standard Portuguese. Standard Portuguese is mostly a jewel or shibboleth for powerless middle-class careers (journalists, teachers, writers, actors, etc.). Whether Bagno's points are valid or not is open to debate, especially the solutions he recommends for the problems he claims to have identified. Whereas some agree that he has captured the feelings of the Brazilians towards Brazil's linguistic situation well, his book (''Linguistic Prejudice: What it Is, What To Do'') has been heavily criticized by some linguists and grammarians, due to his unorthodox claims, sometimes asserted to be biased or unproven.
Impact
The cultural influence of Brazilian Portuguese in the rest of the Portuguese-speaking world has greatly increased in the last decades of the 20th century, due to the popularity of Brazilian music and telenovela, Brazilian soap operas. Since Brazil joined Mercosul, the South American free trade zone, Portuguese has been increasingly studied as a foreign language in Spanish-speaking partner countries. Many words of Brazilian origin (also used in other Portuguese-speaking countries) have also entered into English: samba, bossa nova, Brazilian cruzeiro, cruzeiro, milreis andcapoeira
Capoeira () is an Afro-Brazilian martial art that combines elements of dance, acrobatics, music and spirituality. Born of the melting pot of enslaved Africans, Indigenous Brazilians and Portuguese influences at the beginning of the 16th cent ...
. While originally Angolan, the word "samba" only became famous worldwide because of its popularity in Brazil.
After independence in 1822, Brazilian idioms with African and Amerindian influences were brought to Portugal by returning Portuguese Brazilians (''luso-brasileiros'' in Portuguese).
Language codes
pt is a language code for ''Portuguese'', defined by ISO standards (see ISO 639-1 and ISO 3166-1 alpha-2).
There is no ISO code for spoken or written Brazilian Portuguese.
bzs is a language code for the ''Brazilian Sign Language
Brazilian Sign Language ( pt, Língua Brasileira de Sinais ) is the sign language used by deaf communities of urban Brazil. It is also known in short as Libras () and variously abbreviated as LSB, LGB or LSCB (; "Brazilian Cities Sign Language" ...
'', defined by ISO standards (see ISO 639-3).Languages of Brazil – Ethnologue (ISO-3 codes) http://www.ethnologue.com/country/br/languages
pt-BR is a language code for the ''Brazilian Portuguese'', defined by Internet standards (see IETF language tag).
See also
* Languages of Brazil *Portuguese language
Portuguese ( or, in full, ) is a western Romance language of the Indo-European language family, originating in the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. It is an official language of Portugal, Brazil, Cape Verde, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau and ...
* Portuguese Language Orthographic Agreement of 1990
* Academia Brasileira de Letras
* CELPE-Bras
* Gaucho
* List of English words of Portuguese origin
* :pt:wikt:Wikcionário:Versões da língua portuguesa/Tabela, List of word differences, on the Portuguese Wiktionary
* Portuguese grammar
*
* Uruguayan Portuguese
References
Bibliography
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * {{Authority control Brazilian Portuguese, Portuguese-Brazilian culture Languages of Brazil, Portuguese