Caipira (Caipira pronunciation:
ajˈpiɹɐor
ajˈpiɹ ) is a
dialect
A dialect is a Variety (linguistics), variety of language spoken by a particular group of people. This may include dominant and standard language, standardized varieties as well as Vernacular language, vernacular, unwritten, or non-standardize ...
of the
Portuguese language
Portuguese ( or ) is a Western Romance language of the Indo-European language family originating from the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. It is the official language of Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal and São Tom� ...
spoken in localities of
Caipira influence, mainly in the interior of the state of
São Paulo
São Paulo (; ; Portuguese for 'Paul the Apostle, Saint Paul') is the capital of the São Paulo (state), state of São Paulo, as well as the List of cities in Brazil by population, most populous city in Brazil, the List of largest cities in the ...
, in the eastern south of
Mato Grosso do Sul
Mato Grosso do Sul ( ) is one of Federative units of Brazil, Brazil's 27 federal units, located in the southern part of the Central-West Region, Brazil, Central-West Region, bordering five Brazilian states: Mato Grosso (to the north), Goiás and ...
, in the
Triângulo and southern
Minas Gerais
Minas Gerais () is one of the 27 federative units of Brazil, being the fourth largest state by area and the second largest in number of inhabitants with a population of 20,539,989 according to the 2022 Brazilian census, 2022 census. Located in ...
, in the south of
Goiás
Goiás () is a Brazilian States of Brazil, state located in the Central-West Region, Brazil, Central-West region. Goiás borders the Federal District (Brazil), Federal District and the states of (from north clockwise) Tocantins, Bahia, Minas Ge ...
, in the far north, center and west of
Paraná, as well as in other regions of the interior of the state. Its delimitation and characterization dates back to 1920, with
Amadeu Amaral's work, ''O Dialecto Caipira''.
History
The formation of the caipira dialect began with the arrival of the Portuguese in
São Vicente in the sixteenth century. Ongoing research points to several influences, such as
Galician-Portuguese, represented in some archaic aspects of the dialect, and the ''
língua geral paulista
The Paulista General Language, also called Southern General Language and Austral Tupi, was a lingua franca and creole language formed in the 16th century, in the Captaincy of São Vicente. Today it is only of historical interest, as it has been ...
'', a Tupian Portuguese-like creole codified by the Jesuits. The westward colonial expansion by the
Bandeirantes
''Bandeirantes'' (; ; singular: ''bandeirante'') were settlers in colonial Brazil who participated in expeditions to expand the colony's borders and subjugate Indigenous peoples in Brazil, indigenous peoples during the early modern period. T ...
expedition spread the dialect throughout a dialectal and cultural continuum called Paulistania in the provinces of
São Paulo
São Paulo (; ; Portuguese for 'Paul the Apostle, Saint Paul') is the capital of the São Paulo (state), state of São Paulo, as well as the List of cities in Brazil by population, most populous city in Brazil, the List of largest cities in the ...
,
Mato Grosso
Mato Grosso ( – ) is one of the states of Brazil, the List of Brazilian states by area, third largest by area, located in the Central-West Region, Brazil, Central-West region. The state has 1.66% of the Brazilian population and is responsible ...
(later,
Mato Grosso do Sul
Mato Grosso do Sul ( ) is one of Federative units of Brazil, Brazil's 27 federal units, located in the southern part of the Central-West Region, Brazil, Central-West Region, bordering five Brazilian states: Mato Grosso (to the north), Goiás and ...
and
Rondônia
Rondônia () is one of the 26 states of Brazil, located in the northern subdivision of the country (central-western part). It is bordered by Acre (state), Acre in the west,
Amazonas, Brazil, Amazonas in the north, Mato Grosso in the east, and Bo ...
),
Goiás
Goiás () is a Brazilian States of Brazil, state located in the Central-West Region, Brazil, Central-West region. Goiás borders the Federal District (Brazil), Federal District and the states of (from north clockwise) Tocantins, Bahia, Minas Ge ...
,
Federal District
A federal district is a specific administrative division in one of various federations. These districts may be under the direct jurisdiction of a federation's national government, as in the case of federal territory (e.g., India, Malaysia), or the ...
, and
Minas Gerais
Minas Gerais () is one of the 27 federative units of Brazil, being the fourth largest state by area and the second largest in number of inhabitants with a population of 20,539,989 according to the 2022 Brazilian census, 2022 census. Located in ...
.
In the 1920s, the scholar Amadeu Amaral published a grammar and predicted the imminent
death
Death is the end of life; the irreversible cessation of all biological functions that sustain a living organism. Death eventually and inevitably occurs in all organisms. The remains of a former organism normally begin to decompose sh ...
of the Caipira dialect, caused by urbanization and the coming wave of mass immigration resulting from the monoculture of coffee. However, the dialect survived in rural subculture, with music, folk stories (''causos''), and a
substratum
Substrata, plural of substratum, may refer to:
*Earth's substrata, the geologic layering of the Earth
*''Hypokeimenon'', sometimes translated as ''substratum'', a concept in metaphysics
*Substrata (album), a 1997 ambient music album by Biosphere
* ...
in city-dwellers' speech, recorded by folklorists and linguists, although some ''Caipira'' variants were already heard by the 1790s to 1890s.
Sociolinguistics
Although the ''caipira'' accent originated in
the state of São Paulo, the middle and upper class sociolect of
the state capital is now a very different variety closer to standard Portuguese but with some Italian-influenced elements, and working-class ''paulistanos'' may sound somewhat like ''caipira'' to people of other parts of Brazil, such as Bahia and Rio de Janeiro. ''Caipira'' is spoken mostly in the countryside
Linguistic bias
''See
the dedicated article on the topic of prestige.''
Linguistic bias or ''preconceito linguistico'' is a theme that gained relevancy in the discussion of Brazilian Portuguese by Brazilian linguists, perhaps because of the work "''Preconceito linguístico: o que é, como se faz''" by ''Marcos Bagno'', the same author describes it as a subtype of ''social bias'' since according to him, it attacks the people speaking in a specific manner and not the manner itself, ''Aldo Bizzocchi'', linguist who owns the blog ''Diário de um linguista'' (Diary of a linguist) and the YouTube channel ''Planetalingua'' (Planet-suffix associated with languages, "The world of languages"), that perceives any sort of bias towards ethic,
LGBT
LGBTQ people are individuals who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or questioning. Many variants of the initialism are used; LGBTQIA+ people incorporates intersex, asexual, aromantic, agender, and other individuals. The gro ...
, gender identities and biological sexes while understanding it as resource that has the capacity of save lives, as the byproduct of ignorancy says that this discrimination based on dialectal variation can be seen even in some seemingly innocent scenarios like in Brazilian comedy where ''Caipira''s but also ''Nordestino''s (Northeastener (in Brazil)), which are also people with "weird accents" (Nordestino dialect) are always comedic entities
Representation of this level of prestige of ''Caipira'' can be seen in ''Chico Bento'', some characters sometimes show some unacceptability towards the manner of speech of the main character, ''Chico Bento'' and his father, the achademic paper that is titled ''Uma analise sociolinguística da linguagem de Chico Bento em alguns quadrinhos de gibi'' (A sociolinguistic analysis on the speech of Chico Bento in some scenes found in comic books) by ''Norte Cientifico'' sees it as a recurrent theme in the series, the abstraction that the way he speaks fits into is usually understood to be "wrong" by institutions like schools and media such as TV, Ads, Books,
possibly because linguistics is a less known science.
Phonology
There may be some variation between speakers, the following is a description of various features of this dialect that is sometimes described as having a significant number of particularities.
Rhoticism
Phonetically, the most important differences in comparison with standard Brazilian Portuguese are the
postalveolar
Postalveolar (post-alveolar) consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the ''back'' of the alveolar ridge. Articulation is farther back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but n ...
or
retroflex
A retroflex () or cacuminal () consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate. They are sometimes referred to as cerebral consona ...
approximants () for as allophone of
European and ''
paulistano'' in the syllable coda ( in the syllable coda for most Brazilian dialects), as in most areas there's
Voiced labial–velar approximant">u ~ ʊ">Voiced_labial–velar_approximant.html" ;"title="nowiki/>Voiced labial–velar approximant">u ~ ʊrealization of coda
, although not as in most area, it can also be pronounced as the coda of it,
The most common coda ar allophones of ''caipira'' is not the same of those in urban areas of hinterland São Paulo and some speakers of the capital and the coast, alveolar approximant and r-colored vowel. Some ''caipira'' speakers may use those instead.
Iotization
The merger of into the semivowel , as in the Northeast dialect ''Nordestino'' although unlike it this can't happen for its nasal equivalent and similar to, but not exactly like ''yeísmo
(; literally "Y-ism") is a distinctive feature of many dialects of the Spanish language, characterized by the loss of the traditional palatal lateral approximant phoneme (written ) and its merger into the phoneme (written ). It is an examp ...
([] → [ʝ])'' is a feature of caipira, some may not merge into or may vocalize the . Rarer pronunciations include using approximants for ''all'' instances in which European speakers of Portuguese have , including the intervocalic and post-consonantal ones (like in American English
American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lang ...
) or using a palatal approximant instead of a rhotic approximant. That, while more common in the ''caipira'' area by its particular phonology, is more often associated with speech-language pathology.
Lowering
The lowering of \i\ to happens in some context in ''caipira'' speech, so "country" gets realized as äesin caipira speech, this can also happen with diphthongs and semi-vowels, \i j\ become and \w u\ become
Raising
This phenomenon happens in most dialects although not all (the ''Sulita'' and ''Paulista'' accents do not have this feature.)
In this dialect it occurs in 'Vocalic Groups' (cães, areas, ... but not diphthongs like mais \aj\, leite \ej\) and in stressed vowels and the result of the heightening is and Elision often happens in cases where it happens.
Diphthongization before specific consonants
Certain vowels start to glide to a sound before coda as in other dialects (this merges ''mas'' and ''mais'', that difference may be confusing for someone that's why there's a significant amount of material explaining the differences between the two), this may be analyzed as adding a this pronunciation, there are identified cases where this sort of shift happens before in ''Caipira'' as in some idiolects of ''Paulistano'', that is the dialect spoken casually in the urban regions of the southeast, this sort of realization was historically registered typically only in other vernaculars but that doesn't mean it doesn't occur in more educated speakers, those that know the standard but may do this in familiar, colloquial or informal registers of language
Elision of consonants
It frequently happens with \r\ (Example: ro''→'' o in specific situations, those aren't the same as what may happen in dialects like ''Paulistano'' where final rhotics in infinitives of verbs may get removed, elision sometimes described, more informally in Portuguese as "comendo" (that usually passes the idea of consuming food) but also with vowels (Example: the first in and get deleted), there are reported cases of this happening in the 1840s and a vowel before may not get realized
Epenthesis
There's the usage of a vowel to break unfrequent consonant clusters as in some dialects, ''Caipira'' usually uses but there are dialects that use a sound more like (advogado ''→'' adevogado) but there are cases of rhotic epenthesis (debuta ''→'' debruta), sometimes it also happens because of hypercorrection
In sociolinguistics, hypercorrection is the nonstandard use of language that results from the overapplication of a perceived rule of language-usage prescription. A speaker or writer who produces a hypercorrection generally believes through a ...
, (inclusive ''→'' inclusivel), epenthesis also occurs more broadly in Brazilian Portuguese when borrowing a word in certain contexts.
Metathesis and other shifts in order
This process happens in \p f\ + \r\ + \V\ sequences where the rhotic + vowel position invert, that also in other situations like with the postposition (which gets realized as i, the rhotic may go to a different syllable (pedestres ''→'' pedrestes). This category of sound together with hypothesis change happens frequently with as noted by the linguist Amaral, it was sometimes found that a sound took what was the place of a similar sound (fétido ''→'' fedito).
Shifts in the nasalization property
Words may gain or lose nasalization ( ASAL+ (ordenou ''→'' ordeou & economizar ''→'' enconomizar). The addition of nasalization may happen with \i\ and \e\ in initial position on their own. Sometimes word final nasalization is found in word final position (contagem ''→'' contage), thus merging "fala" (3rd person singular) with "falam" (3rd person plural). In some representations like '' Chico Bento'', it can be seen.
Shifts in voice ''(sometimes voicedness)''
Things may gain voice when in between voiced sounds (precisa ''→'' perciza). Even as early as the 1808 there were phenoma like devoicing ( t''→'' t
Diphthongs shifting to monothongs
Unstressed \ow\, \aj\, \ej\, \õw\ and \ẽj\ may lose their semi-vowel, but monothongization is in no way limited to ''Caipira'' Portuguese and can be observed in other varieties (that includes Portuguese varieties), the w''→'' which results in the short version of the temporal copula being \to\ ( or ) and not \tow\, the broad range of how much of Portugal is affected by this shift is from half to 2/3 of Portugal, others like \ej\ ''→'' and \aj\ ''→'' also affect other regions.
Exemples
Morphology and syntax
Pronouns
* The usage of "cê" (happens in some) or "ocê" (which is the one used by ''Chico Bento'') as the informal second person singular pronoun, which derived from "você", the pronoun used in most of Brazil.
* "Tu" never gets used and that includes "tu" that does use the conjugation of "você" instead of its own conjugation ( vs ) like in most of the south and in the slang of the ''Carioca'' but unlike most of the northeast.
* "Vós" never gets used and always is replaced with "vocês" or "(o)cês" which happens in all Brazil and most of Portugal.
Inflectional morphology
Observed inflectional morphology development; some (possibly most) of those are not restricted to the ''Caipira'' area, formed through contractions.
Gains:
* Com + a = coa
* De + outra = D'outra or D'ôtra
* Para + dentro = padantu or padanto.
* Para + art = Pa\Po
* Negation word distingtion: Não in short replies, and num for negative phrases
* Pra\Para constracts with Ocê (you)
** P(r) + ose = p(r)ose
Loss:
* Because of nasalation shifts, pairs like 'falam' (3rd person plural) and 'fala' (2\3rd person singular) merge.
Shift in usage
* As other vernacular varieties, if something already makes clear that you are talking about something in the plural, a caipira-speaker may drop its inflection: standard: ''essas coisas bonitas'' "those beautiful things" (those-PL beautiful-PL thing-PL) \ ''um monte de livros'' (a lot\mountain-∅ ''in this case "lot"'' of book-PL) ↔ ''caipira and other venecular dialects'': ''essas coisa bonita'' (those-PL beautiful-∅ thing-∅) \ ''um monte de livro'' (a lot\mountain-∅ ''in this case "lot"'' of book-∅), because the fact that there's a lot of book implies that there's more than one. Sometimes this lack of plurality in specific situations is thought of as being very typical of speakers of ''Paulistano''.
''Caipira'' is the Brazilian dialect by far most influenced by the '' línguas gerais'', which is said to be a recent decreolization of them into a more standard Brazilian Portuguese. Nevertheless, the decreolization was successful, and despite all the differences, a speaker of vernacular Brazilian Portuguese of other regions has no difficulty in understanding ''caipira'' at all, but foreigners who learned to deal only with standard lusitanizing Brazilian Portuguese may have as much difficulty with ''caipira'' as they would have with other colloquial and vernacular registers of the language.
Lexicon
The words used are extremely similar to that of other venecular varieties in Brazil (ex: almost always not being used, shifting in meaning and some combinations like becoming grammatalized) but there are some expressions that are typically ''caipira'', some of those are:
* ''Acabar no caritó'' meaning "to be not married"
* ''Chamego'' usually capturing things that are related to romance, but sometimes "noise"
* ''Boca-de-siri'' meaning "to be quiet"
* ''Biboca'' meaning "a house of a poor person", which is normally mentally associated with (Brazilian) stereotypes of those like being hidden, small, as well as other stereotypical ideas of those, it may also refer to a category of business
* ''Chorar o defunto'' meaning "to find death unacceptable", this term is prevalent in rural areas in general and not restricted to the more specific zone that ''Caipira'' is spoken in
* ''Dar cabo a machado'' meaning "to find problems where there aren't any"
* ''Emendar os bigodes'' meaning "doing talking extremely frequently" or more strictly doing this while not considering time
* ''Fazer renda'' meaning "waiting" that may exclusively signal "the action of waiting for a long period" like ''Chá de cadera'', sometimes used to say that someone was in a chair and therefore not dancing for an entire party
* ''Pinguço'' meaning "drunk" as in the English sentence ''he is drunk'' but not ''the cup of water was drunk by her'', as a result of slight semantic drift targeting this word, ''Pinguço'' meaning "drinking alcohol in an excessive quantity" like ''alcoólatra''
Orthographical pragmatic systems
There is no standard orthography, and Brazilians are taught only the standard variant when learning Portuguese in schools (among the reasons why the dialect was often thought of as endangered in the course of socio-economic development of the country). A nonstandard orthography intended to convey ''caipira'' pronunciation is featured prominently in the popular children's comic book '' Chico Bento'', in which some characters speak in it, the table below shows how it usually represents certain phonological aspects of the speech of the ''Caipira''.
These systems may highlight pragmatic-sociolinguistic expectations not being followed in ''Caipira'', like writing Cockney
Cockney is a dialect of the English language, mainly spoken in London and its environs, particularly by Londoners with working-class and lower middle class roots. The term ''Cockney'' is also used as a demonym for a person from the East End, ...
or any exceedingly venecular speech differently.
Chico Bento
# (As in most orthographical systems,) the variants used for Portuguese do not consider to be an orthographic vowel (in contrast to English, at times)
# "Orthographic sequence" is a formal term for a string (that can be a substring), its reversal would be it reversed.
See also
* Caipiras
* Paulistas
* Caipira culture
* Cafundó
* Brazilian Portuguese
Brazilian Portuguese (; ; also known as pt-BR) is the set of Variety (linguistics), varieties of Portuguese language native to Brazil. It is spoken by almost all of the 203 million inhabitants of Brazil and widely across the Brazilian diaspora ...
* Portuguese dialects
Portuguese dialects are the mutually intelligible variations of the Portuguese language in Portuguese-speaking countries and other areas holding some degree of cultural bond with the language. Portuguese has two standard forms of writing and nu ...
* Portuguese phonology
The phonology of Portuguese varies among dialects, in extreme cases leading to some difficulties in mutual intelligibility. This article on phonology focuses on the pronunciations that are generally regarded as standard. Since Portuguese is a ...
* Mineiro
Mineiro (), Mineirês, or the Brazilian mountain accent () is the Portuguese language, Brazilian Portuguese term for the accent spoken in the center, East and Southeast regions of the state of Minas Gerais.
Etymology
The term is also the demo ...
* Carioca
Carioca ( or ) is a demonym used to refer to residents of the City of Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil and their culture.
Like other Brazilians, ''Cariocas'' speak Portuguese. The ''carioca'' accent and sociolect (also simply called "''carioca''", ...
References
Further reading
* Garcia, Rosicleide Rodrigues. ''Para o estudo da formação e expansão do dialeto caipira em Capivari''. São Paulo: USP, 2009.
* Pires, Cornélio . ''Conversas ao pé do fogo'' - IMESP, edição fac-similar, 1984.
* Rodrigues, Ada Natal.''O Dialeto Caipira na Região de Piracicaba '', Editora Ática, 1974.
External links
*
"O Dialeto Caipira", by Amadeu Amaral
*
"Histórias do Zeca Tira 2 – 'As Pinga'", by Adelmario Sampaio – a sample of the caipira dialect in written form
{{Portuguese dialects
Brazilian Portuguese
Culture in São Paulo (state)
Caipira culture