Brazilian Portuguese
Encyclopedia
Brazilian Portuguese is a group of Portuguese
dialect
s written and spoken by most of the 190 million inhabitants of Brazil
and by a few million Brazilian emigrants, mainly in the United States, United Kingdom, Portugal, Canada, Japan and Paraguay.
Some authors compare the differences between Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese
to those found between British and American English
, while others see the differences between Brazilian and European Portuguese as greater or much greater. The differences in the spoken language are much more pronounced than the differences in the formal written language. As many as 1% of the words are different and limited mainly to flora, fauna, foods, etc. As with many languages, the differences between standard Brazilian Portuguese and its informal vernacular
are marked, though lexicon
and most of the grammar
rules remain the same. Nonetheless, there are still scientific debates about the status of that variant due to those differences, especially whether or not it would be a case of diglossia
.
Nevertheless, the comparatively recent development of Brazilian Portuguese (and its use by people of various linguistic backgrounds), the cultural prestige and strong government support accorded to the written standard has maintained the unity of the language over the whole of Brazil and ensured that all regional varieties remain fully intelligible. Starting in the 1960s, the nationwide dominance of television networks based in the southeast (Rio de Janeiro
and São Paulo
) has made the dialects of that region into an unofficial spoken standard for the means of communication, as well.
. The first wave of Portuguese-speaking immigrants settled in Brazil in the 16th century, yet the language was not widely used then. For a time Portuguese coexisted with Língua Geral
, a lingua franca
based on Amerindian languages that was used by the Jesuit
missionaries; as well as with various Africa
n languages spoken by thousands of slaves brought to the country between the 16th and 19th centuries.
By the end of the 18th century, however, 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 inlands, and the huge immigration of Portuguese during that time, who brought their language and became a much more important ethnic group in Brazil
. Besides, they brought millions of slaves, who were in general more likely to learn Portuguese, since the Africans would speak lots of different languages that were mutually unintelligible and had more contact (even if forcedly) with the Portuguese speakers.
Since the early 18th century, Portugal
's government had made many efforts to expand the use of Portuguese in all the colony, particularly because its consolidation in Brazil would help guarantee to them the lands in dispute with Spain
(according to various treaties signed in the 18th century, those lands would be ceded to the people who effectively occupied them). Under the Marquis of Pombal administration (1750–1777), Brazil started to use only Portuguese, for he expelled the Jesuit missionares – who taught the Língua Geral – and prohibited the use of Nhengatu, or Lingua Franca.
The aborted colonization attempts by the French
in Rio de Janeiro
in the 16th century and the Dutch
in the Northeast in the 17th century had negligible effect on Portuguese. Even the substantial non-Portuguese-speaking immigration waves of the late 19th and early 20th century (mostly from Italy
, Spain
, Germany
, Poland
, Japan
and Lebanon
) were linguistically integrated into the Portuguese-speaking majority within very few generations, except for some areas of the three southern states (in the case of Germans, Italians and Slavs) and rural corners of São Paulo (Italians and Japanese).
Nowadays the overwhelming majority of Brazilians speak Portuguese as their mother tongue, with the exception of small communities of descendants of European and Japanese immigrants – mostly in the South and Southeast – and Amerindian villages, who make up for an extremely minor part of the population. However, even in those cases, the populations use Portuguese frequently as a means of communication with other people and to understand television and radio programs, for example.
origin, among others. However, the vocabulary is still predominately Portuguese, since the contributions of other languages were restricted to a few subjects or areas of knowledge.
From South America
, words deriving from the Tupi–Guarani language family are particularly prevalent in place names (Itaquaquecetuba
, Pindamonhangaba
, Caruaru
, Ipanema
, Paraíba
). The native languages also contributed for the names of most of the plants and animals found in Brazil, such as arara ("macaw
"), jacaré ("South American alligator
"), tucano ("toucan
"), mandioca ("manioc"), abacaxi ("pineapple
"), and many more. However, it should be noted that many Tupi–Guarani toponyms did not derive directly from Amerindian expressions, but were in fact coined by European settlers and Jesuit missionaries, who used the Língua Geral extensively in the first centuries of colonization. Many of the Amerindian words entered the Brazilian Portuguese lexicon as early as in the 16th century, and some of them were eventually borrowed by European Portuguese and later even into other European languages.
The African languages
provided hundreds of words too, especially in the following subjects: food (e.g. quitute, quindim
, acarajé
, moqueca
), religious concepts (mandinga, macumba, orixá, axé), African-Brazilian music (samba, lundu, maxixe, berimbau), body-related parts and diseases (banguela, bunda, capenga, caxumba), places (cacimba, quilombo, senzala, mocambo), objects (miçanga, abadá, tanga) and household concepts, such as cafuné ("caress on the head"), curinga ("joker card
"), caçula ("youngest child"), and moleque ("brat, spoiled child"). Though the African slaves had various ethnic origins, the Bantu
and Guinean-Sudanese groups contributed by far to most of the borrowings, above all the Kimbundu
(from Angola
), Kikongo (from Angola
, the Republic of the Congo
and the Democratic Republic of the Congo
), Yoruba
/Nagô (from Nigeria
), and Jeje/Ewe language
(from Benin
).
There are also many borrowings from other Europe
an languages such as English
, specially words connected to technology, modern science and finance, like app, mod, layout, briefing, designer, slideshow, mouse (computing), forward, commodities, commercial terms like kingsize, fast food (ˈfɛstʃ ˈfudʒɪ), delivery service, self service, drive-thru, telemarketing, franchise, merchandise, but also cultural aspects such as okay, gay, vintage, junk food, hot dog, pet, lol
, nerd (ˈnɛʁdʒi, rarely ˈnɐɻdz), geek (sometimes ˈʒiki, but also ˈgiki and rarely ˈgik), noob, punk, skinhead (skĩˈχɛdʒi), emo (ˈẽmu), indie (ˈĩdʒi), hooligan, cool, vibe, hype, rocker, hippie, yuppie, bobo, hipster, overdose, junkie, cowboy, mullet, country, sex appeal, drag queen, queer, bro, rapper, mc, surf, skating, gospel, praise, bullying (ˈbuljĩgɪ, but much often the closer to native pronounce ˈbɐlĩ(ŋ)), stalking (ˈstawkĩ, much often closer ˈstɔwkĩ(ŋ)), etc.
French
(food, furniture, luxurious fabrics and abstract concepts). Examples are hors-concours, chic, metrô (with the French inflection), batom, soutien, buquê, abajur, purê, petit gâteau, pot-pourri, ménage, enfant gâté, enfant terrible, garçonnière, patati-patata, parvenu, détraqué, femme fatale, noir, rendez-vous, chez..., partouse, pédé, à la carte, à la .... Scholars affirm that even now, French remains as the largest foreign influence in Portuguese due to the fact that French borrowings were adopted by a strong cultural affinity. Brazilian Portuguese tends to adopt French suffixes as in aterrissagem, differently from European Portuguese. Brazilian Pt. also tends to adopt culture-bound concepts from French, but when it comes to technology, the major influence is the English, while European Pt. tends to adopt technological terms from French. That is the difference between estação and gare. An evident example of the dichotomy between English and French influences is the use of the expressions know-how, used in a technical context, and savoir-faire, in literal Portuguese saber-fazer, proficiência-da-feitura, saber-como), German
and Italian
(mostly food, music, arts and architecture), and, to a lesser extent, Asian languages such as Japanese
. The latter borrowings are also mostly related to food and drinks or culture-bound concepts, such as quimono, from Japanese kimono
. Besides strudel
, pretzel
, bratwurst
, sauerkraut
(spelled chucrute and pronunced ʃuˈkɾutʃi), Oktoberfest
, biergarten, there are also abstract terms from German like encrenca or blitz. A significant number of beer brands in Brazil are named after German culture-bound concepts due the fact that the brewing process was brought by German immigrants. Besides, there were many Italian loan words and expressions which are not related to food or music: (italianisms) like tchau, imbróglio, bisonho, panetone, è vero, cicerone, male male, terra roxa, capisce, mezzo, va bene, ecco, ecco fatto, ecco qui, caspita, cavolo, incavolarsi, engrouvinhado, andiamo via. Due to its large Italian diaspora
, parts of the Southern and Southeast states have an Italian influence over the prosody, the vocal patterns of the language, with an Italian sounding stress.
The influence of these languages in the phonology and grammar of Brazilian Portuguese have been very minor. Some authors claim the loss of initial es in the verb estar – now widespread in Brazil – is an influence from African slaves' speech, and it is also claimed that some common factors of BP – such as the near-complete disappearance of certain verb inflections and the marked preference for compound tenses – recall the grammatical simplification typical of pidgins. However, the same or similar processes can be verified in the European variant, and such theories have not yet been proved. Regardless of these borrowings and changes, it must be kept in mind that Brazilian Portuguese is not a Portuguese creole
, since it can be traced as a direct evolution from 16th century European Portuguese.
, which awakened in many Brazilians the desire for true (own) national writing uninfluenced by standards in Portugal. Later on, agreements were made as to preserve at least the orthographical 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 end of the 20th century).
On the other hand, the spoken language suffered none of the constraints that applied to the written language. Brazilians, when concerned with pronunciation, look up to what is considered the national standard variety, and never the European one. Moreover, Brazilians in general have had very little exposure to European speech, even after the advent of radio, TV, and movies. The language spoken in Brazil has evolved largely independently of that spoken in Portugal. To many Brazilians, the language spoken in Portugal is almost unintelligible.
. The differences extend to spelling, lexicon, and grammar. Several Brazilian writers were awarded with the highest prize of the Portuguese language. The Camões Prize
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
, Carlos Drummond de Andrade
, Graciliano Ramos
, João Cabral de Melo Neto
, Cecília Meireles
, Clarice Lispector
, José de Alencar
, Rachel de Queiroz
, Jorge Amado
, Castro Alves
, Antonio Candido
, Autran Dourado
, Rubem Fonseca
, Lygia Fagundes Telles
and Euclides da Cunha
are Brazilian writers recognized for writing the most outstanding work in the Portuguese language.
A major subset of the differences relates to words with c and p followed by c, ç, or t. In many cases, the letters c or p 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 down in BP, similar to Italian
spelling standards, but are still written in other countries. For example, we have EP acção / BP ação ("action"), EP óptimo / BP ótimo ("optimum"), and so on, where the consonant is silent both in BP and EP, but the words are 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, 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 [ʒ] 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").
, considering that informal BP has developed both in phonetics
and grammar
in its own way and now constitutes a different, albeit quite similar, language, which would explain the unease that many Brazilians have when learning standard Portuguese. According to them, while diglossia inevitably develops in every literate society, it is much more striking in Brazil
than in English or in European Portuguese
.
According to that theory, 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 basically a phonetic rendering of the written form; it is used only in very formal situations like speeches or ceremonies, by educated people who wish to stress their education, or when reading directly out of a text. While FS is necessarily uniform in lexicon and grammar, it shows noticeable regional variations in pronunciation. Finally the informal register (IS) is almost never written down (basically only in artistic works or very informal contexts such as adolescent chat rooms). It is used to some extent in virtually all oral communication outside of those formal contexts even by well educated speakers and shows considerable regional variations in pronunciation, lexicon, and even grammar.
However, the theory of diglossia in BP finds many oppositions, since diglossia
does not mean simply the coexistence of different varieties or "registers" of the language formal and informal. It means, in fact, the situation in which there are two (often related) languages: a formal one and an informal one, which is the spoken tongue. Opposers of that theory argue that the various aspects that separate the informal register and the formal one in Brazil
cannot be compared with the numerous differences of standard Italian
or German
and their national dialects. Besides, the relatively "simplified" grammar of BP actually, many different levels of informal BP with distinct alterations in grammar and pronunciation would be a reflex of the formation of informal speeches, which happens in every language in the world.
The discussion remains whether informal BP has enough differences in order to be actually considered a low-prestige language, spoken by the Brazilian people, who, therefore, must learn a language that is not their own, the Portuguese language. Thus, opposing to that theory, many arguments have been used:
Since Brazilian independence in 1822, BP has tended to borrow words from English and French. However, BP generally adopts foreign words with minimal adjustments, while EP tends to apply deeper morphological changes. However, there are instances of BP adapting English words, whereas EP retains the original form – hence estoque and stock. Finally, one dialect often borrowed a word while the other coined a new one from native elements. So one has, for exampleBP esporte (alternatives: desporto, desporte) ← English "sport" versus EP desporto ← Spanish deporte
BP jaqueta ← English "jacket" versus EP blusão ← EP blusa ← French blouse (also used in BP)
BP concreto ← English "concrete" versus EP betão ← French beton (in BP, a concrete truck is still called "betoneira")
BP grampeador ("stapler") ← grapadora ← Spanish grapa versus EP agrafador ← agrafo ← French agrafe.
A few other examples are given in the following table:
Some of the words shown in only one column (like comboio, atendedor de chamadas, and mamadeira) do exist in the other dialect, but are rarely used.
studies have shown that Brazilian Portuguese is a topic-prominent or topic- and subject-prominent language. Sentences with topic are extensively used in Brazilian Portuguese, most often by means of an external comment that could have been included as an element (object or verb) of the sentence (topicalization), thus emphasizing it, e.g. in Esses assuntos eu não conheço bem – literally, "These subjects I don't know [them] well". The anticipation of the verb or object in the beginning of the phrase, repeating them 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).
BP seldom has the present continuous construct estar a + infinitive, which, in contrast, has become quite common in EP in the last centuries. BP maintains the Classical Portuguese form of continuous expression, which is made by estar + gerund
.
Thus Brazilians will always write ela está dançando ("she is dancing"), seldom 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"), and that some dialects of EP (namely from Alentejo, Algarve, Açores(Azores), Madeira) will also tend to use estar + gerund
in the same way as Brazilians.
Ter instead of haver In a few compound verb tenses, BP in general uses the auxiliary ter (originally "to hold", "to own"), where EP would normally use haver ("to have, shall / will"). However, both forms are correct according to the prescribed grammar. Thus, ele tinha feito and ele havia feito (compound pluperfect "he had done") are interchangeable, and, in fact, the later form is still used in BP, even if quite rarely.
In particular, the EP construction há de cantar ("he will sing" or "he shall sing") is almost unheard in BP, except, sometimes, in the sense of swearing or promising (e.g. Eu hei de fazer esse negócio funcionar). BP also uses ter in existential sense, whereas EP would use haver, hence "there is no money" will be both "não tem dinheiro" and "não há dinheiro".
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 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, 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).
Even in the most formal contexts, BP never 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.
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 President Jânio Quadros
, as in his famous quote Bebo-o porque é líquido, se fosse sólido comê-lo-ia ("I drink it [liquor] because it is liquid, if it were solid I would eat it")
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.
spoken: ele tinha cantado
spoken: ele podia ter dito
(EP), Brazilian Portuguese (BP) is conservative in its phonology. This also occurs in Angolan Portuguese
, São Tomean Portuguese
, and other African dialects
. Brazilian Portuguese is a phonetically rich language, with 8 vowels, 5 nasal vowels, with several diphthongs, and triphthongs. Brazilian Portuguese is also considerably more nasal than European Portuguese due to Tupi influence.
.
Brazilians generally pronounce vowels more openly than Europeans even when reducing them. In the syllables that follow the stressed one, BP generally pronounces o as [u], a as [ɐ], and e as [i]. Some dialects of BP also follow these rules for vowels before the stressed syllable
.
In contrast, EP pronounces unstressed a primarily as [ɐ], elides
some unstressed vowels or reduces them to a very short, near central unrounded vowel [ɨ], a sound that does not exist in BP. Thus, for example, the word setembro is [seˈtẽbɾu]/[sɛˈtẽbɾʊ] in BP but [s(ɨ)ˈtẽbɾu] in EP.
The main difference among the dialects of Brazilian Portuguese is the frequent presence or not of open vowels in unstressed syllables
. In general, the Southern and Southeastern dialects would always pronounce e and o when they are not reduced to [i] and [u] as closed vowels [e] and [o] if they are not stressed, in which case the pronunciation will depend on the word. Thus, 'operação' (operation) and 'rebolar' (to shake one's body) may be pronounced [opeɾaˈsɐ̃ʊ̃] and [heboˈla].
However, in the Northeastern and Northern accents, there are many complex rules that still have not been much studied which lead to the open pronunciation of e and o in a huge number of words. Thus, on the contrary of the other dialects, the open vowels [ɛ] and [ɔ] are not exclusively used in stressed syllables. Thus, the previous examples would be pronounced differently: [ɔpɛɾaˈsɐ̃ʊ̃] and [hɛbɔˈla].
Another noticeable, if minor, difference between Northern-Northeastern dialects and Southern-Southeastern ones is the frequency of nasalization
of vowels before m and n: in the former, the vowels are nasalized in virtually all the cases, no matter if they are stressed or unstressed; on the other hand, in the latter dialects, the vowels may remain non-nasalized if they are unstressed. A famous example of this distinction is the pronunciation of banana: a Northeastern BP speaker would speak [bɐ̃ˈnɐ̃nɐ], while a Southern one would speak [baˈnɐ̃nɐ].
One of the most noticeable tendencies of modern BP is the palatalization
of /d/ and /t/ by most regions, which are pronounced [dʒ] and [tʃ] (or [dᶾ] and [tᶴ]), respectively, before /i/. The word presidente "president", for example, is pronounced [pɾeziˈdẽtᶴi] in these regions of Brazil, but [pɾɨziˈdẽt(ɨ)] in Portugal. This pronunciation probably began in Rio de Janeiro
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
, and has spread more recently to some regions of São Paulo
(due to the migrants from other regions), where it is common in most speakers under 40 or so. It has always been standard among Brazil's Japanese
community, since this is also a feature of Japanese
. The regions that still preserve the non-palatalized [ti] are mostly in the Northeast and South of Brazil
, due to stronger influence from European Portuguese (Northeast), and from Italian and Argentine Spanish (South).
BP tends to break up clusters where the first consonant is not /r/, /l/, or /s/ by the insertion of the epenthetic vowel
/i/, which can also be characterized, in some situations, as a schwa
. This phenomenon happens mostly in pretonic position and with the consonant clusters ks, ps, bj, dj, dv, kt, bt, ft, mn, tm and dm, i.e. clusters that are not very common in the Portuguese language ("afta": [ˈaftɐ] > [ˈafitɐ]; "opção" : [ɔpˈsɐ̃ʊ̃] > [ɔpiˈsɐ̃ʊ̃]).
However, in some regions of Brazil (such as some Northeastern dialects), there has been an opposite tendency to further reduce the unstressed vowel [i] into a very weak vowel, resulting that partes or destratar are often realized similarly to [pahts] and [dʃtɾaˈta]. Sometimes that phenomenon occurs even more intensely in unstressed post-tonic vowels (except the final ones), causing the reduction of the word and the creation of new consonant clusters (prática > prát'ca; máquina > maq'na; abóbora > abobra; cócega > cosca).
Syllable-final /l/ is pronounced [u̯], and syllable-final [r] is weakened in most regions to [χ] or [h] or dropped (especially at the ends of words). This sometimes results in rather striking transformations of common words. The brand name "McDonald's", for example, is rendered [mɛ̝kiˈdõnawdᶾis], and the word "rock" is rendered as [ˈhɔki]. (Initial /r/ and doubled 'r' are pronounced in BP as [h], as with syllable-final [r].) Combined with the fact that /n/ and /m/ are already disallowed at the end of syllables in Portuguese (being replaced with nasalization on the previous vowel), this makes BP have a phonology that strongly favors open syllables.
Another remarkable aspect of BP is the suppression of final "r" even in formal speech. The final "r" may still be pronounced in most of Brazil as [χ] or [h] , in formal situations, at the end of a phrase, but almost never in a coda with other words (in which case the pronunciation would be [ɾ])). Thus, verbs like matar and correr are normally pronounced [maˈta] and [koˈhe]. However, the same suppression also happens in EP, albeit with much less frequency than in BP.
Nasalization
is much stronger in BP than EP. This is especially noticeable in vowels before /n/ or /m/ followed by a vowel, which are pronounced in BP with nasalization as strong as in phonemically nasalized vowels, while in EP they are nearly without nasalization. For the same reason, open vowels (which are disallowed under nasalization in Portuguese in general) cannot occur before /n/ or /m/ in BP, but can in EP. This sometimes affects the spelling of words. For example, EP, harmónico "harmonic" [ɐɾˈmɔniku] is BP harmônico [aɦˈmõniku]. It also can affect verbal paradigms – for example, EP distinguishes falamos "we speak" [fɐˈlɐmuʃ] from 'falámos' [fɐˈlamuʃ] "we spoke", but BP has falamos [faˈlɐ̃mus] for both.
An important exception to this is the country's largest city, São Paulo
, where, perhaps due to the influence of Italian immigrants, nasalization of stressed vowels before a nasal consonant does not occur. Thus, the word homens 'men' is pronounced with an oral, non-nasal vowel /o/ in São Paulo, as opposed to the nasal /o/ to be heard in the rest of Brazil. This is relevant since São Paulo is a major media hub, and this open pronunciation is thus used on nationally-broadcast television shows.
Related to this is the difference in pronunciation of the consonant represented by nh in many BP dialects. This is always [ɲ] in EP, but in several parts of Brazil, it represents a nasalized semivowel [j̃], which nasalizes the preceding vowel, as well. Example: manhãzinha [mɐ̃j̃ɐ̃zĩj̃ɐ] ("early morning").
BP did not participate in many sound changes that later affected EP, particularly in the realm of consonants. In BP, /b/, /d/, and /ɡ/ are stops in all positions, while they are weakened to fricatives [β], [ð], and [ɣ] in EP. Many dialects of BP maintain syllable-final [s] and [z] as such, while EP consistently converts them to [ʃ] and [ʒ]. Whether such a change happens in BP is highly dialect-specific. Rio de Janeiro
is particularly known for such a pronunciation; São Paulo
and most Southern dialects are particularly known for not having it. Elsewhere, such as 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 in Pernambuco
) have the same pattern as Rio de Janeiro; and in several other dialects (such as in Ceará
), the fricatives replace [s] and [z] only before the consonants /t/ and /d/. Another change in EP that does not occur in BP is the lowering of /e/ to [ɐ] before palatal sounds ([ʃ], [ʒ], [ɲ] [ʎ] and [j]) and in the diphthong em /ẽĩ/, which merges with the diphthong ãe /ɐ̃ĩ/ in EP but not in BP.
There are many dialect-specific phonetic aspects in BP, which can be essential characteristics of a dialect or another in Brazil
. For example, the cearense dialect is notorious for changing [v] into [h] in rapid speech (vamos [vɐ̃mʊ], "let's go", becomes [hɐ̃mʊ]); more rural dialects in southeastern states, including Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais, change pre-consonantal "r" into [ɹ]; several dialects reduce the diminutive suffix inho to im (carrinho, "little car" – [kaˈhĩȷ̃ʊ] > [kaˈhĩ]) and several dialects nasalise the /d/ in the gerund form, such as: "cantando" [kɐ̃ˈtɐ̃dʊ] > [kɐ̃ˈtɐ̃nʊ]. Another common change that, in many cases, makes the difference between two region's dialects is the palatalization
of /n/ followed by the vowel /i/. Thus, there are two slightly distinct pronunciations of the word menina, "girl": with palatalized ni [miˈnʲinɐ], and without palatalization [miˈninɐ].
An interesting change that is in the process of spreading in BP, perhaps originating in the Northeast, is the insertion of [j] after stressed vowels before /s/ at the end of a syllable. This began in the context of /a/ for example, mas "but" is now pronounced [majs] in most of Brazil, making it homophonous with mais "more". Additionally, this change is spreading to other final vowels, and at least in the Northeast the normal pronunciations of voz "voice" and Jesus are [vɔjs] and [ʒeˈzujs]. Similarly, três "three" becomes [tɾejs], making it rhyme with seis "six" [sejs]; this may explain the common Brazilian replacement of seis with meia ("half", as in "half a dozen") when spelling out phone numbers.
an Portuguese (EP) and Brazilian Portuguese (BP), such as the dropping of the second person conjugations
(and, in some dialects, of the 2nd person
pronoun itself) in everyday usage and use of subject pronouns as direct objects. Portuguese people can understand Brazilian Portuguese well. However, some Brazilians find European Portuguese
difficult to understand at first. This is mainly because European Portuguese tends to compress words to a greater extent than in Brazil for example, tending to drop unstressed /e/ and to introduce greater allophonic modifications of various sounds. Another reason is that Brazilians have almost no contact with the European variant, while Portuguese are used to watching Brazilian television programs and listening to Brazilian music.
or
Translation
In BP, it is very common to include the verbal form não é (contracted in informal speech to né) at the end of questions as a sort of emphasis (like in English
"He is a teacher, isn't he?"). Thus, the affirmation is often made by simply saying "é" in response to that kind of question. Examples:
— Ele não fez o que devia, né? (He didn't do what he should, did he?)
— É. (He didn't.)
or
— Ela já foi atriz, né? (She was an actress, wasn't she?)
— É. (She was.) or – É/Sim, ela já foi. (If a longer answer is preferred)
It reveals a natural tendency that only occurs in Brazilian Portuguese, to not reply an answer to the question itself, literally, but many times already focused on what the speaker has intended to know through the question.
It is also common to negate statements twice for emphasis, with não (no) at the beginning and end of the sentence:
"Do you speak English?"
"I don't speak [it], no."
Or only:
"Do you speak English?"
"No."
Sometimes even a "triple" negative is also possible. For example:
"Do you speak English?"
"No. I don't speak it, no."
In some regions, the first "não" of a "não...não" pair is pronounced [nũ].
In some places, however, like Northeastern Brazil, the first of these two nãos is considered redundant informal speech, resulting in a word order for negation opposite to the one still prevailing in European Portuguese:
Translation
of the subject (the being who is ordered to do the action) using either the imperative form of the verb or the present subjunctive. Thus one should use different inflections according to the pronoun used as subject: tu ('you', grammatical 2nd person with the imperative form) or você ('you', grammatical 3rd person with the present subjunctive). For example:
Currently, several dialects of BP have largely lost the second person pronouns, but even those dialects – and, of course, the ones which still use tu – use the second person imperative in addition to the third person present subjunctive form that should be used with você:
It is interesting to notice that, although Brazilians use 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 2nd person imperative sê and está are never used; the 3rd person subjunctive forms seja and esteja may be used instead.
The negative command forms use the subjunctive
present tense
forms of the verb. However, as for the second person forms, Brazilians do not use the subjunctive-derived ones in spoken language. Instead, they employ the imperative forms. Example: "Não anda", rather than the grammatically correct "Não andes".
As for the other grammatical persons, there is not such phenomenon, because both the Positive Imperative and the Negative Imperative forms derive from their respective present tense forms in the subjunctive mood. Examples: Não jogue papel na grama (Don't throw paper on the grass); Não fume (Don't smoke).
adjectives and pronouns and their corresponding adverbs have three forms corresponding to different degrees of proximity.
In spoken BP, the first two of these adjectives/pronouns have merged into the second:
Example:
Perhaps as a means of avoiding or clarifying some doubts created by the fact that "este" ([st] > [s]) and "esse" merged into the same word, informal BP often uses the demonstrative pronoun with some adverb that indicates its placement in relation to the addressee. For example: 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).
In many dialects of BP, você (formal "you" in EP) replaces tu (informal "you" in EP). The object pronoun, however, is still te ([tʃi] or [ti]). Besides, other forms such as teu (possessive), ti (postprepositional), and contigo ("with you") are still common in most regions of Brazil, especially where tu still has frequent usage.
Hence, the combination of object te with subject você in informal BP, for example: 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, although it is argued by some that it is the third-person singular indicative which doubles as the imperative, e.g. Fala o que você fez instead of Fale o que você fez ("Tell what you did").
In the areas where você 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 object pronoun in informal BP. Hence a speaker may end up saying "I love you" in two ways: Eu amo você and/or Eu te amo. In parts of the Northeast, it is also common to use the indirect object pronoun lhe as a second-person object pronoun, thus resulting Eu lhe amo.
In parts of the South (Rio Grande do Sul
, Santa Catarina
and southwest of Paraná
), most of the Northeast (the main exceptions are parts of Bahia
– primarily its capital: Salvador
) and the city of Santos
(in São Paulo
) and neighbourings the distinction between semiformal ‘você' and familiar ’tu' is still maintained; object and possessive pronouns pattern likewise. In Paraná
state capital, Curitiba
, there’s a slight different variety, 'tu' is not generally used. Curitiba’s accent is slightly different too.
In Rio Grande do Sul
and Santa Catarina
, for instance, você is almost never used in spoken language – o senhor/a senhora (highly formal third person pronoun) is employed whenever tu may sound too informal. The same happens in most of the Northeast, albeit in a less strict way (você may also be used informally, though mostly in order to sound more serious or polite).
In Rio de Janeiro
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 to no difference (sometimes in the same sentence).In Salvador
, tu is never used, você is always used.
Most Brazilians who use tu use it with the 3rd person verb: Tu vai ao banco. "Tu" accompanied by the second-person verb can still be found in Maranhão
, Pernambuco
, Piauí
and Santa Catarina
, for instance, and in a few cities in Rio Grande do Sul
(although in the rest of the state speakers may or may not use it in more formal talk), mainly near the border with Uruguay
, with a slightly different pronunciation in some conjugations (tu vieste becomes tu viesse), which is also present in Santa Catarina
and Pernambuco
. In Pará
, tu is used more often than você and is always accompanied by the second-person.
In Brazil
’s biggest city, São Paulo, the use of “tu” in print and conversation nowadays is not very common; “você” is used instead. However, it should be noted that São Paulo is now home to many imigrants 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: Você 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 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.
In spoken informal registers of BP, the third-person object pronouns 'o', 'a', 'os', and 'as', common in EP, are virtually nonexistent they are simply left out, or (when necessary, and usually only when referring to people) replaced by stressed subject pronouns (e.g., ele "he" or isso "that"); for example, Eu vi ele "I saw him" rather than Eu o vi.
When você is strictly a second-person pronoun, the use of possessive seu/sua may turn some phrases quite ambiguous, since one wouldn't know whether seu/sua refers to the second person você or to the third person ele/ela.
Because of that, BP tends to use the third-person possessive 'seu' to mean "your" – given that 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. In situations where no ambiguity may arise (especially in narrative texts), seu is also used to mean 'his' or 'her' (e.g. O candidato apresentou ontem o seu plano de governo para os próximos quatro anos), which doesn't happen in spoken language.
Both forms ('seu' or 'dele(s) /dela(s)') are considered grammatically correct in EP and BP.
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, i.e. it does not mean a dialect completely abandoned this or that form.
In EP, a definite article normally accompanies a possessive when it comes before a noun: este é o meu gato 'this is my cat'. In Southeastern BP, especially in the standard dialects of the cities of Rio de Janeiro
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 etc. In Northeastern BP dialects and in Central and Northern parts of the state of Rio de Janeiro
, (starting from Niterói
), rural parts of Minas Gerais
, and all over Espírito Santo
state, speakers tend to drop the definite article, but there is nothing such as a total preference for this form instead of the other, making both esse é o meu gato and esse é meu gato likely in their speech.
Formal written Brazilian Portuguese tends, however, to omit the definite article in accordance with prescriptive grammar rules derived from Classical Portuguese, even though the alternative form is also considered correct, but many professors consider it inelegant.
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 the word order changes between varieties.
The word order in the first Brazilian example is actually frequent in European Portuguese, too, for example in subordinate clauses like Sabes que eu te amo "You know that I love you", but not in simple sentences like "I love you." But in Portugal an object pronoun would never be placed at the start of a sentence, like 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 in all social classes.
In Latin
the word order was very flexible, that's why "I love you" could be said Ego te amo, in a proclitic form, or Ego amo te, in an enclitic form. Latin also had the forms: Te amo, Amo te and Vos amo. Brazilian Portuguese Eu te amo is an example of proclisis just like French
Je t'aime. Other forms are possible in Portuguese besides Eu te amo and Eu amo-te like: Te amo, Amo-te, Vos amo, Eu amo você and Amo você.
The verb chamar 'call' is normally used with the preposition de in BP, especially when it means 'to describe someone as':
When describing movement toward a place, EP uses the preposition a with the verb, while BP uses em (contracted with an article if necessary):
In both EP and BP, the preposition para can also be used with such verbs, with no difference in meaning:
ian linguists (Bortoni, Kato, Mattos e Silva, Perini and most recently, with great impact, Bagno), Brazilian Portuguese may be a highly 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) and African languages
, while H-variant would be based on 19th century European Portuguese (and very similar to Standard European Portuguese, with only minor differences in 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 Standard 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.
The L-variant may 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’ and/or ‘archaic’. There is a claim that 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, written 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.
Mário A. Perini, a Brazilian linguist, has said:
According to Milton M. Azevedo (Brazilian linguist):
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, with only remarkably few linguists championing its cause. 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":
In opposition to the "myths", Bagno counters that:
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.
. 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
, cruzeiro
, milreis
and capoeira
. 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).
for the Brazilian Portuguese, defined by ISO standards (see ISO 639-1
and ISO 3166-1 alpha-2
) and Internet standard
s (see IETF language tag).
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
dialect
Dialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
s written and spoken by most of the 190 million inhabitants of Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
and by a few million Brazilian emigrants, mainly in the United States, United Kingdom, Portugal, Canada, Japan and Paraguay.
Some authors compare the differences between Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese
European Portuguese
European Portuguese refers to the variety of Portuguese spoken in continental Portugal, as well as the Azores and Madeira islands...
to those found between British and American English
American and British English differences
This is one of a series of articles about the differences between British English and American English, which, for the purposes of these articles, are defined as follows:...
, while others see the differences between Brazilian and European Portuguese as greater or much greater. The differences in the spoken language are much more pronounced than the differences in the formal written language. As many as 1% of the words are different and limited mainly to flora, fauna, foods, etc. As with many languages, the differences between standard Brazilian Portuguese and its informal vernacular
Vernacular
A vernacular is the native language or native dialect of a specific population, as opposed to a language of wider communication that is not native to the population, such as a national language or lingua franca.- Etymology :The term is not a recent one...
are marked, though lexicon
Lexicon
In linguistics, the lexicon of a language is its vocabulary, including its words and expressions. A lexicon is also a synonym of the word thesaurus. More formally, it is a language's inventory of lexemes. Coined in English 1603, the word "lexicon" derives from the Greek "λεξικόν" , neut...
and most of the grammar
Grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
rules remain the same. Nonetheless, there are still scientific debates about the status of that variant due to those differences, especially whether or not it would be a case of diglossia
Diglossia
In linguistics, diglossia refers to a situation in which two dialects or languages are used by a single language community. In addition to the community's everyday or vernacular language variety , a second, highly codified variety is used in certain situations such as literature, formal...
.
Nevertheless, the comparatively recent development of Brazilian Portuguese (and its use by people of various linguistic backgrounds), the cultural prestige and strong government support accorded to the written standard has maintained the unity of the language over the whole of Brazil and ensured that all regional varieties remain fully intelligible. Starting in the 1960s, the nationwide dominance of television networks based in the southeast (Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...
and São Paulo
São Paulo
São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...
) has made the dialects of that region into an unofficial spoken standard for the means of communication, as well.
Portuguese legacy
The existence of Portuguese in Brazil is a legacy of Portuguese colonization of the AmericasPortuguese colonization of the Americas
Portugal was the leading country in the European exploration of the world in the 15th century. The Treaty of Tordesillas divided the Earth, outside Europe, in 1494 into Spanish and Portuguese global territorial hemispheres for exclusive conquest and colonization...
. The first wave of Portuguese-speaking immigrants settled in Brazil in the 16th century, yet the language was not widely used then. For a time Portuguese coexisted with Língua Geral
Língua Geral
Língua Geral is the name of two distinct linguae francae spoken in Brazil, the língua geral paulista , now extinct; and the língua geral amazônica , whose modern descendant is Nheengatu....
, a lingua franca
Lingua franca
A lingua franca is a language systematically used to make communication possible between people not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both mother tongues.-Characteristics:"Lingua franca" is a functionally defined term, independent of the linguistic...
based on Amerindian languages that was used by the Jesuit
Society of Jesus
The Society of Jesus is a Catholic male religious order that follows the teachings of the Catholic Church. The members are called Jesuits, and are also known colloquially as "God's Army" and as "The Company," these being references to founder Ignatius of Loyola's military background and a...
missionaries; as well as with various Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
n languages spoken by thousands of slaves brought to the country between the 16th and 19th centuries.
By the end of the 18th century, however, 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 inlands, and the huge immigration of Portuguese during that time, who brought their language and became a much more important ethnic group in Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
. Besides, they brought millions of slaves, who were in general more likely to learn Portuguese, since the Africans would speak lots of different languages that were mutually unintelligible and had more contact (even if forcedly) with the Portuguese speakers.
Since the early 18th century, Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
's government had made many efforts to expand the use of Portuguese in all the colony, particularly because its consolidation in Brazil would help guarantee to them the lands in dispute with Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
(according to various treaties signed in the 18th century, those lands would be ceded to the people who effectively occupied them). Under the Marquis of Pombal administration (1750–1777), Brazil started to use only Portuguese, for he expelled the Jesuit missionares – who taught the Língua Geral – and prohibited the use of Nhengatu, or Lingua Franca.
The aborted colonization attempts by the French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
in Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...
in the 16th century and the Dutch
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
in the Northeast in the 17th century had negligible effect on Portuguese. Even the substantial non-Portuguese-speaking immigration waves of the late 19th and early 20th century (mostly from Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
and Lebanon
Lebanon
Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...
) were linguistically integrated into the Portuguese-speaking majority within very few generations, except for some areas of the three southern states (in the case of Germans, Italians and Slavs) and rural corners of São Paulo (Italians and Japanese).
Nowadays the overwhelming majority of Brazilians speak Portuguese as their mother tongue, with the exception of small communities of descendants of European and Japanese immigrants – mostly in the South and Southeast – and Amerindian villages, who make up for an extremely minor part of the population. However, even in those cases, the populations use Portuguese frequently as a means of communication with other people and to understand television and radio programs, for example.
Influences from other languages
The evolution of Brazilian Portuguese has certainly been influenced by the languages it supplanted: first the Amerindian tongues of the natives, then the various African languages brought by the slaves, and finally those of later European and Asian immigrants. The influence is clearly detected in the Brazilian lexicon, which today has hundreds of words of Tupi–Guarani and YorubaYoruba language
Yorùbá is a Niger–Congo language spoken in West Africa by approximately 20 million speakers. The native tongue of the Yoruba people, it is spoken, among other languages, in Nigeria, Benin, and Togo and in communities in other parts of Africa, Europe and the Americas...
origin, among others. However, the vocabulary is still predominately Portuguese, since the contributions of other languages were restricted to a few subjects or areas of knowledge.
From South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
, words deriving from the Tupi–Guarani language family are particularly prevalent in place names (Itaquaquecetuba
Itaquaquecetuba
Itaquaquecetuba is a municipality in the state of São Paulo, in Brazil. The estimated population in 2006 is 352,755, the density is 4,313.46/km² and the area is 82 km². The elevation is 790 m...
, Pindamonhangaba
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 accessed to the Via Dutra at the 99th km...
, Caruaru
Caruaru
Caruaru is a Brazilian city in the Pernambuco state. The most populous city in the interior of the state, it's located in the zone named Agreste and because of its cultural importance, it's known by its people as the Capital do Agreste and Princesinha do Agreste.130 kilometers from...
, Ipanema
Ipanema
For other uses, see Ipanema . For the British rock band, see Ipanema .Ipanema is a neighborhood located in the southern region of the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, between Leblon and Arpoador...
, Paraíba
Paraíba
Paraíba Paraíba Paraíba (Tupi: pa'ra a'íba: "bad to navigation"; Brazilian Portuguese pronunciation: is a state of Brazil. It is located in the Brazilian Northeast, and is bordered by Rio Grande do Norte to the north, Ceará to the west, Pernambuco to the south and the Atlantic Ocean to the east...
). The native languages also contributed for the names of most of the plants and animals found in Brazil, such as arara ("macaw
Macaw
Macaws are small to large, often colourful New World parrots. Of the many different Psittacidae genera, six are classified as macaws: Ara, Anodorhynchus, Cyanopsitta, Primolius, Orthopsittaca, and Diopsittaca...
"), jacaré ("South American alligator
Alligator
An alligator is a crocodilian in the genus Alligator of the family Alligatoridae. There are two extant alligator species: the American alligator and the Chinese alligator ....
"), tucano ("toucan
Toucan
Toucans are members of the family Ramphastidae of near passerine birds from the Neotropics. The family is most closely related to the American barbets. They are brightly marked and have large, often colorful bills. The family includes five genera and about forty different species...
"), mandioca ("manioc"), abacaxi ("pineapple
Pineapple
Pineapple is the common name for a tropical plant and its edible fruit, which is actually a multiple fruit consisting of coalesced berries. It was given the name pineapple due to its resemblance to a pine cone. The pineapple is by far the most economically important plant in the Bromeliaceae...
"), and many more. However, it should be noted that many Tupi–Guarani toponyms did not derive directly from Amerindian expressions, but were in fact coined by European settlers and Jesuit missionaries, who used the Língua Geral extensively in the first centuries of colonization. Many of the Amerindian words entered the Brazilian Portuguese lexicon as early as in the 16th century, and some of them were eventually borrowed by European Portuguese and later even into other European languages.
The African languages
African languages
There are over 2100 and by some counts over 3000 languages spoken natively in Africa in several major language families:*Afro-Asiatic spread throughout the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and parts of the Sahel...
provided hundreds of words too, especially in the following subjects: food (e.g. quitute, quindim
Quindim
Quindim is a popular Brazilian baked dessert, 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 color....
, acarajé
Acarajé
Acarajé is a dish made from peeled black-eyed peas formed into a ball and then deep-fried in dendê . It is found in Nigerian and Brazilian cuisine...
, moqueca
Moqueca
Moqueca is a traditional Brazilian seafood stew. Brazilians have been making Moquecas for 300 years.It basically consists of fish, onions, garlic, tomatoes, cilantro, and additional ingredients...
), religious concepts (mandinga, macumba, orixá, axé), African-Brazilian music (samba, lundu, maxixe, berimbau), body-related parts and diseases (banguela, bunda, capenga, caxumba), places (cacimba, quilombo, senzala, mocambo), objects (miçanga, abadá, tanga) and household concepts, such as cafuné ("caress on the head"), curinga ("joker card
Joker (playing card)
Joker is a special type of playing card found in most modern decks, or else a type of tile in some Mahjong game sets.-Name:It is believed that the term "Joker" comes from a mispronunciation of Jucker, the German/Alsatian name for the game Euchre. The card was originally introduced in about 1860 for...
"), caçula ("youngest child"), and moleque ("brat, spoiled child"). Though the African slaves had various ethnic origins, the Bantu
Bantu languages
The Bantu languages constitute a traditional sub-branch of the Niger–Congo languages. There are about 250 Bantu languages by the criterion of mutual intelligibility, though the distinction between language and dialect is often unclear, and Ethnologue counts 535 languages...
and Guinean-Sudanese groups contributed by far to most of the borrowings, above all the Kimbundu
Kimbundu
North Mbundu, or Kimbundu, one of two Bantu languages called Mbundu is one of the most widely spoken Bantu languages in Angola, concentrated in the north-west of the country, notably in the Luanda Province, the Bengo Province and the Malanje Province...
(from Angola
Angola
Angola, officially the Republic of Angola , is a country in south-central Africa bordered by Namibia on the south, the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the north, and Zambia on the east; its west coast is on the Atlantic Ocean with Luanda as its capital city...
), Kikongo (from Angola
Angola
Angola, officially the Republic of Angola , is a country in south-central Africa bordered by Namibia on the south, the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the north, and Zambia on the east; its west coast is on the Atlantic Ocean with Luanda as its capital city...
, the Republic of the Congo
Republic of the Congo
The Republic of the Congo , sometimes known locally as Congo-Brazzaville, is a state in Central Africa. It is bordered by Gabon, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo , the Angolan exclave province of Cabinda, and the Gulf of Guinea.The region was dominated by...
and the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Democratic Republic of the Congo
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a state located in Central Africa. It is the second largest country in Africa by area and the eleventh largest in the world...
), Yoruba
Yoruba language
Yorùbá is a Niger–Congo language spoken in West Africa by approximately 20 million speakers. The native tongue of the Yoruba people, it is spoken, among other languages, in Nigeria, Benin, and Togo and in communities in other parts of Africa, Europe and the Americas...
/Nagô (from Nigeria
Nigeria
Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...
), and Jeje/Ewe language
Ewe language
Ewe is a Niger–Congo language spoken in Ghana, Togo and Benin by approximately six million people. Ewe is part of a cluster of related languages commonly called Gbe, spoken in southeastern Ghana, Togo, and parts of Benin. Other Gbe languages include Fon, Gen, Phla Phera, and Aja...
(from Benin
Benin
Benin , officially the Republic of Benin, is a country in West Africa. It borders Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east and Burkina Faso and Niger to the north. Its small southern coastline on the Bight of Benin is where a majority of the population is located...
).
There are also many borrowings from other Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an languages such as English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, specially words connected to technology, modern science and finance, like app, mod, layout, briefing, designer, slideshow, mouse (computing), forward, commodities, commercial terms like kingsize, fast food (ˈfɛstʃ ˈfudʒɪ), delivery service, self service, drive-thru, telemarketing, franchise, merchandise, but also cultural aspects such as okay, gay, vintage, junk food, hot dog, pet, lol
LOL
LOL is an acronym or abbreviation of "laughing out loud", "lots of luck", or "lots of love". In medical slang, it is used as an acronym for "little old lady", a reference to the novel House of God.LOL or Lol may also refer to:...
, nerd (ˈnɛʁdʒi, rarely ˈnɐɻdz), geek (sometimes ˈʒiki, but also ˈgiki and rarely ˈgik), noob, punk, skinhead (skĩˈχɛdʒi), emo (ˈẽmu), indie (ˈĩdʒi), hooligan, cool, vibe, hype, rocker, hippie, yuppie, bobo, hipster, overdose, junkie, cowboy, mullet, country, sex appeal, drag queen, queer, bro, rapper, mc, surf, skating, gospel, praise, bullying (ˈbuljĩgɪ, but much often the closer to native pronounce ˈbɐlĩ(ŋ)), stalking (ˈstawkĩ, much often closer ˈstɔwkĩ(ŋ)), etc.
French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
(food, furniture, luxurious fabrics and abstract concepts). Examples are hors-concours, chic, metrô (with the French inflection), batom, soutien, buquê, abajur, purê, petit gâteau, pot-pourri, ménage, enfant gâté, enfant terrible, garçonnière, patati-patata, parvenu, détraqué, femme fatale, noir, rendez-vous, chez..., partouse, pédé, à la carte, à la .... Scholars affirm that even now, French remains as the largest foreign influence in Portuguese due to the fact that French borrowings were adopted by a strong cultural affinity. Brazilian Portuguese tends to adopt French suffixes as in aterrissagem, differently from European Portuguese. Brazilian Pt. also tends to adopt culture-bound concepts from French, but when it comes to technology, the major influence is the English, while European Pt. tends to adopt technological terms from French. That is the difference between estação and gare. An evident example of the dichotomy between English and French influences is the use of the expressions know-how, used in a technical context, and savoir-faire, in literal Portuguese saber-fazer, proficiência-da-feitura, saber-como), German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
and Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
(mostly food, music, arts and architecture), and, to a lesser extent, Asian languages such as Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
. The latter borrowings are also mostly related to food and drinks or culture-bound concepts, such as quimono, from Japanese kimono
Kimono
The is a Japanese traditional garment worn by men, women and children. The word "kimono", which literally means a "thing to wear" , has come to denote these full-length robes...
. Besides strudel
Strudel
A strudel is a type of layered pastry with a — most often sweet — filling inside, often served with cream. It became well known and gained popularity in the 18th century through the Habsburg Empire....
, pretzel
Pretzel
A pretzel is a type of baked food made from dough in soft and hard varieties and savory or sweet flavors in a unique knot-like shape, originating in Europe...
, bratwurst
Bratwurst
A bratwurst is a sausage usually composed of veal, pork or beef. The plural in German is Bratwürste....
, sauerkraut
Sauerkraut
Sauerkraut , directly translated from German: "sour cabbage", is finely shredded cabbage that has been fermented by various lactic acid bacteria, including Leuconostoc, Lactobacillus, and Pediococcus. It has a long shelf-life and a distinctive sour flavor, both of which result from the lactic acid...
(spelled chucrute and pronunced ʃuˈkɾutʃi), Oktoberfest
Oktoberfest
Oktoberfest, or Wiesn, is a 16–18 day beer festival held annually in Munich, Bavaria, Germany, running from late September to the first weekend in October. It is one of the most famous events in Germany and is the world's largest fair, with more than 5 million people attending every year. The...
, biergarten, there are also abstract terms from German like encrenca or blitz. A significant number of beer brands in Brazil are named after German culture-bound concepts due the fact that the brewing process was brought by German immigrants. Besides, there were many Italian loan words and expressions which are not related to food or music: (italianisms) like tchau, imbróglio, bisonho, panetone, è vero, cicerone, male male, terra roxa, capisce, mezzo, va bene, ecco, ecco fatto, ecco qui, caspita, cavolo, incavolarsi, engrouvinhado, andiamo via. Due to its large Italian diaspora
Italian diaspora
The term Italian diaspora refers to the large-scale migration of Italians away from Italy in the period roughly beginning with the unification of Italy in 1861 and ending with the Italian economic miracle in the 1960s...
, parts of the Southern and Southeast states have an Italian influence over the prosody, the vocal patterns of the language, with an Italian sounding stress.
The influence of these languages in the phonology and grammar of Brazilian Portuguese have been very minor. Some authors claim the loss of initial es in the verb estar – now widespread in Brazil – is an influence from African slaves' speech, and it is also claimed that some common factors of BP – such as the near-complete disappearance of certain verb inflections and the marked preference for compound tenses – recall the grammatical simplification typical of pidgins. However, the same or similar processes can be verified in the European variant, and such theories have not yet been proved. Regardless of these borrowings and changes, it must be kept in mind that Brazilian Portuguese is not a Portuguese creole
Portuguese Creole
Portuguese creoles are creole languages which have been significantly influenced by Portuguese.- Origins :Portuguese overseas exploration in the 15th and 16th century's led to the establishment of a Portuguese Empire with trading posts, forts and colonies in the Americas, Asia and Africa...
, since it can be traced as a direct evolution from 16th century European Portuguese.
Written and spoken languages
The written language taught in Brazilian schools has historically been based on the standard of Portugal, and until the 19th century, Portuguese writers have often been regarded as models by some Brazilian authors and university professors. Nonetheless, this closeness and aspiration to unity was severely weakened in the 20th century by nationalist movements in literature and the artsWeek of Modern Art
The Modern Art Week was an arts festival in São Paulo, Brazil, that ran from February 11 to February 18, 1922...
, which awakened in many Brazilians the desire for true (own) national writing uninfluenced by standards in Portugal. Later on, agreements were made as to preserve at least the orthographical 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 end of the 20th century).
On the other hand, the spoken language suffered none of the constraints that applied to the written language. Brazilians, when concerned with pronunciation, look up to what is considered the national standard variety, and never the European one. Moreover, Brazilians in general have had very little exposure to European speech, even after the advent of radio, TV, and movies. The language spoken in Brazil has evolved largely independently of that spoken in Portugal. To many Brazilians, the language spoken in Portugal is almost unintelligible.
Formal writing
The written Brazilian standard differs from the European one to about the same extent that written American English differs from written British EnglishAmerican and British English differences
This is one of a series of articles about the differences between British English and American English, which, for the purposes of these articles, are defined as follows:...
. The differences extend to spelling, lexicon, and grammar. Several Brazilian writers were awarded with the highest prize of the Portuguese language. The Camões Prize
Camões Prize
The Camões Prize , named after Luís de Camões is the most important literary prize for the Portuguese language. It is awarded annually by the Portuguese Fundação Biblioteca Nacional and the Brazilian Departamento Nacional do Livro to the author of an outstanding work written in Portuguese.It...
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
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis , often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho , was a Brazilian novelist, poet, playwright and short story writer. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer of Brazilian literature, but he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in...
, João Guimarães Rosa
João Guimarães Rosa
João Guimarães Rosa was a Brazilian novelist, considered by many to be one of the greatest Brazilian novelists born in the 20th century. His best-known work is the novel Grande Sertão: Veredas...
, Carlos Drummond de Andrade
Carlos Drummond de Andrade
Carlos Drummond de Andrade was perhaps the most influential Brazilian poet of the 20th century. He has become something of a national poet; his poem "Canção Amiga" was printed on the 50 cruzados note...
, Graciliano Ramos
Graciliano Ramos
Graciliano Ramos de Oliveira was a Brazilian Post-Modernist writer, politician and journalist. In most of his novels he depicts the precarious situation of the poor inhabitants of the Brazilian sertão.-Life:Graciliano Ramos de Oliveira was born in the city of Quebrangulo, in the Brazilian State...
, João Cabral de Melo Neto
João Cabral de Melo Neto
João Cabral de Melo Neto was born in the state of Pernambuco, Brazil, and is considered one of the greatest Brazilian poets of all time.He is often quoted saying "I try not to perfume the flower"...
, Cecília Meireles
Cecília Meireles
Cecília Benevides de Carvalho Meireles was a Brazilian writer and educator, known principally as a poet. She is a canonical name of Brazilian Modernism, one of the great female poets in the Portuguese language, and is widely considered the best poetess from Brazil, though she combatted the word...
, Clarice Lispector
Clarice Lispector
Clarice Lispector was a Brazilian writer. Acclaimed internationally for her innovative novels and short stories, she was also a journalist...
, José de Alencar
José de Alencar
José Martiniano de Alencar was a Brazilian lawyer, politician, orator, novelist and dramatist. He is one of the most famous writers of the first generation of Brazilian Romanticism, writing historical, regionalist and Indianist romances — being the most famous The Guarani...
, Rachel de Queiroz
Rachel de Queiroz
Rachel de Queiroz was a Brazilian author and journalist....
, Jorge Amado
Jorge Amado
Jorge Leal Amado de Faria was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 49 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands in 1978...
, Castro Alves
Castro Alves
Antônio Frederico de Castro Alves was a Brazilian poet and playwright, famous for his Abolitionist and Republican poems...
, Antonio Candido
Antônio Candido
Antonio Candido de Mello e Souza was born in Poços de Caldas, Minas Gerais, Brazil, on July 24, 1918. He is a writer, professor, and literary critic. He was the co-winner of the Prêmio Jabuti for essays in 1965.-Partial bibliography:...
, Autran Dourado
Autran Dourado
Waldomiro Freitas Autran Dourado is a contemporary Brazilian novelist. He was born in the state of Minas Gerais. Going against current trends in Brazilian literature, Dourado's works display much concern with literary form, with many obscure words and expressions...
, Rubem Fonseca
Rubem Fonseca
Rubem Fonseca is a Brazilian writer.He was born in Juiz de Fora, in the state of Minas Gerais, but he has lived most of his life in Rio de Janeiro. In 1952, he started his career as a low-level cop and, later became a police commissioner, one of the highest ranks in the civil police of Brazil...
, Lygia Fagundes Telles
Lygia Fagundes Telles
Lygia Fagundes Telles is a Brazilian novelist and short-story writer. She was born in São Paulo and is one of Brazil's most important living writers....
and Euclides da Cunha
Euclides da Cunha
Euclides da Cunha was a Brazilian writer, sociologist and engineer. His most important work is Os Sertões , a non-fictional account of the military expeditions promoted by the Brazilian government against the rebellious village of Canudos, known as the War of Canudos...
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. They are similar to how the English spellings of certain words in the United States differ from the spellings used in other English-speaking countries.A major subset of the differences relates to words with c and p followed by c, ç, or t. In many cases, the letters c or p 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 down in BP, similar to Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
spelling standards, but are still written in other countries. For example, we have EP acção / BP ação ("action"), EP óptimo / BP ótimo ("optimum"), and so on, where the consonant is silent both in BP and EP, but the words are 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, BP has retained those silent consonants
Silent letter
In an alphabetic writing system, a silent letter is a letter that, in a particular word, does not correspond to any sound in the word's pronunciation...
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 [ʒ] 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").
Formal versus informal registers
The linguistic situation of the BP informal speech in relation to the standard language is controversial. There are authors who describe it as a case of diglossiaDiglossia
In linguistics, diglossia refers to a situation in which two dialects or languages are used by a single language community. In addition to the community's everyday or vernacular language variety , a second, highly codified variety is used in certain situations such as literature, formal...
, considering that informal BP has developed both in phonetics
Phonetics
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech, or—in the case of sign languages—the equivalent aspects of sign. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds or signs : their physiological production, acoustic properties, auditory...
and grammar
Grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
in its own way and now constitutes a different, albeit quite similar, language, which would explain the unease that many Brazilians have when learning standard Portuguese. According to them, while diglossia inevitably develops in every literate society, it is much more striking in Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
than in English or in European Portuguese
European Portuguese
European Portuguese refers to the variety of Portuguese spoken in continental Portugal, as well as the Azores and Madeira islands...
.
According to that theory, 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 basically a phonetic rendering of the written form; it is used only in very formal situations like speeches or ceremonies, by educated people who wish to stress their education, or when reading directly out of a text. While FS is necessarily uniform in lexicon and grammar, it shows noticeable regional variations in pronunciation. Finally the informal register (IS) is almost never written down (basically only in artistic works or very informal contexts such as adolescent chat rooms). It is used to some extent in virtually all oral communication outside of those formal contexts even by well educated speakers and shows considerable regional variations in pronunciation, lexicon, and even grammar.
However, the theory of diglossia in BP finds many oppositions, since diglossia
Diglossia
In linguistics, diglossia refers to a situation in which two dialects or languages are used by a single language community. In addition to the community's everyday or vernacular language variety , a second, highly codified variety is used in certain situations such as literature, formal...
does not mean simply the coexistence of different varieties or "registers" of the language formal and informal. It means, in fact, the situation in which there are two (often related) languages: a formal one and an informal one, which is the spoken tongue. Opposers of that theory argue that the various aspects that separate the informal register and the formal one in Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
cannot be compared with the numerous differences of standard Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
or German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
and their national dialects. Besides, the relatively "simplified" grammar of BP actually, many different levels of informal BP with distinct alterations in grammar and pronunciation would be a reflex of the formation of informal speeches, which happens in every language in the world.
The discussion remains whether informal BP has enough differences in order to be actually considered a low-prestige language, spoken by the Brazilian people, who, therefore, must learn a language that is not their own, the Portuguese language. Thus, opposing to that theory, many arguments have been used:
- even in the most informal and low-prestige varieties of BP, almost the entirety of the lexicon is Portuguese, with few differences of pronunciation in comparison to the standard BP, especially in what refers to the basic vocabulary;
- there are several different aspects in the grammar, but many authors argue they are very minor (besides, some of those differences also arose during the recent development of European PortugueseEuropean PortugueseEuropean Portuguese refers to the variety of Portuguese spoken in continental Portugal, as well as the Azores and Madeira islands...
); - the fact that the informal vocabulary is much smaller than the formal one happens in every literate language, so it cannot be used to prove the low-prestige variety constitutes another language in a typical situation of diglossia;
- the preference for another form that is also considered correct by the standard/classical grammar also does not justify the existence of diglossia (e.g. preferred compound tense vai faltar and faltará – "will lack" – are both standard BP; the common expression ter que is standard and equivalent to the verb dever);
- the phonetic aspects of the informal language are mostly a matter of preference or accent, since the standard language, in general, accepts most of them (for example, the devoicing of final r, which is accepted by standard BP, as well as the common contraction of words in Portuguese, such as para os becoming pros, as long as it is not written that way).
Characteristics of informal BP
The main and most general (i.e. not considering various regional variations) characteristics of the informal variant of BP are the following (note that some of them may occur in EP, too):- dropping the first syllable of the verb estar ("to 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")); (Exactly the same in EP)
- dropping prepositions before subordinate and relative clauses beginning with conjunctions (Ele precisa que vocês ajudem instead of Ele precisa de que vocês ajudem); (Exactly the same in EP)
- replacing haver when it means "to exist" with ter ("to have"): há muitos problemas na cidade ("there are many problems in the city") can be heard, but is much rarer than tem muitos problema(s) na cidade
- lack of third-person object pronouns, which may be omitted completely or replaced by their respective personal pronouns (eu vi ele or even just eu vi instead of eu o vi for "I saw him/it") (may occur in EP as well)
- lack of second-person verb forms (except for a few parts of Brazil) and, in various regions, plural third-person forms as well (mostly lower-class speakers) (tu cantas becomes tu canta or você canta (Brazilian uses the pronoun "você" a lot but rarely uses "tu")
- 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 [dela] morreu ("the woman that [her] son died"))
- frequent use of the pronoun a gente ("the 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 (uneducated speakers may contaminate the two forms, e.g. say a gente fazemos instead of a gente faz); (Occurs in EP as well)
- obligatory proclisis in all cases (always me disseram, rarely disseram-me), as well as use of the pronoun amidst 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 and is often restricted to certain regions or circumstances (para > pra; vamos em boa hora > vamos embora > bora; em vocês, para vocês > n'ocês, p'r'ocês; dependo de ele ajudar > dependo d'ele ajudar; com as > c'as ; deixa eu ver > x'o 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 agua para ele instead of Dê-lhe um copo de agua ("Give him a glass of water"); Quero mandar uma carta para você instead of Quero te mandar uma carta ("I want to give you a letter"))
- use of dele and dela instead of seu when it means "his" or "her" (o marido dela instead of o seu marido ("her husband")); (Occurs in EP as well)
- use of aí as a pronoun for indefinite direct objects (similar to French 'en'). Examples: falaí (fala + aí) ("say it"), esconde aí ("hide it"), per aí (espere aí = "wait a moment"); (Occurs in EP as well)
- impersonalImpersonalityImpersonality may refer to:* Impersonal passive voice, a verb voice that decreases the valency of an intransitive verb to zero* Impersonal verb, a verb that cannot take a true subject...
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 was able to understand"); (Occurs in EP as well)
Lexicon
The vocabularies of Brazilian and European Portuguese also differ in a couple of thousand words, many of which refer to concepts that were introduced separately in BP and EP.Since Brazilian independence in 1822, BP has tended to borrow words from English and French. However, BP generally adopts foreign words with minimal adjustments, while EP tends to apply deeper morphological changes. However, there are instances of BP adapting English words, whereas EP retains the original form – hence estoque and stock. Finally, one dialect often borrowed a word while the other coined a new one from native elements. So one has, for example
- BP
A few other examples are given in the following table:
| Brazil | Portugal | English |
| abridor de latas | abre-latas | can opener |
| aeromoça, comissária de bordo | aeromoça, hospedeira | flight stewardess |
| água-viva, medusa | alforreca | jellyfish |
| AIDS | SIDA | AIDS |
| alho poró | alho-porro | leek |
| aquarela | aguarela | watercolor |
| amerissagem | amaragem | landing on the sea, splash-down |
| aterrissagem | aterragem | landing |
| Band-Aid | penso rápido | band-aid (US), plaster (UK) |
| banheiro, toalete, toilettes, sanitário | casa de banho, lavabos, sanitários | bathroom, toilet |
| bonde, bonde elétrico | eléctrico | streetcar (US), tram (UK) |
| brócolis | brócolos | broccoli |
| cílio (Classical Latin "cilium"), pestana, celha | pestana | eyelash |
| café da manhã, desjejum, parva | pequeno almoço, desjejum | breakfast |
| caminhonete, van, perua (informal) | camioneta | station wagon (US), estate car (UK) |
| câncer | cancro | cancer (the disease) |
| carona | boleia | ride, hitchhiking |
| carteira de habilitação, carteira de motorista, carta | carta de condução | driver's license (US), driving licence (UK) |
| carteira de identidade, RG (from "Registro Geral") | bilhete de identidade | ID card |
| telefone celular (or simply and most common "celular"), aparelho de telefonia celular | telemóvel | cell phone (US), mobile phone (UK) |
| canadense | canadiano | Canadian |
| caqui (from Japanese 柿 kaki) | dióspiro | persimmon |
| dublagem | dobragem | dubbing |
| durex, fita adesiva | fita gomada, fita-cola, fita adesiva | Scotch Tape (US), Sellotape (UK) |
| time, equipe | equipa, equipe | team |
| estação de trem | gare, estação | train station |
| estrada de ferro, ferrovia | caminho de ferro, ferrovia | railway |
| favela | bairro de lata | slum, shanty-town |
| fila | bicha, fila | line (US), queue (UK) |
| fones de ouvido | auscultadores, auriculares | headphones |
| freio, breque | travão, freio | brake |
| gol | golo | goal (in sports) |
| grama, relva | relva | grass (lawn) |
| Irã | Irão | Iran |
| Islã | Islão | Islam |
| israelense, israelita | israelita | Israeli |
| maiô, maillot | fato de banho | woman's swimsuit |
| mamadeira | biberão, biberon | baby bottle |
| metrô | metro, metropolitano | underground railway, metropolitan railway |
| Moscou | Moscovo | Moscow |
| ônibus | autocarro | bus |
| polonês, polaco | polaco | Polish |
| rúgbi, rugby | râguebi, rugby | rugby |
| secretária eletrônica | atendedor de chamadas | (telephone) answering machine |
| sutiã, soutien, soutien-gorge | soutien, sutiã | bra |
| tcheco, checo | checo | Czech |
| tela | ecrã | screen |
| trem, composição ferroviária | comboio | train |
| Vietnã | Vietname | Vietnam |
| fóton | fotão | photon |
Some of the words shown in only one column (like comboio, atendedor de chamadas, and mamadeira) do exist in the other dialect, but are rarely used.
Topic-prominent language
Modern linguisticLinguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
studies have shown that Brazilian Portuguese is a topic-prominent or topic- and subject-prominent language. Sentences with topic are extensively used in Brazilian Portuguese, most often by means of an external comment that could have been included as an element (object or verb) of the sentence (topicalization), thus emphasizing it, e.g. in Esses assuntos eu não conheço bem – literally, "These subjects I don't know [them] well". The anticipation of the verb or object in the beginning of the phrase, repeating them 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).
Progressive
Portuguese makes extensive use of verbs in the progressive aspect, almost as in English.BP seldom has the present continuous construct estar a + infinitive, which, in contrast, has become quite common in EP in the last centuries. BP maintains the Classical Portuguese form of continuous expression, which is made by estar + gerund
Gerund
In linguistics* As applied to English, it refers to the usage of a verb as a noun ....
.
Thus Brazilians will always write ela está dançando ("she is dancing"), seldom 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"), and that some dialects of EP (namely from Alentejo, Algarve, Açores(Azores), Madeira) will also tend to use estar + gerund
Gerund
In linguistics* As applied to English, it refers to the usage of a verb as a noun ....
in the same way as Brazilians.
Ter instead of haver In a few compound verb tenses, BP in general uses the auxiliary ter (originally "to hold", "to own"), where EP would normally use haver ("to have, shall / will"). However, both forms are correct according to the prescribed grammar. Thus, ele tinha feito and ele havia feito (compound pluperfect "he had done") are interchangeable, and, in fact, the later form is still used in BP, even if quite rarely.
In particular, the EP construction há de cantar ("he will sing" or "he shall sing") is almost unheard in BP, except, sometimes, in the sense of swearing or promising (e.g. Eu hei de fazer esse negócio funcionar). BP also uses ter in existential sense, whereas EP would use haver, hence "there is no money" will be both "não tem dinheiro" and "não há dinheiro".
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 object pronoun
Pronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun , such as, in English, the words it and he...
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, 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).
Contracted forms
Even in the most formal contexts, BP never 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
Clitic
In morphology and syntax, a clitic is a morpheme that is grammatically independent, but phonologically dependent on another word or phrase. It is pronounced like an affix, but works at the phrase level...
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 President Jânio Quadros
Jânio Quadros
Jânio da Silva Quadros , , was a Brazilian politician who served as President of Brazil for only 7 months in 1961.-Career:...
, as in his famous quote Bebo-o porque é líquido, se fosse sólido comê-lo-ia ("I drink it [liquor] because 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:
- written:
Phonology
In many ways, compared to European PortugueseEuropean Portuguese
European Portuguese refers to the variety of Portuguese spoken in continental Portugal, as well as the Azores and Madeira islands...
(EP), Brazilian Portuguese (BP) is conservative in its phonology. This also occurs in Angolan Portuguese
Angolan Portuguese
Angolan Portuguese is a variety of Portuguese used mostly in Angola where it is an official language. It is generally used in Angola by 80% of all residents, of which 60% of the inhabitants of Luanda, with around 7.5 million first-language speakers....
, São Tomean Portuguese
São Tomean Portuguese
São Tomean Portuguese is a dialect of Portuguese spoken in São Tomé and Príncipe....
, and other African dialects
African Portuguese
Portuguese is spoken in five African states: Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé and Príncipe, Angola, and Mozambique. Like English and French, Portuguese has become a post-colonial language in Africa and one of the working languages of the African Union and the Southern African Development Community...
. Brazilian Portuguese is a phonetically rich language, with 8 vowels, 5 nasal vowels, with several diphthongs, and triphthongs. Brazilian Portuguese is also considerably more nasal than European Portuguese due to Tupi influence.
Vowels
The reduction of vowels is one of the main phonetic characteristics of the Portuguese language, but the intensity and frequency with which that phenomenon happens varies significantly between Brazilian Portuguese and European PortugueseEuropean Portuguese
European Portuguese refers to the variety of Portuguese spoken in continental Portugal, as well as the Azores and Madeira islands...
.
Brazilians generally pronounce vowels more openly than Europeans even when reducing them. In the syllables that follow the stressed one, BP generally pronounces o as [u], a as [ɐ], and e as [i]. Some dialects of BP also follow these rules for vowels before the stressed syllable
Stress (linguistics)
In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence. The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables. The word accent is sometimes also used with this sense.The stress placed...
.
In contrast, EP pronounces unstressed a primarily as [ɐ], elides
Elision
Elision is the omission of one or more sounds in a word or phrase, producing a result that is easier for the speaker to pronounce...
some unstressed vowels or reduces them to a very short, near central unrounded vowel [ɨ], a sound that does not exist in BP. Thus, for example, the word setembro is [seˈtẽbɾu]/[sɛˈtẽbɾʊ] in BP but [s(ɨ)ˈtẽbɾu] in EP.
The main difference among the dialects of Brazilian Portuguese is the frequent presence or not of open vowels in unstressed syllables
Stress (linguistics)
In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence. The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables. The word accent is sometimes also used with this sense.The stress placed...
. In general, the Southern and Southeastern dialects would always pronounce e and o when they are not reduced to [i] and [u] as closed vowels [e] and [o] if they are not stressed, in which case the pronunciation will depend on the word. Thus, 'operação' (operation) and 'rebolar' (to shake one's body) may be pronounced [opeɾaˈsɐ̃ʊ̃] and [heboˈla].
However, in the Northeastern and Northern accents, there are many complex rules that still have not been much studied which lead to the open pronunciation of e and o in a huge number of words. Thus, on the contrary of the other dialects, the open vowels [ɛ] and [ɔ] are not exclusively used in stressed syllables. Thus, the previous examples would be pronounced differently: [ɔpɛɾaˈsɐ̃ʊ̃] and [hɛbɔˈla].
Another noticeable, if minor, difference between Northern-Northeastern dialects and Southern-Southeastern ones is the frequency of nasalization
Nasalization
In phonetics, nasalization is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth...
of vowels before m and n: in the former, the vowels are nasalized in virtually all the cases, no matter if they are stressed or unstressed; on the other hand, in the latter dialects, the vowels may remain non-nasalized if they are unstressed. A famous example of this distinction is the pronunciation of banana: a Northeastern BP speaker would speak [bɐ̃ˈnɐ̃nɐ], while a Southern one would speak [baˈnɐ̃nɐ].
Palatalization of /di/ and /ti/
One of the most noticeable tendencies of modern BP is the palatalization
Palatalization
In linguistics, palatalization , also palatization, may refer to two different processes by which a sound, usually a consonant, comes to be produced with the tongue in a position in the mouth near the palate....
of /d/ and /t/ by most regions, which are pronounced [dʒ] and [tʃ] (or [dᶾ] and [tᶴ]), respectively, before /i/. The word presidente "president", for example, is pronounced [pɾeziˈdẽtᶴi] in these regions of Brazil, but [pɾɨziˈdẽt(ɨ)] in Portugal. This pronunciation probably began in Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...
and is often still associated with this city, but is now standard in many other states and major cities, such as Belo Horizonte
Belo Horizonte
Belo Horizonte is the capital of and largest city in the state of Minas Gerais, located in the southeastern region of Brazil. It is the third largest metropolitan area in the country...
and Salvador
Salvador, Bahia
Salvador is the largest city on the northeast coast of Brazil and the capital of the Northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia. Salvador is also known as Brazil's capital of happiness due to its easygoing population and countless popular outdoor parties, including its street carnival. The first...
, and has spread more recently to some regions of São Paulo
São Paulo
São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...
(due to the migrants from other regions), where it is common in most speakers under 40 or so. It has always been standard among Brazil's Japanese
Japanese people
The are an ethnic group originating in the Japanese archipelago and are the predominant ethnic group of Japan. Worldwide, approximately 130 million people are of Japanese descent; of these, approximately 127 million are residents of Japan. People of Japanese ancestry who live in other countries...
community, since this is also a feature of Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
. The regions that still preserve the non-palatalized [ti] are mostly in the Northeast and South of Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
, due to stronger influence from European Portuguese (Northeast), and from Italian and Argentine Spanish (South).
Epenthesis in consonant clusters
BP tends to break up clusters where the first consonant is not /r/, /l/, or /s/ by the insertion of the epenthetic vowel
Epenthesis
In phonology, epenthesis is the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially to the interior of a word. Epenthesis may be divided into two types: excrescence, for the addition of a consonant, and anaptyxis for the addition of a vowel....
/i/, which can also be characterized, in some situations, as a schwa
Schwa
In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean the following:*An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in some languages, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel...
. This phenomenon happens mostly in pretonic position and with the consonant clusters ks, ps, bj, dj, dv, kt, bt, ft, mn, tm and dm, i.e. clusters that are not very common in the Portuguese language ("afta": [ˈaftɐ] > [ˈafitɐ]; "opção" : [ɔpˈsɐ̃ʊ̃] > [ɔpiˈsɐ̃ʊ̃]).
However, in some regions of Brazil (such as some Northeastern dialects), there has been an opposite tendency to further reduce the unstressed vowel [i] into a very weak vowel, resulting that partes or destratar are often realized similarly to [pahts] and [dʃtɾaˈta]. Sometimes that phenomenon occurs even more intensely in unstressed post-tonic vowels (except the final ones), causing the reduction of the word and the creation of new consonant clusters (prática > prát'ca; máquina > maq'na; abóbora > abobra; cócega > cosca).
L-vocalization and suppression of final "r"
Syllable-final /l/ is pronounced [u̯], and syllable-final [r] is weakened in most regions to [χ] or [h] or dropped (especially at the ends of words). This sometimes results in rather striking transformations of common words. The brand name "McDonald's", for example, is rendered [mɛ̝kiˈdõnawdᶾis], and the word "rock" is rendered as [ˈhɔki]. (Initial /r/ and doubled 'r' are pronounced in BP as [h], as with syllable-final [r].) Combined with the fact that /n/ and /m/ are already disallowed at the end of syllables in Portuguese (being replaced with nasalization on the previous vowel), this makes BP have a phonology that strongly favors open syllables.
Another remarkable aspect of BP is the suppression of final "r" even in formal speech. The final "r" may still be pronounced in most of Brazil as [χ] or [h] , in formal situations, at the end of a phrase, but almost never in a coda with other words (in which case the pronunciation would be [ɾ])). Thus, verbs like matar and correr are normally pronounced [maˈta] and [koˈhe]. However, the same suppression also happens in EP, albeit with much less frequency than in BP.
Nasalization
Nasalization
Nasalization
In phonetics, nasalization is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth...
is much stronger in BP than EP. This is especially noticeable in vowels before /n/ or /m/ followed by a vowel, which are pronounced in BP with nasalization as strong as in phonemically nasalized vowels, while in EP they are nearly without nasalization. For the same reason, open vowels (which are disallowed under nasalization in Portuguese in general) cannot occur before /n/ or /m/ in BP, but can in EP. This sometimes affects the spelling of words. For example, EP, harmónico "harmonic" [ɐɾˈmɔniku] is BP harmônico [aɦˈmõniku]. It also can affect verbal paradigms – for example, EP distinguishes falamos "we speak" [fɐˈlɐmuʃ] from 'falámos' [fɐˈlamuʃ] "we spoke", but BP has falamos [faˈlɐ̃mus] for both.
An important exception to this is the country's largest city, São Paulo
São Paulo
São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...
, where, perhaps due to the influence of Italian immigrants, nasalization of stressed vowels before a nasal consonant does not occur. Thus, the word homens 'men' is pronounced with an oral, non-nasal vowel /o/ in São Paulo, as opposed to the nasal /o/ to be heard in the rest of Brazil. This is relevant since São Paulo is a major media hub, and this open pronunciation is thus used on nationally-broadcast television shows.
Related to this is the difference in pronunciation of the consonant represented by nh in many BP dialects. This is always [ɲ] in EP, but in several parts of Brazil, it represents a nasalized semivowel [j̃], which nasalizes the preceding vowel, as well. Example: manhãzinha [mɐ̃j̃ɐ̃zĩj̃ɐ] ("early morning").
Phonetic changes
BP did not participate in many sound changes that later affected EP, particularly in the realm of consonants. In BP, /b/, /d/, and /ɡ/ are stops in all positions, while they are weakened to fricatives [β], [ð], and [ɣ] in EP. Many dialects of BP maintain syllable-final [s] and [z] as such, while EP consistently converts them to [ʃ] and [ʒ]. Whether such a change happens in BP is highly dialect-specific. Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...
is particularly known for such a pronunciation; São Paulo
São Paulo
São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...
and most Southern dialects are particularly known for not having it. Elsewhere, such as 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 in Pernambuco
Pernambuco
Pernambuco is a state of Brazil, located in the Northeast region of the country. To the north are the states of Paraíba and Ceará, to the west is Piauí, to the south are Alagoas and Bahia, and to the east is the Atlantic Ocean. There are about of beaches, some of the most beautiful in the...
) have the same pattern as Rio de Janeiro; and in several other dialects (such as in Ceará
Ceará
Ceará is one of the 27 states of Brazil, located in the northeastern part of the country, on the Atlantic coast. It is currently the 8th largest Brazilian State by population and the 17th by area. It is also one of the main touristic destinations in Brazil. The state capital is the city of...
), the fricatives replace [s] and [z] only before the consonants /t/ and /d/. Another change in EP that does not occur in BP is the lowering of /e/ to [ɐ] before palatal sounds ([ʃ], [ʒ], [ɲ] [ʎ] and [j]) and in the diphthong em /ẽĩ/, which merges with the diphthong ãe /ɐ̃ĩ/ in EP but not in BP.
There are many dialect-specific phonetic aspects in BP, which can be essential characteristics of a dialect or another in Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
. For example, the cearense dialect is notorious for changing [v] into [h] in rapid speech (vamos [vɐ̃mʊ], "let's go", becomes [hɐ̃mʊ]); more rural dialects in southeastern states, including Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais, change pre-consonantal "r" into [ɹ]; several dialects reduce the diminutive suffix inho to im (carrinho, "little car" – [kaˈhĩȷ̃ʊ] > [kaˈhĩ]) and several dialects nasalise the /d/ in the gerund form, such as: "cantando" [kɐ̃ˈtɐ̃dʊ] > [kɐ̃ˈtɐ̃nʊ]. Another common change that, in many cases, makes the difference between two region's dialects is the palatalization
Palatalization
In linguistics, palatalization , also palatization, may refer to two different processes by which a sound, usually a consonant, comes to be produced with the tongue in a position in the mouth near the palate....
of /n/ followed by the vowel /i/. Thus, there are two slightly distinct pronunciations of the word menina, "girl": with palatalized ni [miˈnʲinɐ], and without palatalization [miˈninɐ].
An interesting change that is in the process of spreading in BP, perhaps originating in the Northeast, is the insertion of [j] after stressed vowels before /s/ at the end of a syllable. This began in the context of /a/ for example, mas "but" is now pronounced [majs] in most of Brazil, making it homophonous with mais "more". Additionally, this change is spreading to other final vowels, and at least in the Northeast the normal pronunciations of voz "voice" and Jesus are [vɔjs] and [ʒeˈzujs]. Similarly, três "three" becomes [tɾejs], making it rhyme with seis "six" [sejs]; this may explain the common Brazilian replacement of seis with meia ("half", as in "half a dozen") when spelling out phone numbers.
BP/EP differences in the informal spoken language
There are various differences between EuropeEurope
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an Portuguese (EP) and Brazilian Portuguese (BP), such as the dropping of the second person conjugations
Portuguese verb conjugation
Portuguese verbs display a high degree of inflection. A typical regular verb has over fifty different forms, expressing up to six different grammatical tenses and three moods...
(and, in some dialects, of the 2nd person
Grammatical person
Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...
pronoun itself) in everyday usage and use of subject pronouns as direct objects. Portuguese people can understand Brazilian Portuguese well. However, some Brazilians find European Portuguese
European Portuguese
European Portuguese refers to the variety of Portuguese spoken in continental Portugal, as well as the Azores and Madeira islands...
difficult to understand at first. This is mainly because European Portuguese tends to compress words to a greater extent than in Brazil for example, tending to drop unstressed /e/ and to introduce greater allophonic modifications of various sounds. Another reason is that Brazilians have almost no contact with the European variant, while Portuguese are used to watching Brazilian television programs and listening to Brazilian music.
Grammar
Spoken Brazilian usage differs considerably from European usage in many aspects. Between Brazilian Portuguese, particularly in its most informal varieties, and European Portuguese, there can be considerable differences in grammar as well. The most prominent ones concern the placement of clitic pronouns and use of subject pronouns as objects in the third person. Nonstandard inflections are also common in colloquial Brazilian Portuguese.Affirmation and negation
Spoken Portuguese rarely uses the affirmation adverb sim ("yes") in informal speech. The verb in question is generally preferred.- EP:
- — Já foste à câmara municipal?
- — Já, fui ontem.
- — Foste à câmara municipal?
- — Fui .
- BP:
- — Você foi na/à/pra prefeitura?
- — Fui.
or
- — Tu foste na/à/pra prefeitura? (Southern variant)
- — Fui.
Translation
- "Have you gone to the City Hall yet?"
- "Yes, I went there yesterday."
In BP, it is very common to include the verbal form não é (contracted in informal speech to né) at the end of questions as a sort of emphasis (like in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
"He is a teacher, isn't he?"). Thus, the affirmation is often made by simply saying "é" in response to that kind of question. Examples:
— Ele não fez o que devia, né? (He didn't do what he should, did he?)
— É. (He didn't.)
or
— Ela já foi atriz, né? (She was an actress, wasn't she?)
— É. (She was.) or – É/Sim, ela já foi. (If a longer answer is preferred)
It reveals a natural tendency that only occurs in Brazilian Portuguese, to not reply an answer to the question itself, literally, but many times already focused on what the speaker has intended to know through the question.
It is also common to negate statements twice for emphasis, with não (no) at the beginning and end of the sentence:
- BP:
Or only:
- BP:
Sometimes even a "triple" negative is also possible. For example:
In some regions, the first "não" of a "não...não" pair is pronounced [nũ].
In some places, however, like Northeastern Brazil, the first of these two nãos is considered redundant informal speech, resulting in a word order for negation opposite to the one still prevailing in European Portuguese:
- EP:
- — Você fala inglês?
- — Não falo. (I don't speak)
- BP (Northeastern variant):
- — Você fala inglês?
- — Falo não. (I speak not)
Translation
- "Do you speak English?"
- "No, I don't."
Imperative
Standard Portuguese forms commands according to the grammatical personGrammatical person
Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...
of the subject (the being who is ordered to do the action) using either the imperative form of the verb or the present subjunctive. Thus one should use different inflections according to the pronoun used as subject: tu ('you', grammatical 2nd person with the imperative form) or você ('you', grammatical 3rd person with the present subjunctive). For example:
- Tu és burro, cala a boca!
- Você é burro, cale a boca!
- "You are stupid, shut up!"
Currently, several dialects of BP have largely lost the second person pronouns, but even those dialects – and, of course, the ones which still use tu – 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 gramatically incorrect, but completely dominant in informal language)
It is interesting to notice that, although Brazilians use 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 2nd person imperative sê and está are never used; the 3rd person subjunctive forms seja and esteja may be used instead.
The negative command forms use the subjunctive
Subjunctive mood
In grammar, the subjunctive mood is a verb mood typically used in subordinate clauses to express various states of irreality such as wish, emotion, possibility, judgment, opinion, necessity, or action that has not yet occurred....
present tense
Present tense
The present tense is a grammatical tense that locates a situation or event in present time. This linguistic definition refers to a concept that indicates a feature of the meaning of a verb...
forms of the verb. However, as for the second person forms, Brazilians do not use the subjunctive-derived ones in spoken language. Instead, they employ the imperative forms. Example: "Não anda", rather than the grammatically correct "Não andes".
As for the other grammatical persons, there is not such phenomenon, because both the Positive Imperative and the Negative Imperative forms derive from their respective present tense forms in the subjunctive mood. Examples: Não jogue papel na grama (Don't throw paper on the grass); Não fume (Don't smoke).
Deictics
EP demonstrativeDemonstrative
In linguistics, demonstratives are deictic words that indicate which entities a speaker refers to and distinguishes those entities from others...
adjectives and pronouns and their corresponding adverbs have three forms corresponding to different degrees of proximity.
- Este 'this (one)' [near the speaker]
- Esse 'that (one)' [near the addressee]
- Aquele 'that (one)' [away from speaker and addressee]
In spoken BP, the first two of these adjectives/pronouns have merged into the second:
- Esse 'this (one)' [near the speaker] / 'that (one)' [near the addressee]
- Aquele 'that (one)' [away from both]
Example:
- Esta é a minha camisola nova. (EP)
- Essa é minha camiseta nova. (BP)
- This is my new T-shirt.
Perhaps as a means of avoiding or clarifying some doubts created by the fact that "este" ([st] > [s]) and "esse" merged into the same word, informal BP often uses the demonstrative pronoun with some adverb that indicates its placement in relation to the addressee. For example: 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).
Tu and você
In many dialects of BP, você (formal "you" in EP) replaces tu (informal "you" in EP). The object pronoun, however, is still te ([tʃi] or [ti]). Besides, other forms such as teu (possessive), ti (postprepositional), and contigo ("with you") are still common in most regions of Brazil, especially where tu still has frequent usage.
Hence, the combination of object te with subject você in informal BP, for example: 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, although it is argued by some that it is the third-person singular indicative which doubles as the imperative, e.g. Fala o que você fez instead of Fale o que você fez ("Tell what you did").
In the areas where você 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 object pronoun in informal BP. Hence a speaker may end up saying "I love you" in two ways: Eu amo você and/or Eu te amo. In parts of the Northeast, it is also common to use the indirect object pronoun lhe as a second-person object pronoun, thus resulting Eu lhe amo.
In parts of the South (Rio Grande do Sul
Rio Grande do Sul
Rio Grande do Sul is the southernmost state in Brazil, and the state with the fifth highest Human Development Index in the country. In this state is located the southernmost city in the country, Chuí, on the border with Uruguay. In the region of Bento Gonçalves and Caxias do Sul, the largest wine...
, Santa Catarina
Santa Catarina (state)
Santa Catarina is a state in southern Brazil with one of the highest standards of living in Latin America. Its capital is Florianópolis, which mostly lies on the Santa Catarina Island. Neighbouring states are Rio Grande do Sul to the south and Paraná to the north. It is bounded on the east by...
and southwest of Paraná
Paraná (state)
Paraná is one of the states of Brazil, located in the South of the country, bordered on the north by São Paulo state, on the east by the Atlantic Ocean, on the south by Santa Catarina state and the Misiones Province of Argentina, and on the west by Mato Grosso do Sul and the republic of Paraguay,...
), most of the Northeast (the main exceptions are parts of Bahia
Bahia
Bahia is one of the 26 states of Brazil, and is located in the northeastern part of the country on the Atlantic coast. It is the fourth most populous Brazilian state after São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro, and the fifth-largest in size...
– primarily its capital: Salvador
Salvador, Bahia
Salvador is the largest city on the northeast coast of Brazil and the capital of the Northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia. Salvador is also known as Brazil's capital of happiness due to its easygoing population and countless popular outdoor parties, including its street carnival. The first...
) and the city of Santos
Santos (São Paulo)
-Sister cities: Shimonoseki, Japan Nagasaki, Japan Funchal, Portugal Trieste, Italy Coimbra, Portugal Ansião, Portugal Arouca, Portugal Ushuaia, Argentina Havana, Cuba Taizhou. China Ningbo. China Constanţa, Romania Ulsan, South Korea Colón, Panama* Cadiz, Spain...
(in São Paulo
São Paulo (state)
São Paulo is a state in Brazil. It is the major industrial and economic powerhouse of the Brazilian economy. Named after Saint Paul, São Paulo has the largest population, industrial complex, and economic production in the country. It is the richest state in Brazil...
) and neighbourings the distinction between semiformal ‘você' and familiar ’tu' is still maintained; object and possessive pronouns pattern likewise. In Paraná
Paraná (state)
Paraná is one of the states of Brazil, located in the South of the country, bordered on the north by São Paulo state, on the east by the Atlantic Ocean, on the south by Santa Catarina state and the Misiones Province of Argentina, and on the west by Mato Grosso do Sul and the republic of Paraguay,...
state capital, Curitiba
Curitiba
Curitiba is the capital of the Brazilian state of Paraná. It is the largest city with the biggest economy of both Paraná and southern Brazil. The population of Curitiba numbers approximately 1.75 million people and the latest GDP figures for the city surpass US$61 billion according to...
, there’s a slight different variety, 'tu' is not generally used. Curitiba’s accent is slightly different too.
In Rio Grande do Sul
Rio Grande do Sul
Rio Grande do Sul is the southernmost state in Brazil, and the state with the fifth highest Human Development Index in the country. In this state is located the southernmost city in the country, Chuí, on the border with Uruguay. In the region of Bento Gonçalves and Caxias do Sul, the largest wine...
and Santa Catarina
Santa Catarina (state)
Santa Catarina is a state in southern Brazil with one of the highest standards of living in Latin America. Its capital is Florianópolis, which mostly lies on the Santa Catarina Island. Neighbouring states are Rio Grande do Sul to the south and Paraná to the north. It is bounded on the east by...
, for instance, você is almost never used in spoken language – o senhor/a senhora (highly formal third person pronoun) is employed whenever tu may sound too informal. The same happens in most of the Northeast, albeit in a less strict way (você may also be used informally, though mostly in order to sound more serious or polite).
In Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...
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 to no difference (sometimes in the same sentence).In Salvador
Salvador, Bahia
Salvador is the largest city on the northeast coast of Brazil and the capital of the Northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia. Salvador is also known as Brazil's capital of happiness due to its easygoing population and countless popular outdoor parties, including its street carnival. The first...
, tu is never used, você is always used.
Most Brazilians who use tu use it with the 3rd person verb: Tu vai ao banco. "Tu" accompanied by the second-person verb can still be found in Maranhão
Maranhão
Maranhão is a northeastern state of Brazil. To the north lies the Atlantic Ocean. Maranhão is neighbored by the states of Piauí, Tocantins and Pará. The people of Maranhão have a distinctive accent...
, Pernambuco
Pernambuco
Pernambuco is a state of Brazil, located in the Northeast region of the country. To the north are the states of Paraíba and Ceará, to the west is Piauí, to the south are Alagoas and Bahia, and to the east is the Atlantic Ocean. There are about of beaches, some of the most beautiful in the...
, Piauí
Piauí
Piauí is one of the states of Brazil, located in the northeastern part of the country.Piauí has the shortest coastline of any of the non-landlocked Brazilian states at 66 km , and the capital, Teresina, is the only state capital in the north east to be located inland...
and Santa Catarina
Santa Catarina (state)
Santa Catarina is a state in southern Brazil with one of the highest standards of living in Latin America. Its capital is Florianópolis, which mostly lies on the Santa Catarina Island. Neighbouring states are Rio Grande do Sul to the south and Paraná to the north. It is bounded on the east by...
, for instance, and in a few cities in Rio Grande do Sul
Rio Grande do Sul
Rio Grande do Sul is the southernmost state in Brazil, and the state with the fifth highest Human Development Index in the country. In this state is located the southernmost city in the country, Chuí, on the border with Uruguay. In the region of Bento Gonçalves and Caxias do Sul, the largest wine...
(although in the rest of the state speakers may or may not use it in more formal talk), mainly near the border with Uruguay
Uruguay
Uruguay ,officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay,sometimes the Eastern Republic of Uruguay; ) is a country in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area...
, with a slightly different pronunciation in some conjugations (tu vieste becomes tu viesse), which is also present in Santa Catarina
Santa Catarina (state)
Santa Catarina is a state in southern Brazil with one of the highest standards of living in Latin America. Its capital is Florianópolis, which mostly lies on the Santa Catarina Island. Neighbouring states are Rio Grande do Sul to the south and Paraná to the north. It is bounded on the east by...
and Pernambuco
Pernambuco
Pernambuco is a state of Brazil, located in the Northeast region of the country. To the north are the states of Paraíba and Ceará, to the west is Piauí, to the south are Alagoas and Bahia, and to the east is the Atlantic Ocean. There are about of beaches, some of the most beautiful in the...
. In Pará
Pará
Pará is a state in the north of Brazil. It borders the Brazilian states of Amapá, Maranhão, Tocantins, Mato Grosso, Amazonas and Roraima. To the northwest it also borders Guyana and Suriname, and to the northeast it borders the Atlantic Ocean. The capital is Belém.Pará is the most populous state...
, tu is used more often than você and is always accompanied by the second-person.
In Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
’s biggest city, São Paulo, the use of “tu” in print and conversation nowadays is not very common; “você” is used instead. However, it should be noted that São Paulo is now home to many imigrants 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: Você is almost entirely prevalent in the states of Minas Gerais
Minas Gerais
Minas Gerais is one of the 26 states of Brazil, of which it is the second most populous, the third richest, and the fourth largest in area. Minas Gerais is the Brazilian state with the largest number of Presidents of Brazil, the current one, Dilma Rousseff, being one of them. The capital is the...
(apart from portions of the countryside, such as the region of São João da Ponte, where "tu" is also present) and Espírito Santo
Espírito Santo
Espírito Santo is one of the states of southeastern Brazil, often referred to by the abbreviation "ES". Its capital is Vitória and the largest city is Vila Velha. The name of the state means literally "holy spirit" after the Holy Ghost of Christianity...
, but “tu” is frequent in 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
Caipira
Caipira is a Brazilian Portuguese term used to designate inhabitants of rural, remote areas of some Brazilian states—it refers to the people of lesser schooling. It can be considered pejorative when used to describe others, but it can also be used as a self-identifier without negative connotations...
dialect) and, especially, cê.
Third-person direct object pronouns
In spoken informal registers of BP, the third-person object pronouns 'o', 'a', 'os', and 'as', common in EP, are virtually nonexistent they are simply left out, or (when necessary, and usually only when referring to people) replaced by stressed subject pronouns (e.g., ele "he" or isso "that"); for example, 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 wouldn't know whether seu/sua refers to the second person você or to the third person ele/ela.
Because of that, BP tends to use the third-person possessive 'seu' to mean "your" – given that 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. In situations where no ambiguity may arise (especially in narrative texts), seu is also used to mean 'his' or 'her' (e.g. O candidato apresentou ontem o seu plano de governo para os próximos quatro anos), which doesn't happen in spoken language.
Both forms ('seu' or 'dele(s) /dela(s)') are considered grammatically correct in EP and BP.
Definite article before a 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, i.e. it does not mean a dialect completely abandoned this or that form.
In EP, a definite article normally accompanies a possessive when it comes before a noun: este é o meu gato 'this is my cat'. In Southeastern BP, especially in the standard dialects of the cities of Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...
and São Paulo
São Paulo
São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...
, 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 etc. In Northeastern BP dialects and in Central and Northern parts of the state of Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...
, (starting from Niterói
Niterói
Niterói is a municipality in the state of Rio de Janeiro, southeast region of Brazil. It has an estimated population of 487,327 inhabitants and an area of ², being the sixth most populous city in the state and the highest Human Development Index. Integrates the Metropolitan Region of Rio de...
), rural parts of Minas Gerais
Minas Gerais
Minas Gerais is one of the 26 states of Brazil, of which it is the second most populous, the third richest, and the fourth largest in area. Minas Gerais is the Brazilian state with the largest number of Presidents of Brazil, the current one, Dilma Rousseff, being one of them. The capital is the...
, and all over Espírito Santo
Espírito Santo
Espírito Santo is one of the states of southeastern Brazil, often referred to by the abbreviation "ES". Its capital is Vitória and the largest city is Vila Velha. The name of the state means literally "holy spirit" after the Holy Ghost of Christianity...
state, speakers tend to drop the definite article, but there is nothing such as a total preference for this form instead of the other, making both esse é o meu gato and esse é meu gato likely in their speech.
Formal written Brazilian Portuguese tends, however, to omit the definite article in accordance with prescriptive grammar rules derived from Classical Portuguese, even though the alternative form is also considered correct, but many professors 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 the word order changes between varieties.
| European Portuguese | Brazilian Portuguese (formal) |
Brazilian Portuguese (colloquial) |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| placement of clitic pronouns |
Eu amo-te. "I love you/thee." |
Eu te amo. "I you/thee love." |
|
| Responde-me! (tu) Responda-me! (você) "Answer me!" (you) |
Responda-me! (você) "Answer me!" (you) |
Me responde! (você)1 "To-me answer!" (you) |
|
| use of personal pronouns |
Eu vi-a. "I saw her." |
Eu a vi. "I her saw." |
Eu vi ela. "I saw she." |
The word order in the first Brazilian example is actually frequent in European Portuguese, too, for example in subordinate clauses like Sabes que eu te amo "You know that I love you", but not in simple sentences like "I love you." But in Portugal an object pronoun would never be placed at the start of a sentence, like 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 in all social classes.
In Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
the word order was very flexible, that's why "I love you" could be said Ego te amo, in a proclitic form, or Ego amo te, in an enclitic form. Latin also had the forms: Te amo, Amo te and Vos amo. Brazilian Portuguese Eu te amo is an example of proclisis just like French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
Je t'aime. Other forms are possible in Portuguese besides Eu te amo and Eu amo-te like: Te amo, Amo-te, Vos amo, Eu amo você and Amo você.
Use of prepositions
Just as in the case of English, where the 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 EP in the same context.chamar de
The verb chamar 'call' is normally used with the preposition de in BP, especially when it means 'to describe someone as':
- Chamei ele de ladrão. (BP)
- Chamei-lhe ladrão. (EP)
- I called him a thief.
em with verbs of movement
When describing movement toward a place, EP uses the preposition a with the verb, while BP uses em (contracted with an article if necessary):
- Fui na praça. (BP)
- Fui à praça. (EP)
- I went to the square. [temporarily]
In both EP and BP, the preposition para can also be used with such verbs, with no difference in meaning:
- Fui para a praça. (BP, EP)
- I went to the square. [definitively]
Diglossia
According to some contemporary BrazilBrazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
ian linguists (Bortoni, Kato, Mattos e Silva, Perini and most recently, with great impact, Bagno), Brazilian Portuguese may be a highly diglossic language
Diglossia
In linguistics, diglossia refers to a situation in which two dialects or languages are used by a single language community. In addition to the community's everyday or vernacular language variety , a second, highly codified variety is used in certain situations such as literature, formal...
. 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) and African languages
African languages
There are over 2100 and by some counts over 3000 languages spoken natively in Africa in several major language families:*Afro-Asiatic spread throughout the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and parts of the Sahel...
, while H-variant would be based on 19th century European Portuguese (and very similar to Standard European Portuguese, with only minor differences in spelling
Orthography
The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...
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 Standard 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
Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press is the publishing business of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII in 1534, it is the world's oldest publishing house, and the second largest university press in the world...
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 songs lyrics, love letters, intimate friends correspondence). Even language professors many times 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 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’ and/or ‘archaic’. There is a claim that 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, written by Brazilian modernist Mário de Andrade
Mário de Andrade
Mário Raul de Morais Andrade was a Brazilian poet, novelist, musicologist, art historian and critic, and photographer. One of the founders of Brazilian modernism, he virtually created modern Brazilian poetry with the publication of his Paulicéia Desvairada in 1922...
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, with only remarkably few linguists championing its cause. 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
- Nearly all 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 Stardard 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 Brazilian soap operasTelenovela
A telenovela is a limited-run serial dramatic programming popular in Latin American, Portuguese, and Spanish television programming. The word combines tele, short for televisión or televisão , and novela, a Spanish or Portuguese word for "novel"...
. Since Brazil joined Mercosul, the South American free trade zone, Portuguese has been increasingly studied as a foreign language
Foreign language
A foreign language is a language indigenous to another country. It is also a language not spoken in the native country of the person referred to, i.e. an English speaker living in Japan can say that Japanese is a foreign language to him or her...
in Spanish-speaking partner countries.
Many words of Brazilian origin (also used in other Portuguese-speaking countries) have also entered into English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
: samba
Samba
Samba is a Brazilian dance and musical genre originating in Bahia and with its roots in Brazil and Africa via the West African slave trade and African religious traditions. It is recognized around the world as a symbol of Brazil and the Brazilian Carnival...
, bossa nova
Bossa nova
Bossa nova is a style of Brazilian music. Bossa nova acquired a large following in the 1960s, initially consisting of young musicians and college students...
, cruzeiro
Brazilian cruzeiro
The cruzeiro was the currency of Brazil from 1942 to 1986 and again between 1990 and 1993. The name refers to the constellation of the Southern Cross, known in Brazil as Cruzeiro do Sul, or simply Cruzeiro ....
, milreis
Milréis
The mil-réis was effectively a unit of currency in both Portugal and Brazil .The usage of mil-réis as a word dates back to the economic crises of the 19th century, when the currency was devaluated for the first time and most prices reached the thousands.It was replaced in 1911 by the escudo in...
and capoeira
Capoeira
Capoeira is a Brazilian art form that combines elements of martial arts, sports, and music. It was created in Brazil mainly by descendants of African slaves with Brazilian native influences, probably beginning in the 16th century...
. 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).
pt-BR
pt-BR is a language codeLanguage code
A language code is a code that assigns letters and/or numbers as identifiers or classifiers for languages. These codes may be used to organize library collections or presentations of data, to choose the correct localizations and translations in computing, and as a shorthand designation for longer...
for the Brazilian Portuguese, defined by ISO standards (see ISO 639-1
ISO 639-1
ISO 639-1:2002, Codes for the representation of names of languages — Part 1: Alpha-2 code, is the first part of the ISO 639 series of international standards for language codes. Part 1 covers the registration of two-letter codes. There are 136 two-letter codes registered...
and ISO 3166-1 alpha-2
ISO 3166-1 alpha-2
ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes are two-letter country codes defined in ISO 3166-1, part of the ISO 3166 standard published by the International Organization for Standardization , to represent countries, dependent territories, and special areas of geographical interest...
) and Internet standard
Internet standard
In computer network engineering, an Internet Standard is a normative specification of a technology or methodology applicable to the Internet. Internet Standards are created and published by the Internet Engineering Task Force .-Overview:...
s (see IETF language tag).
See also
- Academia Brasileira de LetrasAcademia Brasileira de LetrasAcademia Brasileira de Letras is a Brazilian literary non-profit society established at the end of the 19th century by a group of 40 writers and poets inspired by the Académie Française. The first president, Machado de Assis, declared its foundation on December 15, 1896, with the statutes being...
- CELPE-BrasCELPE-BrasCELPE-Bras is the only certificate of proficiency in Brazilian Portuguese as a Second language officially recognized and developed by the Brazilian Ministry of Education...
- Italian BrazilianItalian Brazilian-Italian immigration to Brazil:The Italian government claims there are 25 million Brazilians of Italian descent, which would be the largest population of Italian background outside of Italy itself. There are no actual surveys, or even verifiable calculations supporting such claims. According to...
- List of English words of Portuguese origin List of word differences, on the Portuguese WiktionaryWiktionaryWiktionary is a multilingual, web-based project to create a free content dictionary, available in 158 languages...
- Portuguese dialectsPortuguese dialectsPortuguese dialects are variants of the Portuguese language that are shared by a substantial number of speakers over several generations, but are not sufficiently distinct from the official norms to be considered separate languages...
- Portuguese grammarPortuguese grammarPortuguese grammar, the morphology and syntax of the Portuguese language, is similar to the grammar of most other Romance languages—especially that of Spanish, and even more so to that of Galician...
- Portuguese languagePortuguese languagePortuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
- Portuguese personal pronouns
- Portuguese phonologyPortuguese phonologyThe phonology of Portuguese can vary considerably between dialects, in extreme cases leading to difficulties in intelligibility. This article focuses on the pronunciations that are generally regarded as standard...
- Spelling reforms of PortugueseSpelling reforms of PortugueseThis article is about the spelling reforms of the Portuguese language.-Historical background:Portuguese began to be used regularly in documents and poetry around the 12th century...
Some regional accents
- CaipiraCaipiraCaipira is a Brazilian Portuguese term used to designate inhabitants of rural, remote areas of some Brazilian states—it refers to the people of lesser schooling. It can be considered pejorative when used to describe others, but it can also be used as a self-identifier without negative connotations...
- Carioca
- FlorianopolitanoFlorianopolitan dialectFlorianopolitan dialect, pejoratively called manezês or manezinho, is a variety of Brazilian Portuguese heavily influenced by the Azorean dialect. It is spoken by inhabitants of Florianópolis of full or predominant Azorean descent. and also in cities neighbouring the capital, albeit with slight...
- Paulistano
- MineiroMineiroMineiro redirects here; for the Brazilian footballer nicknamed Mineiro, see Mineiro .Mineiro feminine: Mineira), also called Brazilian mountain dialect, is the Brazilian Portuguese term for the inhabitants of the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais and also the characteristic accent spoken in the...