what language is spoken in brazil?
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what language is spoken in brazil?
Portuguese is the first language of the vast majority of Brazilians, but numerous foreign words have expanded the national lexicon. The Portuguese language has undergone many transformations, both in the mother country and in its former colony, since it was first introduced into Brazil in the 16th century.
The two countries have largely standardized their spellings, but pronunciations, vocabularies, and the meanings of words have diverged so widely that it now may be easier for some Brazilians to understand Spanish-language films from other Latin American countries than films from Portugal.
Italians, Germans, Japanese, and Spanish-speaking immigrants have introduced new words and expressions in Brazilian Portuguese, such as the ubiquitous expression tchau (“farewell”),
which was adopted from the Italian ciao. Foreign products and technologies have introduced additional terms.
Brazil’s indigenous peoples speak dozens of discrete languages, and some authorities suggest that the greatest divergence of the Brazilian language from the Portuguese can be traced to initial contact with the Indians. The Tupian, or Tupí-Guaraní, language group has especially influenced Brazilian place-names and added perhaps thousands of words and expressions to Brazilian Portuguese. Tupian was the principal language of Brazil’s native peoples before European contact, and it became the lingua franca between Indians and Portuguese traders, missionaries, adventurers, and administrators; it was widely used in the Amazon region and western Brazil until the 19th century. The Tupian influence also caused Brazilians to enunciate more clearly and to use more nasal speech patterns than their Iberian counterparts.
What are the top 3 languages spoken in brazil?
The top 3 languages spoken in Brazil are:
- Portuguese
- Indigenous languages
- German
Portuguese
By most accounts, the Portuguese language first touched American shores in the year 1500, when Portuguese navigator Pedro Álvares Cabral reached Brazil.
The rest, as they say, is colonial history. There were 6 to 10 million Amerindian people living in what is modern-day Brazil at the time of Cabral’s arrival,
speaking about 1,300 different languages. Today, there are an estimated 170,000, speaking only 181. Though Portuguese Jesuit missionaries made an effort to study the Tupi languages of the coastal tribes, their main motivation for doing so was to more effectively proselytize to the indigenous people. This interchange continued until Marquês de Pombal prohibited the use of any indigenous languages in 1775.
Modern-day Brazilian Portuguese differs from European Portuguese thanks to the remaining traces of the African and Amerindian languages it came into contact with. There are over 205 million Portuguese speakers in Brazil,
compared with 10 million speakers in Portugal itself. It’s fair to say that Brazilian Portuguese has taken on a life of its own since the days of the colonizers.
To put things in perspective, there are approximately 207 million people living in Brazil today, which means 99 percent of the population speaks Portuguese.
Among the relatively small sliver of indigenous people, 17.5 percent do not speak Portuguese.
Still, Portuguese remains Brazil’s official language, and the language in which its government communications, media and public education are conducted. Thanks to the effect of mass media, whatever regional inflections may have existed are rapidly diminishing (and further cementing the uniformity of the language). Regardless, in the list of most spoken languages in Brazil, Portuguese takes the cake by far.
German
What? German spoken in Brazil? Yes, that’s right! Around 3 million speakers in the southern region of Brazil communicate in a dialect derived from the Hunsrückisch dialect of West Central German. It is so relevant to the cultural heritage of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, that two of its municipalities have declared it a co-official language! In Espírito Santo, Pomeranian German is also considered a crucial part of linguistic heritage. Speaking regular German in Brazil might not be the best option, though. Hunsrückish German has been so deeply influenced by Portuguese and several indigenous languages, that it has its own unique sound and vocabulary!
Italian
The third most natively spoken language of Brazil is Italian. Again, the language spoken in Brazil differs from that spoken in Europe. It even has its own name: Talian. However, known as Brazilian Venetian, this form of Italian is mostly spoken in Rio Grande do Sul, where it s a co-official language in some municipalities.
Italian was brought to Brazil towards the end of the 19th century, when a wave of settlers from Italy descended on the country. Some 60% of these immigrants hailed from Veneto – hence the distinct Venetian influence on the Italian spoken in Brazil.
Minority Languages
Brazil is one of the most bio-diverse places in the world with a great amount of cultural heritage and linguistic diversity. People are concerned about the language diversity in Brazil. As you visit Brazil you will get to know how to disserve Brazil is in Language. Immigrants from different countries bring different languages and now they are Brazil’s minority language. But the thing is the immigrant languages are different than the original European languages.
Japanese
Japanese definitely isn’t the first language that comes to mind when wondering what languages are spoken in Brazil. But Brazil is home to a large community of Japanese expats. In fact, it’s home to the world’s largest Japanese expat population, most of them calling Sao Paulo home. As a result there are roughly 1.5 million Japanese natives in Brazil, with many of the second and third generation immigrants having adopted Portuguese as their mother tongue.
French
Visiting the state of Amapá? Located in the North, Amapá is relatively isolated from the rest of the country, at the very northeastern corner, but its motto says everything we need to know: “Brazil starts here”. Because this state shares borders with French Guiana, its interactions with French-speaking populations is frequent. In fact, only two years ago, the state of Amapá received more than 33.383 tourists, of which 65% were French. Having said that, learning French in public schools has become mandatory in Amapá since 1999. A creole blending French and Portuguese is also frequently spoken in daily life – the karipuna.
Spanish
Is Brazil a Spanish-speaking country? No, it’s not. But do Brazilians speak Spanish? Some of them! In fact, around 460,000 Brazilians speak Spanish, according to Ethnologue. The two languages are similar in many ways, though more in their written form than their pronunciation. As such, many Brazilians are able to understand Spanish, though they may not speak it fluently.
As with speakers of all minority languages in Brazil, Spanish speakers pop up in clusters. Many of these occur close to Brazil’s borders with other Latin American countries, where Spanish is the primary language. Spanish speakers are also clustered in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, both of which have made learning Spanish mandatory.
English
English is often taught as a second language in schools in Brazil, and many Brazilians also partake in private English classes. Like most countries, English proficiency is most common inside the country’s major cities. moreover it is estimated that out of the estimated 5% of Brazilians who speak an additional language, 3% speak English.
Pomerano
The Pomeranian was the official language of Pomerania, a region between present-day Germany and Poland. With the end of World War II, most of the territory of Pomerania was annexed by Poland and, as a consequence, the Pomeranian language practically disappeared in Europe. Brazil is the only country in the world where Pomeranians are still regularly spoken of because of the arrival of thousands of immigrants in the 19th century. Currently, the Pomeranian language is spoken in five Brazilian states: Espírito Santo, Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul, Rondônia and Minas Gerais.
The pedagogical project of the program values the Pomeranian language as a factor of ethnic identity and preservation of culture, through oral and written language, dances, religion and other traditions, promoting the self-esteem of the language-speaking students. They are literate in Portuguese, but the Pomeranian is a discipline of the curriculum.
Differences between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese
Pronunciation is one of the main differences between the two languages. Brazilians emphasise the vowels when they speak, while the Portuguese pronounce the words with their mouths closed, without emphasising the vowels so much.
The pronunciation of some consonants is also different, especially the S at the end of words. In Brazilian Portuguese, an S at the end of a word is pronounced as SS, but in European Portuguese it is pronounced as SH.
As a result brazilians are more creative in their use of Portuguese, converting some nouns into verbs. The Portuguese expression “dar os parabéns” for congratulate is combined by Brazilians into one verb – “parabenizar”.
As with American and British English,moreover, European and Brazilian Portuguese have different words for the same thing. Here are some examples:
|
European Portuguese |
Brazilian Portuguese |
|
| Brown |
Castanho |
Marrom |
| Ice cream |
Gelado |
Sorvete |
| Fridge |
Frigorífico |
Geladeira |
| Bus |
Autocarro |
Ônibus |
| Train |
Comboio |
Trem |
| Bathroom |
Casa de banho |
Banheiro |
| Juice |
Sumo |
Suco |
