Brazilian Portuguese

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Brazilian Portuguese is a collective name for the varieties of Portuguese written and spoken by virtually all the 180 million inhabitants of Brazil and by a couple million Brazilian immigrants and temporary workers in other countries, mainly in Canada, United States, Portugal, Paraguay and Japan. The term includes

• the formal written (FW) standard, the version of written Portuguese that is taught at schools throughout Brazil and used in almost all writing;
• the formal spoken (FS) standard, basically a spoken form of the above, used in formal contexts or when reading from a written text;
• the informal spoken (IS) language, used in all other occasions.

The Brazilian formal written standard, which is defined by law and by international agreements with other Portuguese-speaking countries, is very similar to the European one; but there are nevertheless many differences in spelling, lexicon, and grammar. Brazilian and European writers also have markedly different preferences when choosing between supposedly equivalent words or constructs.

The formal spoken standard, being tied to the written one, has those same minor differences in lexicon and grammar, but also substantial phonological differences, with noticeable regional variation.

The informal spoken language deviates substantially from the formal standard, even in the rules for agreement; and shows considerable regional variation.

Nevertheless, the cultural prestige and strong government support accorded to the written standard has maintained the unity of the language over the whole country, and ensured that all regional varieties remain fully intelligible. Starting in the 1960s, the nationwide dominance of TV networks based in the southeast (Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo) has made the dialect of that region into an unofficial standard for the spoken language as well.

Contents 1 History 1.1 The Portuguese legacy 1.2 Written and spoken languages 1.3 Influences from other languages 1.4 Impact of Brazilian Portuguese 2 Formal and informal registers 3 Formal written Brazilian Portuguese 3.1 Spelling 3.2 Lexicon 3.3 Grammar 3.3.1 Continuous action 3.3.2 Ter instead of haver 3.3.3 Personal pronouns 3.3.3.1 Syntax 3.3.3.2 Contracted forms 3.3.3.3 Mesoclisis 3.3.3.4 Reflexive verbs 3.4 Preferences 3.4.1 Simple future and conditional 4 BP/EP differences in the formal spoken language 4.1 Phonology 4.1.1 Vowels 4.1.2 Consonants 5 BP/EP differences in the informal spoken language 5.1 Grammar 5.1.1 Personal pronouns 5.1.1.1 Third-person direct object pronouns 5.1.1.2 Tu and você 5.1.1.3 Seu and Dele 5.1.2 The imperative 6 See also 7 External links

[edit] History

[edit] The Portuguese legacy

Portuguese in Brazil is a legacy of Portuguese colonization of the Americas. 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 the Lingua Geral, a lingua franca based on Amerindian languages that was used by the Jesuit missionaries; as well as with various African languages spoken by the hundreds of thousands of slaves brought to the country between the 17th to 19th centuries.

By the end of the 18th century, however, Portuguese had affirmed itself as the national language. That status was further consolidated with the arrival in Brazil of over 1.4 million new immigrants from Portugal during the 19th and 20th centuries. The aborted colonization attempts by the French in Rio de Janeiro in the 16th century and by the Dutch in the Northeast in the 17th century had negligible effect on the language. Even the substantial non-Portuguese-speaking immigration waves of the late 19th and early 20th century — mostly from Italy, Spain, Germany, Japan, and Lebanon — were linguistically integrated into the Portuguese-speaking majority within a couple of generations.

[edit] Written and spoken languages

The written language taught in Brazilian schools has always been based on the standard of Portugal, and Portuguese writers were always regarded as models by Brazilian authors and teachers. Thus, the essential identity of the languages of Brazil and Portugal was always taken for granted, and was eventually strengthened by various laws and international treaties that established a single spelling system for all the major Portuguese-speaking countries ^{[citation needed]}.

On the other hand, the spoken language suffered none of the constraints that applied to the written language. School teachers have generally been concerned with the student's written expression, paying little attention to their speech (or to their own). Moreover, Brazilians in general have had very little exposure to the European speech, even after the advent of radio, TV, and movies. Therefore the language spoken in Brazil has evolved largely independently of that spoken in Portugal; and, as one might expect, in quite different directions ^{[citation needed]}.

[edit] Influences from other languages

Apart from the random drift caused by the isolation of the two communities, the evolution of Brazilian Portuguese was certainly influenced by the languages it supplanted: first the Amerind tongues of the natives, then the various African languages of the slaves, and finally the speeches of the European and Asian immigrants. It must be noted, incidentally, that a large fraction of present-day Brazilians have ancestors in one or more of those groups.

Brazilian Portuguese has borrowed words from many sources. From South America, words deriving from the Tupi-Guaraní family of languages are particularly prevalent in place names (Itaquaquecetuba, Pindamonhangaba, Caruaru, Ipanema). The influence of Amerind and African languages is also quite visible in the lexicon. The native languages contributed the names for most of the plants and animals found in Brazil, such as arara ("macaw"), jacaré ("South American alligator"), tucano ("toucan"), mandioca ("manioc"), pipoca ("popcorn"), abacaxi ("pineapple"), and many more. Many of these words entered the Brazilian Portuguese lexicon already in the 16th century, and some of them, like pipoca and abacaxi were eventually borrowed by European Portuguese. The African languages provided many words too, especially related to food, such as quindim, acarajé, moqueca; and household concepts, such as cafuné ("caress on the head"), curinga ("joker card"), and caçula ("youngest child"). Capoeira, marimba, and samba are also the African (Bantu) words borrowed by Brazilian Portuguese that gained popularity, and these were also gained by European Portuguese and English. Later immigrants contributed many words too, like chope (from german schoppenbier, or "tap beer") and nhoque (from italian pasta, "gnocchi").

There are also many borrowings from other European languages such as English, French, German and Italian, and, to a lesser extent, from Asian languages such as Japanese.

The influence of those languages in the phonology and grammar of Brazilian Portuguese are harder to detect, and nearly impossible to prove. However, some regional features of Brazilian informal speech, such as the loss of final [r] and [s] in rural dialects, seem to match phonological features of the Amerind and African languages, which were more present in those areas than in the cities ^{[citation needed]}. Also, it is claimed that the virtual disappearance of certain verb inflections in Brazil, such as the past pluperfect and the second person plural, and the Brazilian's marked preference for compound tenses, recall the grammatical simplification that is observed in the formation of pidgins. However, the same or similar processes can be verified in the European variant.

Regardless of these borrowings, it must be kept in mind that Brazilian Portuguese is not literally a Portuguese creole, since both grammar and vocabulary remain real Portuguese.

[edit] Impact of Brazilian Portuguese

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 operas. Since Brazil joined Mercosul, the South American free trade zone, Portuguese has been increasingly studied as a second language in Spanish-speaking partner countries. A mixed language of Portuguese and Spanish, nicknamed Portuñol or Portunhol, is spoken in regions bordering countries such as Uruguay.

Many words of Brazilian origin (also used in other Portuguese-language countries) have also entered into English: samba, bossa nova, cruzeiro, milreis, capoeira, and especially marimba. While originally Angolan, the words "capoeira" and "samba" only became famous worldwide because of their 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) [and some Amerindian Brazilians (Indio-Brasileiros in Portuguese), Afro-Brazilians (Afro-Brasileiros in Portuguese), mestiços, mulatos, and zambos], who brought rich culture mixed with African and Native American elements.

[edit] Formal and informal registers

The linguistic situation of Brazil can be described as one of extreme diglossia, the intimate coexistence of two varieties or "registers" of the language — "formal" and "informal" — which are used simultaneously, mixed in continuously varying proportions depending on the speaker and occasion. While diglossia inevitably develops in every literate society, it is much more striking in Brazil than in English or in European Portuguese.

The formal register of Brazilian Portuguese has both 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 written 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 in 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.

For example, consider the following sample of formal written Portuguese (FW), as it would be written by a secretary, and its formal spoken version (FS) in the São Paulo dialect and semi-literal English translation (EN):

EN: "We need to inform everybody that there won't be power for the elevators."

FW: Precisamos informar a todos que não haverá energia para os elevadores.

FS: [presi'zɐ̃muz infor'mar a 'todus ki 'nɐ̃w ave'ra ener'ʒia 'para us eleva'do]

Here is how the same person could deliver the same message orally, in informal spoken register (IS):

IS (as it would be written): A gente tem que falar pra todo mundo que não vai ter força pr'os elevadores.

IS (IPA): [a 'ʒenti 'tẽĩ ki fa'la pra 'todu 'mũdu ki nɐ̃u vai te 'forsa prus eleva'doris]

EN: "We have to tell 'all the world' that there is no 'force' for the elevators."

This examples shows that FS and IS can differ in

lexicon: precisamos → temos que ("we have to"), informar → falar ("to tell"), etc.;

change of existential verb: haverá → terá ("there will be");

change of grammatical person: temos → a gente tem;

choice of verbal form: terá → vai ter;

contractions: para os → pros ("for the");

suppression of redundant plurals: elevadores → elevador;

loss of final -r: [fa'lar] → [fa'la], [eleva'dor] → [eleva'do].

This example is somewhat extreme: the speech of most people will be some mixture of the informal (IS) and formal (FS) spoken registers, the proportions varying according to the speaker's education and the situation. Thus, for example, the same person may deliver something close to the FS version when speaking in a TV interview. The adjustment is largely unconscious, and it is not unusual to hear informal and formal constructs mixed in the same speech, or even in the same sentence. As is usually the case in diglossic communities, an educated person who has to write down a spoken text (e.g. a secretary taking dictation) will unconsciously translate IS into FW, and back again when delivering the message in person.

[edit] Formal written Brazilian Portuguese

The written Brazilian Portuguese standard differs from the European one to about the same extent that American written English differs from British English; or to the same extent observed among the national variants of French and Spanish. The differences extend to spelling, lexicon, and grammar.

[edit] Spelling

The Brazilian spellings of certain words differ from those used in Portugal and the other Portuguese-speaking countries. Some of these differences are merely orthographical, but others reflect true differences in pronunciation.

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, 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 in 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.

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 arsênio / EP arsénio. 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 close 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 as g (favored in EP). Thus, for example, we have BP berinjela/ EP beringela ("eggplant").

[edit] Lexicon

Apart from the general spelling differences noted above, the vocabularies of Brazilian and European Portuguese differ also in a couple of thousand words. Many of them refer to concepts that were introduced separately in BP and EP. Since the Brazilian independence in 1822, BP has tended to borrow words from English, whereas EP tended to borrow the equivalent words from French. Moreover, BP generally adopts foreign words with minimal phonetic adjustments, while EP tends to apply deeper morphological changes^{[citation needed]}. However, there are instances of BP transliterating 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 esporte (alternatives: desporto, desporte) ← English "sport" versus EP desporto ← Spanish deporte

BP jaqueta ← English "jacket" versus EP blusão ← EP blusa ← French blouse

BP concreto ← English "concrete" versus EP betão ← French beton

BP grampeador ("stapler") ← grampo ← German Krampe versus EP agrafador ← agrafo ← French agrafe.

A few other examples are given in the following table:

Brazil	Portugal	English
abridor de latas	abre-latas	can opener
água-viva	alforreca, água-viva	jellyfish
AIDS	SIDA	AIDS
alho poró	alho-porro	leek
aquarela	aguarela	watercolor
aterrissagem	aterragem	landing
banheiro, lavabo, sanitário	casa de banho, lavabos, sanitários	bathroom
breque, freio	travão, freio	brake
brócolis	brócolos	broccoli
câncer, cancro (mostly rural)	cancro	cancer
carona	boleia	hitchhiking
carteira (or "carta") de motorista	carta de condução	driving licence
carteira de identidade	bilhete de identidade	ID card
celular	telemóvel	cell phone (US), mobile phone (UK)
Cingapura	Singapura	Singapore
dublagem	dobragem	dubbing
durex	fita-cola	clear tape
Band-Aid, adesivo	adesivo, penso rápido	plaster (UK), Band-Aid (US)
time, equipe	equipa, equipe	team
favela	bairro de lata	slum quarters
ferrovia	caminho de ferro	railway
fila	bicha, fila	line (US), queue (UK)
fones de ouvido	auscultadores, auriculares, fones	headphones
gol	golo	goal
Irã	Irão	Iran
Islã	Islão	Islam
jaqueta, blusão	blusão	jacket
locatário, arrendatário	arrendatário	tenant
maiô	fato de banho	woman's swimsuit
mamadeira	biberão	baby bottle
metrô	metro, metropolitano	subway
nadadeiras, barbatanas	barbatanas	swimming fins
ônibus	autocarro	bus
kombi, perua (obsolete), van	carrinha	station wagon (US), estate car (UK)
rúgbi	râguebi	rugby
requeijão, queijo cremoso	queijo creme	cream cheese
secretária eletrônica	atendedor de chamadas	answering machine
trem	comboio	train
uísque	whisky, uísque	whisk(e)y

Some words, which are oftentimes mistakenly given as examples of dialectal lexical differences, actually do not denote the same concepts. For example: "abacaxi" and "ananás" designate two different kinds of pineapple; "grama" often refers to any kind of grass in a garden or urban area whereas "relva" or "relvado" refers to natural grass of forests, etc. 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.

[edit] Grammar

[edit] Continuous action

BP seldom has the present continuous construct estar a + infinitive, which, in contrast, has become quite common in EP. In BP, the present continuous must be expressed by estar + gerund. Thus Brazilians will always write ela está dançando ("she is dancing"), never ela está a dançar. The same restriction applies to several other uses of the gerund: BP always writes ficamos conversando ("we kept on talking") and ele trabalha cantando ("he sings while he works"), never ficamos a conversar and ele trabalha a cantar as is the case in most varieties of EP.

It must be noted, however, that 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 will also tend to use estar + gerund in the same way as Brazilians.

[edit] Ter instead of haver

In a few compound verb tenses, BP uses the auxiliary ter (originally "to hold", "to own"), where EP would normally use haver ("shall, will"). In particular, the EP construction há-de cantar ("he will sing" or "he shall sing") is hardly ever used in BP. BP also uses ter in existential sense, whereas EP would use haver, hence "não tem dinheiro" instead of "não há dinheiro" ("there is no money").

[edit] Personal pronouns

[edit] Syntax

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 to start a sentence with a proclitic pronoun; so both will write Deram-lhe o livro ("They gave her the book") instead of Lhe deram o livro.

[edit] 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. But this form is practically used only on Portugal.

[edit] Mesoclisis

The mesoclitic placement of pronouns (between the verb stem and its inflection suffix) is viewed as archaic in BP, and therefore is restricted to very formal situations. 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")

[edit] Reflexive verbs

Brazilian Portuguese often treats as intransitive certain verbs that in EP are reflexive, and therefore would require a reflexive weak pronoun. Thus, for example, BP would often write ele lembra ("he remembers") instead of ele se lembra, or eu deito "I lie down" instead of eu me deito. An exception to the rule may be the state of Rio Grande do Sul, where such verbs are often used as reflexive, possibly because of influence from Spanish as spoken in neighbouring Argentina and Uruguay - and formerly in Rio Grande do Sul as well.

[edit] Preferences

There are many differences between formal written BP and EP that are simply a matter of different preferences between two alternative words or constrictions that are both officially valid and acceptable.

[edit] Simple future and conditional

BP often uses ia cantar ("he was going to sing") or teria cantado ("he would have sung") instead of the sythetic cantaria.

[edit] BP/EP differences in the formal spoken language

[edit] Phonology

In many ways, compared to European Portuguese (EP), Brazilian Portuguese (BP) is conservative in its phonology. In some areas of Brazil, the speech is close to that of Portuguese as spoken in the 16th and 17th centuries.^{[citation needed]} This also occurs in São Tomean Portuguese.

[edit] Vowels

Brazilian speakers generally pronounce all vowels more clearly and distinctly than the European speakers. 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 follow these rules also for vowels before the stressed syllable. In contrast, EP 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] in BP but [s(ɨ)ˈtẽbɾu] in EP.

[edit] Consonants

One of the most noticeable tendencies of BP is the palatalization of /d/ and /t/ in some regions, which are pronounced as [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 began in Rio de Janeiro and is often still associated with this city, but is now standard in other 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 the Japanese language.

BP tends to break up clusters where the first sound is not /r/, /l/, or /s/ by the insertion of /i/ (although clusters ending in /l/ or /r/ are allowed, as are /ks/ and sometimes /kt/), and similarly to eliminate words ending with consonants other than /r/, /l/, or /s/ by the addition of /i/. Syllable-final /l/ is vocalized to [w], and syllable-final /r/ is weakened in most regions to [χ] or [h], or dropped entirely (especially at the ends of words). Mute of syllable-final [r], or non-rhoticity, is not only affected by accent features of Native American and African languages, but also by accent features of Japanese and German when descendants of Japanese-Brazilian and German-Brazilian settlers speak Portuguese. This sometimes results in rather striking transformations of common words. The brand name "MacDonald's", for example, is rendered [makiˈdõnawdʒi], and the word "rock" is rendered as [ˈhɔki]. (Initial /r/ and doubled 'rr' 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 a syllable in Portuguese (being replaced with nasalization on the previous vowel), BP has a phonology that strongly favors open syllables, as in Japanese.

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.

Related to this is the difference in pronunciation of the consonant written nh. This is [ɲ] in EP but [̃j̃] in BP, a nasalized /j/, which nasalizes the preceding vowel ^{[citation needed]}.

BP did not participate in many sound changes that later affected EP, particularly in the realm of consonants. In BP, /b/, /d/, and /g/ are stops in all positions, while they are weakened to fricatives [β], [ð] and [ɣ] in EP, as in Spanish. 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 is particular known for not having it. Elsewhere, such as in the Northeast, it is more likely to happen before a consonant than word-finally, and varies from region to region or even from speaker to speaker.

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 BP.

An interesting change that is in the process of spreading in BP, probably 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". The change is spreading to other vowels, however, and at least in the Northeast the normal pronunciations of voz "voice" and Jesus are [vojs] 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 (literally "half", as in "half a dozen") when spelling out phone numbers.

[edit] BP/EP differences in the informal spoken language

There are various differences between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese, such as the dropping of the second person in everyday usage and the use of subject pronouns (ele, ela, eles, elas) as direct objects. Portuguese people can understand Brazilian Portuguese well. However, some Brazilians find European Portuguese difficult to understand. This is mainly due to the fact 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. For similar reasons, Portuguese speakers in general usually find it easier to understand Spanish than the reverse.

[edit] 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 the use of subject pronouns as objects in the third person. Non-standard inflections are also common in colloquial Brazilian Portuguese.

	European Portuguese	Brazilian Portuguese
placement of clitic pronouns	Eu amo-te. "I love you."	Eu te amo. Literally, "I you love".
	Responde-me! "Answer me!"	Me responde! Literally, "Me answer!"
use of personal pronouns	Eu vi-a. "I saw her."	Eu vi ela. (colloquial) Literally, "I saw she".
inflection of nouns, adjectives and verbs	As moças1 voltaram ontem. "The girls came back yesterday."	As moça voltou ontem. (colloquial) Literally, "The [plural] girl came back [singular] yesterday".

¹Although the word moças is not often used in modern European Portuguese, the intent here is to compare the morphology.

The examples in the table are in increasing degree of informality. 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, would be considered ungrammatical by most educated urban middle-class speakers of BP, but it is nonetheless widely heard in Brazil, especially in certain regional dialects like caipira and mineiro.

[edit] Personal pronouns

Main article: Portuguese pronouns

[edit] 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.

[edit] Tu and você

In most dialects of BP, 'você' (formal "you" in EP) replaces tu (informal "you" in EP). (Thus, there is no formal/informal distinction such as exists in most European languages.) The object pronoun, however, is still te [tʃi], and other forms such as teu (possessive), ti (post-prepositional) and contigo ("with you") may still remain in some regions of Brazil, especially when tu is still used. Hence, the combination of object te with subject você, for example, eu te disse para você ir "I told you that you should go". The imperative forms, however, look like the EP second-person forms, although it is argued by some that it is the third-person singular indicative which doubles as the imperative.

The forms ti and contigo are replaced with você and com você. Either você (following the verb) or te (preceding the verb) can be used as object pronoun: Hence a speaker may end up saying "I love you" in two ways: Eu amo você and/or eu te amo.

In the South (Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, parts of Paraná) and the cities of Santos (in Sao Paulo) and Recife (in Pernambuco), the distinction between semi-formal você and familiar tu is still maintained; object and possessive pronouns pattern likewise. In Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina, for instance, você is almost never used in spoken language - o senhor/a senhora is employed whenever tu may sound too informal. In Rio de Janeiro, parts of the Northeast (interior of some northeastern states and some speakers from the coast) and the North, both tu and você (and associated object and possessive pronouns) are used, with no difference. 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, Piauí and Santa Catarina, for instance, and in a few cities in Rio Grande do Sul near the border with Uruguay, with a slightly different pronunciation in some conjugations (tu vieste pronounced tu viesse), which also is present in Santa Catarina and Pernambuco.

[edit] Seu and Dele

Standard BP tends to use the third-person possessive 'seu' to mean "your", and uses 'dele,' 'dela', 'deles', and 'delas' (literally "of him/her/them", and placed after the noun) as third-person possessive forms. In situations however where no ambiguity arises (especially in narrative texts), 'seu' may be used as well to mean 'his' or 'her' (e.g. O candidato apresentou ontem o seu plano de governo para os próximos quatro anos).

It must be noted, though, that both forms ('seu' or 'dele(s)/dela(s)') are considered grammatically correct both in EP as well as in BP.

[edit] The imperative

Classical Portuguese inflected the imperative according to the grammatical person of the subject (the being who is ordered to do the action). Thus one should use different inflections when that subject is treated as tu ("you", grammatical 2nd person) or você ("you", grammatical 3rd person):

tu és burro, cala a boca!

você é burro, cale a boca!

"you are stupid, shut up!"

Currently, many dialects of BP have largely lost the 2nd person subjects, but the same dialects might still use the 2rd person imperative, even with você:

BP: você é burro, cale a boca! OR

BP: você é burro, cala a boca! (in this case, sometimes people join "cala" + "a" + "boca", resulting on você é burro, calaboca on Brazilian Portuguese Informal Speech.)

Moreover, BP speakers rarely use the subjunctive for the Negative Imperative; instead they will employ the Imperative inflexion. This never occurs in EP, except for some jocular contexts or when scolding or giving incisive orders to a child. Here are some examples:

Não faz nada, eu te ajudo! (Do not do anything, I'll help you [occurs mainly in spoken BP]).

Não faças nada, eu ajudo-te! (same meaning [occurs mainly in EP. Compare also the placement of the pronoun ''te'']).

Note that 3rd person subjunctive verb forms are nevertheless frequently used in Brazil, both as Negative and Positive Imperatives, in written signs and public announcements (e.g. Não jogue papel na grama; Não fume, Toque a descarga após usar a privada), or in (printed, Internet, TV, or radio) advertising (e.g. Pague um e leve três, Emagreça dez quilos dormindo). The subjunctive form of the verb "ser" (seja) is also always used to form the Imperative, even in informal spoken language (e.g. Seja um bom menino; não seja bobo, garoto!).

[edit] See also

• Portuguese dialects
• Portuguese phonology
• Portuguese grammar
• Portuguese pronouns
• Academia Brasileira de Letras
• List of word differences, on the Portuguese Wiktionary (in Portuguese)
• Caipira
• Mineiro
• Manezês
• Spelling reforms of Portuguese
• Diglossia: Brazilian Portuguese

[edit] External links

• Brazilian Portuguese Podcast - Audio Lessons
• Brazilian Portuguese Grammar - Grammar specifically designed for English speakers
• English/Portuguese and Portuguese/English Translator and Dictionary
• Vernacular Features in Educated Speech in Brazilian Portuguese
• Brazilian Portuguese Online
• Brazilian and European Portuguese
• List of words which are different in Brazilian and European Portuguese
• Brazilian Portuguese Voice Over