Languages of Brazil
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Portuguese is the only official language of Brazil and is spoken by nearly the entire population. Minority Amerindian languages survived in many places and can still be heard from the indigenous peoples. Other European or Asian languages brought by the immigrants can be heard in small rural communities or in borroughs of the big cities.
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[edit] Portuguese
Portuguese is the only official language of Brazil, and is spoken by nearly the entire population, being virtually the only language used in schools, newspapers, radio and TV, and used for all business and administrative purposes. Brazil is the only Portuguese-speaking nation in the Americas, giving it a national culture distinct from its Spanish-speaking neighbors.
Brazilian Portuguese has had its own development, influenced by the Amerindian and African languages. Due to it, the language is somewhat different from that spoken in Portugal and other Portuguese-speaking countries, mainly for phonological and orthographic differences - like, for instance, the difference between American-English and British-English.
[edit] Indigenous languages
Many Amerindian minority languages are spoken daily throughout the vast national territory of Brazil. Half of these languages are spoken by indigenous peoples, mostly in Northern Brazil. The main indigenous languages are: Apalaí, Arara, Bororo, Canela, Carajá, Caribe, Guarani (also in Paraguay), Kaingang, Nadëb, Nheengatu, Terena, Tucano, Tupiniquim, and many others.
[edit] Immigrant languages
[edit] European languages
Still others are spoken by small communities of descendants of immigrants, who are for the most part bilingual, in rural areas of Southern and South Brazil. A variation of the Hunsrückisch, the Riograndenser Hunsrückisch can be heard some parts of Rio Grande do Sul. Other Brazilian German dialects spoken in Brazil are Pomeranian language, spoken in Pomerode and in Santa Maria de Jetibá and Austrian dialects in Treze Tílias. In the Serras gaúchas region, we can find Italian dialect such as the Talian, based on the Venetian Language.
[edit] Asian languages
In the city of São Paulo, Korean, Chinese and Japanese can be heard in the immigrants districts, like Liberdade.
[edit] Bilinguism
English is part of the official high school curriculum, but just a minority achieve any usable degree of fluency. Spanish is also part of the curriculum and is understood to various degrees by most Brazilians, due to the similarities of the languages. Spanish is slightly more common on the border of Brazil with Spanish-speaking countries, and the mixture of Spanish and Portuguese is jokingly known as Portuñol.
[edit] List of languages and dialects of Brazil
[edit] See also
Argentina · Bolivia · Brazil · Chile · Colombia · Ecuador · Guyana · Panama* · Paraguay · Peru · Suriname · Trinidad and Tobago* · Uruguay · Venezuela ·
Dependencies and other territories
Aruba* · the Falkland Islands · French Guiana · the Netherlands Antilles* · South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands ·
* Territories also in or commonly reckoned elsewhere in the Americas (North America).
