Brazilian Portuguese

For Brazilians of Portuguese descent, see Portuguese Brazilian.
Brazilian Portuguese
Português do Brasil
brasileiro
Native speakers
 190 million  (1998)[1]
Official status
Official language in
  Brazil
Language codes
ISO 639-3 –
Glottolog braz1246[2]

Brazilian Portuguese (português do Brasil [poʁtuˈɡez do bɾaˈziw]) is a set of dialects of the Portuguese language used mostly in Brazil. It is spoken by virtually all of the 200 million inhabitants of Brazil[3] and by perhaps two million Brazilian emigrants, mainly in the United States, Japan, Paraguay, Portugal, and several other European countries (see Brazilian diaspora). Brazilian Portuguese has had its own development. As a result, this variant of the Portuguese language is somewhat different, mostly in phonology, from the variant spoken in Portugal and other Portuguese-speaking countries (the dialects of the other countries, partly because of the more recent end of Portuguese colonialism in these regions, have a closer connection to contemporary European Portuguese). The degree of difference between the two variants of the Portuguese language is a controversial topic. In formal writing, the written Brazilian standard differs from the European one to about the same extent that written American English differs from written British English.[4] Brazilian and European Portuguese differ more from each other in phonology and prosody. In 1990, the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP), which included representatives from all countries with Portuguese as the official language, reached an agreement on the reform of the Portuguese orthography to unify the two standards then in use by Brazil on one side and the remaining Lusophone countries on the other. This spelling reform went into effect in Brazil on 1 January 2009. In Portugal, the reform was signed into law by the President on 21 July 2008 allowing for a 6-year adaptation period, during which both orthographies co-existed. All of the CPLP countries have signed the reform. In Brazil, this reform will be in force as of January 2016. Portugal and the other Portuguese speaking countries have already started using the new orthography.

In spite of the use of Brazilian Portuguese by people of various linguistic backgrounds, a number of other factors—especially its comparatively recent development and the cultural prestige and strong government support accorded to the written standard—have helped to maintain the unity of the language over the whole of Brazil and to ensure that all regional varieties remain mutually intelligible. Starting in the 1960s, the nationwide dominance of television networks based in the southeast (Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo) has made the accents of that region into a common spoken standard for the mass media, as well.

History

Portuguese legacy

The existence of 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 Língua Geral—a lingua franca based on Amerindian languages that was used by the Jesuit missionaries—as well as with various African languages spoken by millions of slaves brought to the country between the 16th and 19th centuries.

By the end of the 18th century, 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 interior, and the huge immigration of Portuguese people, who brought their language and became the most important ethnic group in Brazil.

Beginning in the early 18th century, Portugal's government made many efforts to expand the use of Portuguese throughout the colony, particularly because its consolidation in Brazil would help guarantee to Portugal 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 administration of the Marquis of Pombal (1750–1777), Brazil started to use only Portuguese, as the Marquis expelled the Jesuit missionares (who had taught Língua Geral) and prohibited the use of Nhengatu, or Lingua Franca.[5]

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 effects on Portuguese. Even the substantial waves of non-Portuguese-speaking immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (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 southernmost states (Paraná, Santa Catarina, and Rio Grande do Sul)—in the case of Germans, Italians and Slavs—and in rural areas of the state 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 (German, Polish, Ukrainian, and Italian) and Japanese immigrants – mostly in the South and Southeast – and villages of indigenous peoples, who constitute an extremely small portion 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 development of Brazilian Portuguese has been influenced by other languages with which it has come into contact: first the Amerindian languages of the original inhabitants, then the various African languages brought by the slaves, and finally those of later European and Asian immigrants. Although the vocabulary is still predominantly Portuguese, the influence of other languages is evident in the Brazilian lexicon, which today includes, for example, hundreds of words of Tupi–Guarani origin referring to local flora and fauna; numerous Yoruba words related to foods, religious concepts, and musical expressions; and English terms from the fields of modern technology and commerce.

From South America, words deriving from the Tupi language are particularly prevalent in place names (Itaquaquecetuba, Pindamonhangaba, Caruaru, Ipanema, Paraíba). The native languages also contributed the names of most of the plants and animals found in Brazil, such as arara ("macaw"), jacaré ("South American alligator"), tucano ("toucan"), mandioca ("cassava"), abacaxi ("pineapple"), and many more. However, 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.

African languages provided hundreds of words too, especially in the following subjects: food (e.g., quitute, quindim, acarajé, moqueca); religious concepts (mandinga, macumba, orixá ("orisha"), and axé); Afro-Brazilian music (samba, lundu, maxixe, berimbau); body-related parts and diseases (banguela "toothless", bunda "buttocks", capenga "lame", caxumba "mumps"); geographical features (cacimba "well", quilombo or mocambo "runaway slave settlement", senzala "slave quarters"); articles of clothing (miçanga "beads", abadá "capoeira uniform", tanga "loincloth"); and household concepts, such as cafuné ("caress on the head"), curinga ("joker card"), caçula ("youngest child"), and moleque ("brat, spoiled child"). Although the African slaves had various ethnic origins, by far most of the borrowings were contributed (1) by Bantu languages (above all, Kimbundu, from Angola, and Kikongo from Angola and the area that is now the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo),[6] and (2) by Niger-Congo languages, notably Yoruba/Nagô, from what is now Nigeria, and Jeje/Ewe language, from what is now Benin.

There are also many borrowings from other European languages: especially English and French, but also German and Italian. In addition there are a few loanwords from Japanese.

Brazilian Portuguese has borrowed copiously from English, especially words related to the following fields:

French has contributed words for foods, furniture, and luxurious fabrics, as well as for various abstract concepts. Examples include 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..., à la carte, à la .... Brazilian Portuguese tends to adopt French suffixes as in aterrissagem (Fr. atterrissage "landing" [aviation]), differently from European Portuguese (cf. Eur.Port. aterragem). Brazilian Portuguese also tends to adopt culture-bound concepts from French, but when it comes to technology, the major influence is from English, while European Portuguese tends to adopt technological terms from French. That is the difference between Braz. estação and Eur. 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 a social context.

Contributions from German and Italian include terms for foods, music, arts and architecture.

From German, besides strudel, pretzel, bratwurst, kuchen (also bolo cuca) sauerkraut (also spelled chucrute from French "choucroute" and pronounced [ʃuˈkɾutʃi]), Oktoberfest, biergarten, Osterbaum, there are also abstract terms from German such as blitz "police action" and possibly encrenca "difficult situation" (perhaps from Ger. ein Kranker 'a sick person'). 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.

Italian loan words and expressions, in addition to those that are related to food or music, include 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 the large Italian immigrant population, parts of the Southern and Southeastern states exhibit some Italian influence on prosody, including patterns of intonation and stress.

Fewer words have been borrowed from Japanese. The latter borrowings are also mostly related to food and drinks or culture-bound concepts, such as quimono, from Japanese kimono.

Aside from the above-mentioned prosodic effects from Italian, the influence of other languages on the phonology and grammar of Brazilian Portuguese have been minor. Some authors claim that the loss of initial es- in the forms of the verb estar (e.g. "Tá bom") – now widespread in Brazil – reflects an influence from the speech of African slaves.[7] It is also claimed that some common grammatical features of Brazilian Portuguese – such as the near-complete disappearance of certain verb inflections and a marked preference for the periphrastic Periphrasis future (e.g. "vou falar") over the synthetic future ("falarei") – recall the grammatical simplification typical of pidgins and creoles. However, the same or similar processes can be observed in the European variant, and such theories have not yet been proved.[8] Regardless of these borrowings and changes, Brazilian Portuguese cannot be characterized as a Portuguese creole, since its evolution can be traced directly from 16th-century European Portuguese.[8]

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 arts, 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. Lately, Brazilians in general have had some exposure to European speech, through TV, and movies. Often one will see Brazilian actors working in Portugal, and Portuguese actors working in Brazil.

Formal writing

The written Brazilian standard differs from the European one to about the same extent that written American English differs from written British English. The differences extend to spelling, lexicon, and grammar. However, with the entry into force of the Orthographic Agreement of 1990 in Portugal and in Brazil since 2009, these differences were drastically reduced.

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.

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 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").

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 diglossia, considering that informal BP has developed – both in phonetics and grammar – evolved in its own particular way.

Accordingly, 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:

  1. 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;
  2. there are some 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 Portuguese);
  3. 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;
  4. 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);
  5. 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 (some of them may occur in EP, too):

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 mouse ← English "(computer) mouse" versus EP rato ← literal translation of "mouse" in Portuguese ("mouse" is also used in EP)
BP esporte (alternatives: desporto, desporte) ← English "sport" versus EP desporto ← Spanish deporte
BP jaqueta ← English "jacket" versus EP blusão ← EP blusa ← French blouse/blouson (also used in BP)
BP concreto ← English "concrete" versus EP betão ← French béton (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:

Brazil Portugal English
Abridor de latas Abre-latas Can opener
Aeromoça, comissária de bordo Hospedeira do ar, assistente de bordo Flight stewardess
Água-viva, medusa Alforreca, Água-viva, medusa Jellyfish
AIDS SIDA (Síndrome da Imunodeficiência Adquirida) AIDS
Alho poró Alho-porro, alho-francês Leek
Aluguel Aluguer Rent (a house), rental
Amerissagem Amaragem Landing on the sea, splash-down
Aquarela Aguarela, aquarela Watercolor
Arquivo (computer) Ficheiro (computer) File (computer)
Aterrissagem Aterragem Landing
Band-Aid Penso rápido Band-aid (US), plaster (UK)
Banheiro, toalete, toilettes, sanitário Casa de banho, quarto de banho, lavabos, sanitários Bathroom, toilet
Bonde, bonde elétrico Eléctrico Streetcar (US), tram (UK)
Brócolis Brócolos Broccoli
Cílio (Classical Latin "cilium"), pestana Pestana, cílio, celha 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, carta Driver's license (US), driving licence (UK)
Carteira de identidade, RG (from "Registro Geral") Bilhete de identidade (BI), cartão do cidadão ID card
Telefone celular (or simply and most commonly "celular"), aparelho de telefonia celular Telemóvel (portmanteau of telefone (telephone) and móvel (mobile)) Cell phone (US), mobile phone (UK)
Canadense Canadiano Canadian
Caqui (from Japanese 柿 kaki) Dióspiro Persimmon
Cadarço Atacador Shoe-tie
Descarga Autoclismo Toilet Flush
Disco rígido, HD Disco rígido Hard disk
Dublagem Dobragem Dubbing
Durex, fita adesiva Fita gomada, fita-cola, fita adesiva (durex is a condom) Scotch Tape (US), Sellotape (UK)
Time, equipe Equipa, equipe Team
Estação de trem, estação ferroviária, gare Estação de comboio, estação ferroviária, gare Railway station
Estrada de ferro, ferrovia Caminho-de-ferro, ferrovia, via férrea Railway
Favela Bairro de lata Slum, shanty-town
Fila Bicha, fila Line (US), queue (UK)
Fóton Fotão Photon
Fones de ouvido Auscultadores, auriculares, fones 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
Legal Fixe Nice
Maiô Fato de banho Swimsuit
Mamadeira Biberão, biberon (mamadeira ancient term) Baby bottle
Metrô, metropolitano Metro, metropolitano Underground railway, metropolitan railway
Moscou Moscovo Moscow
Ônibus Autocarro Bus
Polonês, polaco (this last form is rarely used because of its pejorative meaning) Polaco Polish
Rúgbi Râguebi, rugby Rugby
Secretária eletrônica Atendedor de chamadas (telephone) Answering machine
Sutiã Soutien, sutiã Bra
Tcheco, checo Checo Czech
Tela Ecrã, monitor Screen
Trem, composição ferroviária Comboio, composição ferroviária Train
Vietnã Vietname Vietnam
Xícara Chávena Cup

Grammar

Syntactic and morphological features

Topic-prominent language

Modern linguistic studies have shown that Brazilian Portuguese is a topic-prominent or topic- and subject-prominent language.[9] Sentences with topic are extensively used in Brazilian Portuguese, most often by means of turning an element (object or verb) within the sentence into an external comment (topicalization), thus emphasizing it, e.g., in Esses assuntos eu não conheço bem – literally, "These subjects I don't know [them] well".[10] 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).[11] The usage of redundant pronouns for means of topicalization is considered grammatically incorrect, because the topicalized noun phrase, according to traditional European analysis (which doesn't acknowledge topic-comment structures), doesn't have any syntactic function. This kind of construction, however, is sometimes used in European Portuguese poetry, usually for keeping the metre, and is considered a case of Anacoluthon (anacoluto in Portuguese). Brazilian grammars traditionally treat this structure likewise, rarely mentioning such a thing as topic. Nevertheless, the so-called anacoluthon has won a new dimension in Brazilian Portuguese, leaving the realm of poetry to be extensively used in colloquial language, even though most people are not aware of it.[12] The famous poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade once wrote a short metapoema (a metapoem, i. e., a poem about poetry, a specialty for which he was renowned) treating the concept of anacoluto.

"[...] O homem, chamar-lhe mito não passa de anacoluto"[13] (The man, calling him myth is nothing more than an anacoluthon).

In colloquial language, this kind of anacoluto may even be used when the subject itself is the topic, only to add more emphasis to this fact, e.g. the sentence Essa menina, ela costuma tomar conta de cachorros abandonados ("This girl, she usually takes care of abandoned dogs"). This structure highlights the topic, and could be more accurately translated as "As for this girl, she usually takes care of abandoned dogs".

The usage of this construction is particularly common with compound subjects, as in, e.g., Eu e ela, nós fomos passear ("She and I, we went for a walk"). This happens because the traditional syntax (Eu e ela fomos passear) places a plural-conjugated verb immediately following an argument in the singular, which may sound "ugly" to Brazilian ears. The redundant pronoun thus clarifies the verbal inflection in such cases.

Progressive

Portuguese makes extensive use of verbs in the progressive aspect, almost as in English.

Brazilian Portuguese seldom has the present continuous construct estar a + infinitive, which, in contrast, has become quite common in European over the last few 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"), not 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"). Some dialects of EP (namely from Alentejo, Algarve, Açores(Azores), Madeira) will also tend to feature estar + gerund as in Brazil.

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 latter 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".

Personal pronouns

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 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, some 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). Nevertheless, nowadays, it is becoming perfectly acceptable to use a clitic between two verbs, without linking it with a hyphen (as in 'Poderia se dizer', Não vamos lhes dizer') and this usage (known as: pronome solto entre dois verbos) can be found in modern(ist) literature, textbooks, magazines and newspapers like Folha de São Paulo and O Estadão (See in-house style manuals of these newspapers, available on-line, for more details).

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 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")

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: ele havia/tinha cantado (he had sung)
spoken: ele tinha cantado
written: ele podia haver/ter dito (he might have said)
spoken: ele podia ter dito

BP/EP differences in the formal spoken language

Phonology

In many ways, compared to European Portuguese (EP), Brazilian Portuguese (BP) is conservative in its phonology. This also occurs in Angolan Portuguese, São Tomean Portuguese, and other African dialects. Brazilian Portuguese has 8 vowels, 5 nasal vowels, with several diphthongs, and triphthongs.

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 Portuguese.

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 short, near-close near-back unrounded vowel [ɨ], a sound that does not exist in BP. Thus, for example, the word setembro is [seˈtẽbɾu]/[sɛˈtẽbɾu] 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 [opeɾaˈsɐ̃ũ] 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: [ɔpɛɾaˈsɐ̃ũ] 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].

It is also noteworthy that the vowel nasalization in some dialects of Brazilian Portuguese is far different from that seen in French, for example. In French, the nasalization extends uniformly through the entire vowel. In the Southern-Southeastern dialects of Brazilian Portuguese, the nasalization begins almost imperceptibly, and then gets far stronger in the end of the vowel, therefore being closer to the nasalization of Hindi-Urdu phonology (see Anusvara). In some cases, the nasal archiphoneme actually represents the addition of a nasal consonant, like /m, n, ŋ, ȷ̃, w̃ , ɰ̃/.

"manta" = /ˈmɐ̃ntɐ/

"tampa" = /ˈtɐ̃mpɐ/

"banco" = /ˈbɐ̃ŋku/

"bem" = /bẽȷ̃/

"bom" = /bõʊ̃/ or /ˈbõɰ̃/ or /ˈbõŋ/

"pan" = /ˈpɐ̃ɰ̃/ or /ˈpɐ̃ŋ/

Consonants

Palatalization of /di/ and /ti/

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] and [di] are mostly in the Northeast and South of Brazil, 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 /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" : [ɔpˈsɐ̃ũ] > [ɔpiˈsɐ̃ũ]).

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] – though not in São Paulo state or in the South Region – 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.[14]

Nasalization

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 represented by nh in most BP dialects. This is always [ɲ] in EP, but in most of Brazil, it represents a nasalized semivowel [j̃], which nasalizes the preceding vowel, as well.[15] 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 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 [vɐ̃mu], "let's go", becomes [hɐ̃mu]); more rural dialects in southeastern states, including São Paulo and Minas Gerais, change pre-consonantal "r" into [ɹ]; several dialects reduce the diminutive suffix inho to im (carrinho, "little car" – [kaˈhĩȷ̃u] > [kaˈhĩ]) and several dialects nasalise the /d/ in the gerund form, such as: "cantando" [kɐ̃ˈtɐ̃du] > [kɐ̃ˈtɐ̃nu]. Another common change that, in many cases, makes the difference between two regions' 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.

BP/EP differences in the informal spoken language

There are various differences between European 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 (ele, ela, eles, elas) 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.

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 biblioteca?
— Já, fui ontem.
— Foste à biblioteca?
— Fui (, fui ontem).

:BP:

— Você foi na/à/pra biblioteca?
— Fui.

or

— Tu foste/foi na/à/pra biblioteca? (Southern variant)
— Fui.

Translation

"Have you gone to the Library 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 "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 had already been an actress, hadn't she?)

— É. (She already had.) 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:

— Você fala inglês?
— Não falo, não.
"Do you speak English?"
"I don't speak [it], no."

Or only:

:BP:

— Você fala inglês?
— Não.
"Do you speak English?"
"No."

Sometimes even a "triple" negative is also possible. For example:

— Você fala inglês?
— Não. Não falo, não
"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 cases, however, the first of these two não's 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 do] not speak)

:BP:

— 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 person 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! (cale-se)
Você é burro, cale a boca! (cale-se)
"You are stupid, shut your mouth! (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 grammatically incorrect, but completely dominant in informal language)

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 no 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 demonstrative 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).

Personal pronouns and possessives

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 or Eu te amo. In parts of the Northeast, most specifically in the states of Piauí and Pernambuco, it is also common to use the indirect object pronoun lhe as a second-person object pronoun, thus resulting Eu lhe amo. However, this form is grammatically incorrect, and in the rest of the country it sounds weird and affected.

In parts of the South (Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and southwest of Paraná), in the North (except for Rondonia and parts of Acre) and 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.[16] 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).[17] 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 the states of Pará and Amazonas, tu is used much more often than você and is always accompanied by the second-person.

In São Paulo, the use of “tu” in print and conversation nowadays is not very common; “você” is used instead. However, São Paulo is now home to many immigrants 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[18]) 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 due to the fact vo is a weak syllable, being dropped in fast speech.

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).

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 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.

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

"Me to 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 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.

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 Brazilian 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.

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 be 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’ 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.

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":

  1. There is a striking uniformity in Brazilian Portuguese
  2. A big amount of Brazilians speak Portuguese poorly while in Portugal people speak it very well
  3. Portuguese is difficult to learn and speak
  4. People that have had poor education can't speak anything correctly
  5. In the state of Maranhão people speak a better Portuguese than elsewhere in Brazil
  6. We should speak as closely as possible to the written language
  7. The knowledge of grammar is essential to the correct and proper use of a language
  8. To master Standard Portuguese is the path to social promotion

In opposition to the "myths", Bagno counters that:

  1. 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.
  2. Brazilians speak Standard Portuguese poorly because they speak a language that is sufficiently different from Standard 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. It is the written language that must reflect the spoken and not vice versa: it is not the tail that wags the dog.
  7. 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.
  8. 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 operas. 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).

Language Codes

pt is a language code for Portuguese, defined by ISO standards (see ISO 639-1 and ISO 3166-1 alpha-2). There is no ISO code for spoken or written Brazilian Portuguese.

bzs is a language code for the Brazilian Sign Language, defined by ISO standards (see ISO 639-3).[19]

pt-BR is a language code for the Brazilian Portuguese, defined by Internet standards (see IETF language tag).

See also

Bibliography

References