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.
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History
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. The aborted colonization attempts by the French in Rio de Janeiro (the France Antarctique) and by the Dutch in the Northeast had negligible effect on the language. Even the substantial immigration waves of the late 19th and early 20th century — mainly from Germany, Italy, Japan, and Lebanon — were linguistically integrated within a couple of generations.
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.
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; and European pronunciation, unlike European writing, was never viewed as a standard to be imitated. Therefore the language spoken in Brazil has evolved largely independently of that spoken in Portugal; and, as one might expect, in quite different directions.
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.
The influence of Amerind and African languages is quite visible in the lexicon. The native languages contributed the names for most of the plants and animals found in Brazil, such as arara ("large parrot"), tucano ("toucan"), mandioca ("cassava"), 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, 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"). Later immigrants contributed many words too, like chope ("tap beer") and nhoque ("gnocchi").
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 countryside dialects, seem to match phonological features of the Amerind and African languages, which were more present in those areas than in the cities. Also, the virtual disappearance of certain verb inflections in Brazil, such as the past pluperfect and the second person, and the Brazilian's marked preference for compound tenses, recall the grammatical simplification that is observed in the formation of pidgins.
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 Mercosur, the South American free trade zone, Portuguese has been increasingly studied as a second language in Spanish-speaking partner countries. A language mix of Portuguese and Spanish, nicknamed Portuñol or Portunhol, is spoken in regions bordering countries such as Uruguay.
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 pronuciation. 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 any 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: Template:IPA
Here is how the same person could deliver the same message orally, in informal spoken register (IS):
- IS: Template:IPA
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");
- supression of redundant plurals: elevadores → elevador;
- loss of final -r: Template:IPA → Template:IPA, Template:IPA → Template:IPA.
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.
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.
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/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 close (ê or ô) when they are stressed before one of the nasal consonants m, n, 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").
Lexicon
Apart from the general spelling differences noted above, the vocabularies of Brazilian and European Portuguese differ also in a couple 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. 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 ← English "sport" versus EP desporto
- BP jaqueta ← English "jacket" versus EP blusão
- BP concreto ← English "concrete" versus EP betão ← French beton
- BP grampeador ("stapler") ← BP grampo versus EP agrafador ← French agrafeuse.
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 |
| aquarela | aguarela | watercolor |
| alho poró | alho-porro | leek |
| aterrissagem | aterragem | landing |
| banheiro | casa de banho | bathroom |
| breque, freio | travão | brake |
| brócolis | brócolos | broccoli |
| câncer | cancro | cancer |
| carona | boleia | hitchhiking |
| carteira de motorista | carta de condução | driving licence |
| carteira de identidade | bilhete de identidade | ID card |
| celular | telemóvel | cell phone (US), mobile phone (UK) |
| dublagem | dobragem | dubbing |
| esparadrapo, bandêide |
adesivo, penso rápido |
surgical tape, Band-Aid |
| equipe, time | equipa, equipe | team |
| experto | perito | expert |
| favela | bairro de lata | slum quarters |
| ferrovia | caminho de ferro | railway |
| fila | bicha, fila | queue |
| fones de ouvido | auscultadores, auriculares |
headphones |
| Irã | Irão | Iran |
| Islã | Islão | Islam |
| jaqueta | blusão | jacket |
| locatário | arrendatário | tenant |
| maiô | fato de banho | woman's swimsuit |
| mamadeira | biberão | baby bottle |
| metrô | metro, metropolitano |
subway |
| nadadeiras | barbatanas | swimming fins |
| ônibus | autocarro | bus |
| perua | canadiano | station wagon (US), estate car (UK) |
| rúgbi | râguebi | rugby |
| secretária eletrônica | atendedor de chamadas | answering machine |
| trem | comboio | train |
| AIDS | SIDA | AIDS |
Actually, some of the words above (like comboio, atendedor de chamadas, and mamadeira) do exist in the other dialect, but are almost never used.
Grammar
While formal written BP and EP officially have the same grammar, in reality there here are several grammatical differences between the two varieties, that are present even in the most educated and formal situations. Some of them were originally only a matter of differing preferences between two admissible constructions, but in time the choices have become so consistent that the BP choice is effectively incorrect in EP, and vice-versa.
Other differences, such as the prefixing of weak pronouns in BP, were officially prohibited by the established grammars; however, such "errors" become so common in one country that they eventually became acceptable there, even in formal contexts, while it continued to be regarded as wrong in other countries.
Continuous action
BP does not have the present continuous construct estar a + infinitive, which, in contrast, has become quite common in EP (and even mandatory for most verbs in the northern dialects). In BP, the present continuous must be expressed by estar + gerund. So 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 in EP.
BP however retains the combination a + infinitive for uses that are not related to continued action, such as voltamos a correr ("we went back to running").
Prefixing of weak pronouns
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.
Contracted weak pronouns
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 + weak pronoun: thus BP writes ela o deu para mim ("she gave it to me") instead of EP ela deu-mo.
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 never used in BP, where it must be replaced by terá que cantar ("he must sing"), vai cantar ("he is going to sing"), or cantará ("he will sing").
Preferences
There are many differences between formal written BP and EP that are simply a mattter of different preferences between two alternative words or constrictions that are both officially valid and acceptable.
Ter and haver
Besides the mandatory substitution of ter by haver in specific tenses, BP has a general preference for the auxiliary ter (originally "to hold", "to own") rather than haver ("to have") in the formation of compound tenses, e.g. to use tinha cantado ("he had sung") instead of havia cantado, as does EP. Using haver as the auxiliary verb of perfect tenses is old-fashioned in both varieties of the language. But 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").
Simple future and conditional
The use of compound forms with ir ("to go") + infinitive for the future verb tenses is more common in BP than in EP; so BP will often use vai cantar ("he is going to sing") instead of cantará (he will sing). The synthetic forms tend to be used only in the most formal contexts, such as business letters, or for auxiliary verbs such as será ("it will be") and teremos ("we will have").
The same holds for the conditional tense: BP would often use ia cantar ("he was going to sing") or teria cantado ("he would have sung") instead of the sythetic cantaria.
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.
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")
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. In some areas of Brazil, the speech is close to that of Portuguese as spoken in the 16th and 17th centuries. This also occurs in São Tomean Portuguese.
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 Template:IPA, a as Template:IPA, and e as Template:IPA. Some dialects of BP follow these rules also for vowels before the stressed syllable. In contrast, EP deletes many unstressed vowels, or reduces them to a very short, close central unrounded vowel Template:IPA, a sound that does not exist in BP. Thus, for example, the word setembro is Template:IPA in BP but Template:IPA in EP
Palatalization of t and d
One of the most noticeable tendencies of BP is the palatalization of Template:IPA and Template:IPA, which are pronounced as Template:IPA and Template:IPA, respectively, before Template:IPA. The word presidente "president", for example, is pronounced Template:IPA in Brazil, but Template:IPA 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.
, pronouncing them with an epenthetic [i] vowel; [deteki'taɹ [seki'sãű] [se'sãű] EP [sek'sãű]
BP tends to break up clusters where the first sound is not Template:IPA, Template:IPA, or Template:IPA by the insertion of Template:IPA (although clusters ending in Template:IPA or Template:IPA are allowed, as are Template:IPA and sometimes Template:IPA), and similarly to eliminate words ending with consonants other than Template:IPA, Template:IPA, or Template:IPA by the addition of Template:IPA. Syllable-final Template:IPA is vocalized to Template:IPA, and syllable-final Template:IPA is weakened in most regions to Template:IPA or Template:IPA, or dropped entirely (especially at the ends of words). Combined with the fact that Template:IPA and Template:IPA 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. This sometimes results in rather striking transformations of common words. The brand name "MacDonald's", for example, is rendered Template:IPA, and the words "rock" and "hockey" are both rendered as Template:IPA. (Initial Template:IPA and doubled 'rr' are pronounced in BP as Template:IPA, as with syllable-final Template:IPA.)
Nasalization is much stronger in BP than EP. This is especially noticeable in vowels followed by Template:IPA or Template:IPA, 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 Template:IPA or Template:IPA in BP, but can in EP. This sometimes affects the spelling of words. For example, EP, harmónico "harmonic" Template:IPA is BP harmônico Template:IPA. It also can affect verbal paradigms—for example, EP distinguishes falamos "we speak" Template:IPA from 'falámos' Template:IPA "we spoke", but BP has falamos Template:IPA for both.
Related to this is the difference in pronunciation of the consonant written nh. This is Template:IPA in EP but Template:IPA in BP, a nasalized Template:IPA, where the previous vowel is also nasalized.
BP did not participate in many sound changes that later affected EP, particularly in the realm of consonants. In BP, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, and Template:IPA are stops in all positions, while they are weakened to fricatives Template:IPA, Template:IPA and Template:IPA in EP, as in Spanish. Many dialects of BP maintain syllable-final Template:IPA and Template:IPA as such, while EP consistently converts them to Template:IPA and Template:IPA. (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 Template:IPA before palatal sounds (Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA Template:IPA and Template:IPA) and in the diphthong em Template:IPA, which merges with the diphthong ãe Template:IPA 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 Template:IPA after stressed final vowels before final Template:IPA. This began in the context of Template:IPA—for example, mas "but" is now pronounced Template:IPA 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 Template:IPA and Template:IPA. Similarly, três "three" becomes Template:IPA, making it rhyme with seis "six" Template:IPA; this may explain the common Brazilian replacement of seis with meia (literally "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 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.
, 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
Phonology
Lexicon
Grammar
Spoken Brazilian usage differs considerably from European usage in many aspects. The following are a few of these differences:
Third-person object pronouns
In spoken BP, the third-person object pronouns 'o', 'a', 'os' and 'as', common in EP, are virtually nonexistent -- they are simply left out
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 Template:IPA, 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 probably more correct to simply say that the third-person singular indicative is also used as the imperative. (Proof of this is that irregular second-person EP imperative forms such as sê "be" are not used.).
Seu and Dele
Standard BP tends to use the EP 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. 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 city of Santos (in São Paulo), the distinction between semi-formal você and familiar tu is still maintained; object and possessive pronouns pattern likewise. In Rio de Janeiro (especially among older speakers), 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 ("You goes [sic] to the bank"). Tu accompanied by the second-person verb can still be found in Maranhão (Northeast of Brazil). Maranhão is popularly thought to be where people are said to speak Portuguese in a more "correct way," which many correlate with speaking like Continental Portuguese.
O senhor
The formal term o senhor is often used as a second-person pronoun in Portugal. In Brazil, this is not very common, although it still sometimes happens in very formal situations such as shopkeepers addressing customers -- similar to when the terms "sir" or "ma'am" are used in English. The EP custom of using a title or first name as a pronoun is not used in Brazil. However, we can see this form used also in working places, for example, in an office. People also use the form doutor, meaning "doctor" (also used to call people from Law) to refer to doctors and lawyers.
Imperative inflections
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!"
However, current BP has largely lost the 2nd person subjects, but still uses the 2rd person imperative, even whith você:
- BP: você é burro, cale a boca! OR
- BP: você é burro, cala a boca!
The imperative
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 collocation of the pronoun ''te]).
Borrowings and loan words
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. A Brazilian and a Bantu (from Angola or Mozambique) easily communicate because Angolan and Mozambican dialects were influenced by some Bantu words, since African slaves were brought to Brazil from those countries.
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) and names of flora and fauna (abacaxi "pineapple", mandioca, "manioc"; jacaré "South American alligator", jaguar).
After independence in 1821, Brazilian dialect with African and Amerindian influences was brought to Portugal by returning Portuguese-Brazilians ( Português-Brasileiros in Portuguese) [and some Amerindian Brazilians (Indio-Brasileiros in Portuguese), Afro-Brazilians (Afro-Brasileiros in Portuguese), mestizos, mulattos, and zambos who wanted to be in the shadow of Portuguese], who brought rich culture mixed with African and Native American elements.
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.
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.
See also
- Portuguese language
- Angolan Portuguese
- Academia Brasileira de Letras
- List of word differences, on the Portuguese Wiktionary (in Portuguese)
External links
- Vernacular Features in Educated Speech in Brazilian Portuguese
- Brazilian Portuguese Lessons
- Introduction to Brazilian Portuguese
- sonia-portuguese
- Brazilian Portuguese Grammar
- Brazilian Portuguese Link Directory
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