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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 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. The Portuguese legacy Portuguese in Brazil is a legacy of Portuguese colonization of the Americas. The first wave of Portuguese-speaking immigrants settled in Brazil in the 16th Century, yet the language was not widely used then. For a time Portuguese coexisted with the Lingua Geral, a lingua franca based on Amerindian languages that was used by the Jesuit missionaries; as well as with various African languages spoken by the hundreds of thousands of slaves brought to the country between the 17th to 19th centuries. By the end of the 18th century, however, Portuguese had affirmed itself as the national language. That status was further consolidated with the arrival in Brazil of over 1.4 million new immigrants from Portugal during the 19th and 20th centuries. The aborted colonization attempts by the French in Rio de Janeiro in the 16th century and by the Dutch in the Northeast in the 17th century had negligible effect on the language. Even the substantial non-Portuguese-speaking immigration waves of the late 19th and early 20th century — mostly from Italy, Spain, Germany, Japan, and Lebanon — were linguistically integrated into the Portuguese-speaking majority within a couple of generations. 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. 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. 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). The influence of Amerind and African languages is also quite visible in the lexicon. The native languages contributed the names for most of the plants and animals found in Brazil, such as arara ("macaw"), jacaré ("South American alligator"), tucano ("toucan"), mandioca ("manioc"), pipoca ("popcorn"), abacaxi ("pineapple"), and many more. Many of these words entered the Brazilian Portuguese lexicon already in the 16th century, and some of them, like pipoca and abacaxi were eventually borrowed by European Portuguese. The African languages provided many words too, especially related to food, such as quindim, acarajé, moqueca; and household concepts, such as cafuné ("caress on the head"), curinga ("joker card"), and caçula ("youngest child"). Capoeira, marimba, and samba are also the African (Bantu) words borrowed by Brazilian Portuguese that gained popularity, and these were also gained by European Portuguese and English. Later immigrants contributed many words too, like chope (from german schoppenbier, or "tap beer") and nhoque (from italian pasta, "gnocchi"). There are also many borrowings from other European languages such as English, French, German and Italian, and, to a lesser extent, from Asian languages such as Japanese. The influence of those languages in the phonology and grammar of Brazilian Portuguese are harder to detect, and nearly impossible to prove. However, some regional features of Brazilian informal speech, such as the loss of final r and s in rural dialects, seem to match phonological features of the Amerind and African languages, which were more present in those areas than in the cities. 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. 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. Impact of Brazilian Portuguese The cultural influence of Brazilian Portuguese in the rest of the Portuguese-speaking world has greatly increased in the last decades of the 20th century, due to the popularity of Brazilian music and Brazilian soap operas. Since Brazil joined Mercosul, the South American free trade zone, Portuguese has been increasingly studied as a second language in Spanish-speaking partner countries. A mixed language of Portuguese and Spanish, nicknamed Portuñol or Portunhol, is spoken in regions bordering countries such as Uruguay. Many words of Brazilian origin (also used in other Portuguese-language countries) have also entered into English: samba, bossa nova, cruzeiro, milreis, capoeira, and especially marimba. While originally Angolan, the words "capoeira" and "samba" only became famous worldwide because of their popularity in Brazil. After independence in 1822, Brazilian idioms with African and Amerindian influences were brought to Portugal by returning Portuguese-Brazilians (Luso-Brasileiros in Portuguese) and some Amerindian Brazilians (''Indio-Brasileiros'' in Portuguese), Afro-Brazilians (''Afro-Brasileiros'' in Portuguese), mestizos, mulattos, and zambos, who brought rich culture mixed with African and Native American elements. Formal and informal registers The linguistic situation of Brazil can be described as one of extreme diglossia, the intimate coexistence of two varieties or "registers" of the language — "formal" and "informal" — which are used simultaneously, mixed in continuously varying proportions depending on the speaker and occasion. While diglossia inevitably develops in every literate society, it is much more striking in Brazil than in English or in European Portuguese. The formal register of Brazilian Portuguese has both a written and spoken form. The written formal register (FW) is used in almost all printed media and written communication, is uniform throughout the country, and is the "Portuguese" officially taught at school. The spoken formal register (FS) is basically a phonetic rendering of the written form: it is used only in very formal situations like speeches or ceremonies, by educated people who wish to stress their education; or when reading directly out of a written text. While FS is necessarily uniform in lexicon and grammar, it shows noticeable regional variations in pronunciation. Finally the informal register (IS) is almost never written down (basically only in artistic works, or in very informal contexts such as adolescent chat rooms). It is used to some extent in virtually all oral communication outside of those formal contexts — even by well educated speakers — and shows considerable regional variations in pronunciation, lexicon, and even grammar. For example, consider the following sample of formal written Portuguese (FW), as it would be written by a secretary, and its formal spoken version (FS) in the São Paulo dialect and semi-literal English translation (EN): EN: "We need to inform everybody that there won't be power for the elevators." FW: Precisamos informar a todos que não haverá energia para os elevadores. FS: Here is how the same person could deliver the same message orally, in informal spoken register (IS): IS (as it would be written): A gente tem que falar pra todo mundo que não vai ter força pr'os elevadores. IS (IPA): EN: "We have to tell 'all the world' that there is no 'force' for the elevators." This examples shows that FS and IS can differ in lexicon: precisamos → temos que ("we have to"), informar → falar ("to tell"), etc.; change of existential verb: haverá → terá ("there will be"); change of grammatical person: temos → a gente tem; choice of verbal form: terá → vai ter; contractions: para os → pros ("for the"); suppression of redundant plurals: elevadores → elevador; loss of final -r: → , → . 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 closed (ê or ô) when they are stressed before one of the nasal consonants m, n followed by a vowel, but in BP they are always close in this environment. The variant spellings are necessary in those cases because the general Portuguese spelling rules mandate a stress diacritic in those words, and the Portuguese diacritics also encode vowel quality. Another source of variation is the spelling of the ʒ}} sound before e and i. By Portuguese spelling rules, that sound can be written either as j (favored in BP for certain words) or as g (favored in EP). Thus, for example, we have BP berinjela/ EP beringela ("eggplant"). Lexicon Apart from the general spelling differences noted above, the vocabularies of Brazilian and European Portuguese differ also in a couple of thousand words. Many of them refer to concepts that were introduced separately in BP and EP. Since the Brazilian independence in 1822, BP has tended to borrow words from English, whereas EP tended to borrow the equivalent words from French. Moreover, BP generally adopts foreign words with minimal phonetic adjustments, while EP tends to apply deeper morphological changes. However, there are instances of BP transliterating English words, whereas EP retains the original form - hence estoque and stock. Finally, one dialect often borrowed a word while the other coined a new one from native elements. So one has, for example BP esporte (alternatives: desporto, desporte) ← English "sport" versus EP desporto ← Spanish deporte BP jaqueta ← English "jacket" versus EP blusão ← EP blusa ← French blouse BP concreto ← English "concrete" versus EP betão ← French beton BP grampeador ("stapler") ← grampo ← German Krampe versus EP agrafador ← agrafo ← French agrafe. A few other examples are given in the following table:
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