Brazilian Portuguese

Brazilian Portuguese is a form of the Portuguese language used mostly in Brazil. It is spoken by most of the 180 million inhabitants of Brazil. Standard Brazilian Portuguese is strongly influenced by the dialects of the many Brazilian regions. It is also spoken through immigrants and their descendants in Canada, United States, Portugal, and Japan — where it is spoken by Japanese-Brazilian migrants.

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, Brazilians have some difficulty in understanding European Portuguese. 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. However, Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese are as inteligible as different national dialects of the same language should be.

History

Portuguese was inherited due to the Portuguese colonization of the Americas. The first wave of Portuguese-speaking immigrants was settled in Brazil in the 16th Century, yet the language was not widely used then. By the end of the 18th century, it was already the national language. It gained words from Amerindian languages such as Lingua Geral. Many of those also reached Portugal, such as "Pipoca" (popcorn) or "Abacaxi" (pineapple). Some of these words have entered into the colony's Portuguese dialects in a very early stage, even with the first Portuguese settlers.

Brazilian Portuguese was spread worldwide due to the popularity of the Brazilian music. Ever since Brazil entered Mercosul, the Portuguese language is sometimes taught as a second language in the Spanish-speaking partner countries. A language mix of Portuguese and Spanish is sometimes named Portuñol or Portunhol.

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.

BP maintains unstressed vowels to a greater extent than EP. BP maintains the five vowels /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/ and /u/ fairly consistently in pre-stressed positions, while EP tends to raise /o/ to [u], to raise /a/ to [ɐ] and to delete unstressed /e/ entirely, maintaining it (as a very short, close central unrounded vowel [ɨ], a sound that does not exist in BP) only in careful speech. In post-stressed position, both BP and EP raise /o/ to [u] and /a/ to [ɐ]. BP, however, raises /e/ to [i], while EP deletes both sounds (or maintains them as a short [ɨ] in careful speech). A word like 'quente' "hot" is [ˈkẽtʃi] in BP but [ˈkẽt(ɨ)]) in EP. The word 'Setembro' "September" is [seˈtẽbɾu] in BP but [s̩ˈtẽbɾu] in EP.

One of the most noticeable tendencies of BP is the palatalization of /t/ and /d/, which are pronounced as [dʒ] and [tʃ], respectively, before /i/. The word presidente, for example, is pronounced [pɾeziˈdẽtʃi] in Brazil, but [pɾɨziˈdẽt(ɨ)] in Portugal. This pronunciation began in Rio de Janeiro and is often still associated with this city, but is now standard in other major cities such as Belo Horizonte and Salvador, and has spread more recently to São Paulo, where it is common in most speakers under 40 or so.

BP tends to break up clusters where the first sound is not /r/, /l/, or /s/ by the insertion of /i/ (although clusters ending in /l/ or /r/ are allowed, as are /ks/ and sometimes /kt/), and similarly to eliminate words ending with consonants other than /r/, /l/, or /s/ by the addition of /i/. Syllable-final /l/ is vocalized to [w], and syllable-final /r/ is weakened in most regions to [χ] or [h], or dropped entirely (especially at the ends of words). Combined with the fact that /n/ and /m/ are already disallowed at the end of a syllable in Portuguese (being replaced with nasalization on the previous vowel), BP has a phonology that strongly favors open syllables, as in Japanese. This sometimes results in rather striking transformations of common words. The brand name "MacDonald's", for example, is rendered [makiˈdõnawdʒi], and the words "rock" and "hockey" are both rendered as [ˈhɔki]. (Initial /r/ and doubled 'rr' are pronounced in BP as [h], as with syllable-final /r/.)

Nasalization is much stronger in BP than EP. This is especially noticeable in vowels followed by /n/ or /m/, 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 vowel written 'nh'. This is [ɲ] in EP but [ ̃j̃] in BP -- i.e. a nasalized /j/, 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, /b/, /d/, and /g/ are stops in all positions, while they are weakened to fricatives [β], [ð] and [ɣ] in EP, as in Spanish. Many dialects of BP maintain syllable-final /s/ and /z/ as such, while EP consistently converts them to [ʃ] and [ʒ]. (Whether such a change happens in BP is highly dialect-specific. Rio de Janeiro is particularly known for such a pronunciation; São Paulo is particular known for not having it. Elsewhere, such as in the Northeast, it is more likely to happen before a consonant than word-finally, and varies from region to region or even from speaker to speaker.

Another change in EP that does not occur in BP is the lowering of /e/ to [ɐ] before palatal sounds ([ʃ], [ʒ], [ɲ] [ʎ] and [j]) and in the diphthong 'em' /ẽĩ/, which merges with the diphthong 'ãe' /ɐ̃ĩ/ in EP but not BP.

An interesting change that is in the process of spreading in BP, probably originating in the Northeast, is the insertion of /j/ after stressed final vowels before final /s/. This began in the context of /a/ -- for example, 'mas' "but" is now pronounced [majs] in most of Brazil, making it homophonous with 'mais' "more". The change is spreading to other vowels, however, and at least in the Northeast the normal pronunciations of 'voz' "voice" and 'Jesus' are [vojs] and [ʒeˈzujs]. Similarly, 'três' "three" becomes [tɾejs], making it rhyme with 'seis' "six" [sejs]; this may explain the common Brazilian replacement of 'seis' with 'meia' (literally "half", as in "half-dozen") when spelling out phone numbers.

Brazilian lexicon

Although most of the lexicon of Brazilian Portuguese is the same as that of Portugal, there are differences, particularly in terminology referring to objects which have come into existence since the political separation of the two countries in the 19th century.

Spelling

Brazilian Portuguese has different spelling from European and African Portuguese, which usually consists on "simplified" letter combinations. For example, the words for "action" and "actual" in Brazilian Portuguese are "ação" and "atual", whereas in European Portuguese, they would be "acção" and "actual". Most of these differences in spelling are to be eliminated. For further information on this, see Written varieties of the Portuguese language.

Grammar

Spoken Brazilian usage differs considerably from European usage in many aspects. The European usage is still taught as "correct" in schools, however, and may appear in written texts.

The use of the gerund instead of the infinitive

In BP people say, estou falando (I'm Speaking), estou escrevendo (I'm writing), vou rindo (i'm going laughing), etc. There are exceptions in verbs where the infinitive can not be used in EP. The EP norm is to say "estou a falar", "estou a escrever" and "vou rindo" ("vou a rir" is much used in the North of Portugal). Both variations are well understood in both countries. The Brazilian form is also used in the southern regions of Portugal, and is considered fully correct in certain situations. The infinitive is used in Brazil in other situations, such as "voltamos a apresentar" (we are back presenting). The gerund is always used in all varieties in situations such as "vamos indo" (we are going).

Use of tenses

The simple future (e.g. 'falarei' "I will speak") is rare in spoken BP, except with some verbs with monosyllabic infinitives such as 'ser' "to be" or 'ter' "to have". The periphrastic construction 'vou falar', using the verb 'ir' "to go", is used instead. The conditional (e.g. 'falaria' "I would speak") is also rare, normally replaced by the imperfect -- although, interestingly, the conditional perfect (e.g. 'teria falado' "I would have spoken") is still used.

Use of reflexives

There is a tendency in BP to avoid the use of reflexive constructions. Verbs that traditionally were reflexive often drop the pronoun, e.g. 'eu lembro' "I remember" instead of 'eu me lembro' or 'eu deito' "I go to sleep" instead of 'eu me deito'. The use of the passive is much more common in BP than in other Romance languages, where a reflexive is usually preferred.

object pronouns

Brazilians consistently place the object pronoun before the verb (proclitic position) -- "Ele me viu"), while in Portugal it often comes after the verb (enclitic position) -- "Ele viu-me"), although it may also come before the verb in certain constructions.

In spoken BP, the third-person object pronouns 'o', 'a', 'os' and 'as', common in EP, are virtually nonexistent -- they are simply left out, or replaced by stressed subject pronouns (e.g. 'ele' "he" or 'isso' "that") if emphasis is required. For similar reasons, the EP combinations of direct and indirect object pronoun (e.g. 'me' + 'o' becomes 'mo', and 'te' + 'os' becomes 'tos') do not exist in BP.

The formal EP use of pronouns in mesoclitic position, that is in the middle of the verb, in the simple future and conditional forms is completely absent in BP, except in archaic texts such as the Bible.

Use of subject pronouns (pronomes de tratamento)

Tu and Você

In most dialects of BP, 'você' (formal "you" in EP) replaces 'tu' (informal "you" in EP). (Thus, there is no formal/informal distinction such as exists in most European languages.) The object pronoun, however, is still 'te' [tʃi], and other forms such as 'teu' (possessive), 'ti' (post-prepositional) and 'contigo' ("with you") may still remain in some regions of Brazil, especially when 'tu' is still used. Hence, the combination of object 'te' with subject 'você', for example, 'eu te disse para você ir' "I told you so that you would 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.)

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, 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 falou isso" ("You said it"). "Tu" accompanied by the 2nd-person verb can still be found in Maranhão (Northeast of Brazil).

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.

The imperative

BP speakers, as already stated, use third-person singular indicative forms as familiar imperatives. These forms are identical for the most part with the familiar imperative in EP, although the combination of such forms with "você" will not occur in EP:

• "Cala a boca, você é o próximo!" (Shut up, you're next; occurs only in BP).

• "Corra, você tem apenas até amanhã." (Hurry up, you have only until tomorrow; occurs both in EP and BP).

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. 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. While originally Angolan, the words "capoeira" and "samba" only became worldwide famous because of their popularity in Brazil.

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).

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

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

See also

• Portuguese language
• Angolan Portuguese
• Academia Brasileira de Letras

External Links

• Brazilian Portuguese Lessons
• Introduction to Brazilian Portuguese
• sonia-portuguese