Languages of Brazil

Overview of the languages spoken in Brazil

Portuguese is the official and national language of Brazil being widely spoken by most of the population. Brazil is the most populous Portuguese speaking country in the world, with its lands comprising the majority of Portugal's former colonial holdings in the Americas. Aside from Portuguese, the country has also numerous minority languages, including indigenous languages, such as Nheengatu (a descendant of Tupi), and languages of more recent European and Asian immigrants, such as Italian, German and Japanese. In some municipalities, those minor languages have official status: Nheengatu, for example, is an official language in São Gabriel da Cachoeira, while a number of German dialects are official in nine southern municipalities. Hunsrik (also known as Riograndenser Hunsrückisch) is a Germanic language also spoken in Argentina, Paraguay and Venezuela, which derived from the Hunsrückisch dialect. Hunsrik has official status in Antônio Carlos and Santa Maria do Herval, and is recognized by the states of Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina as part of their historical and cultural heritage. As of 2023, the population of Brazil speaks or signs 238 languages, of which approximately 217 are indigenous and others are non indigenous In 2005, no indigenous language was spoken by more than 40,000 people. With the implementation of the Orthographic Agreement of 1990, the orthographic norms of Brazil and Portugal have been largely unified, but still have some minor differences. Brazil enacted these changes in 2009 and Portugal enacted them in 2012. In 2002, Brazilian Sign Language (Libras) was made the official language of the Brazilian deaf community. The Brazilian Sign Language also has official status at the federal level. On December 9, 2010, the National Inventory of Linguistic Diversity was created, which will analyze proposals for revitalizing minority languages in the country. In 2019, the Technical Commission of the National Inventory of Linguistic Diversity was established.

Before the first Portuguese explorers arrived in 1500, what is now Brazil was inhabited by several Amerindian peoples that spoke many different languages. According to Aryon Dall'Igna Rodrigues there were six million Indians in Brazil speaking over 1,000 different languages. When the Portuguese settlers arrived, they encountered the Tupi people, who dominated most of the Brazilian coast and spoke a set of closely related languages. The Tupi called the non Tupi peoples "Tapuias", a designation that the Portuguese adopted; however, there was little unity among the diverse Tapuia tribes other than their not being Tupi. In the first two centuries of colonization, a language based on Tupian languages known as Língua Geral ("General Language") was widely spoken in the colony, not only by the Amerindians, but also by the Portuguese settlers, the Africans and their descendants. This language was spoken in a vast area from São Paulo to Maranhão, as an informal language for domestic use, while Portuguese was the language used for public purposes. Língua Geral was spread by the Jesuit missionaries and Bandeirantes to other areas of Brazil where the Tupi language was not spoken. In 1775, Marquis of Pombal prohibited the use of Língua Geral or any other indigenous language in Brazil. However, as late as the 1940s, Língua Geral was widely spoken in some Northern Amazonian areas where the Tupi people were not present. However, before that prohibition, the Portuguese language was dominant in Brazil. Most of the other Amerindian languages gradually disappeared as the populations that spoke them were integrated or decimated when the Portuguese speaking population expanded to most of Brazil. The several African languages spoken in Brazil also disappeared. Since the 20th century there are no more records of speakers of African languages in the country. However, in some isolated communities settled by escaped slaves (Quilombo), the Portuguese language spoken by its inhabitants still preserves some lexicon of African origin, which is not understood by other Brazilians. Due to the contact with several European, Amerindian and African languages, the Portuguese spoken in Brazil absorbed many influences from these languages, which led to a notable differentiation from the Portuguese spoken in Portugal. Examples of widely used words of Tupi origin in Brazilian Portuguese include abacaxi ("pineapple"), pipoca ("popcorn"), catapora ("chickenpox"), and siri ("crab"). The names of thirteen of Brazil's twenty six states also have Amerindian origin. Starting in the early 19th century, Brazil started to receive substantial immigration of non Portuguese speaking people from Europe and Asia. Most immigrants, particularly Italians and Spaniards, adopted the Portuguese language after a few generations. Other immigrants, particularly Germans, Japanese, Poles and Ukrainians, preserved their languages for more generations. German speaking immigrants started arriving in 1824. They came not only from Germany, but also from other countries that had a substantial German speaking population (Switzerland, Poland, Austria, Romania and Russia (Volga Germans). During over 100 years of continuous emigration, it is estimated that some 300,000 German speaking immigrants settled in Brazil. Italian immigration started in 1875 and about 1.5 million Italians immigrated to Brazil until World War II. They spoke several dialects from Italy. Other sources of immigration to Brazil included Spaniards, Poles, Ukrainians, Japanese and Middle easterns. With the notable exception of the Germans, who preserved their language for several generations, and in some degree the Japanese, Poles, Ukrainians, Arabs, Kurds and Italians, most of the immigrants in Brazil adopted Portuguese as their mother tongue after a few generations.

Brazilian Portuguese is the official language of Brazil and the primary language used in most schools and media. It is also used for all business and administrative purposes. Brazilian Portuguese has had its own development, influenced by the other European languages such as Italian and German in the South and Southeast, and several indigenous languages all across the country. For this reason, Brazilian Portuguese differs significantly from European Portuguese and other dialects of Portuguese speaking countries, even though they are all mutually intelligible. Such differences occur in phonetics and lexicon and have been compared to the differences between British English and American English.

The Brazilian Sign Language (Libras) is the sign language used by deaf people in Brazilian urban centers and legally recognized as a means of communication and expression. It is derived both from an autochthonous sign language, which is native to the region or territory in which it lives, and from French sign language; therefore, it is similar to other European and American sign languages. Libras is not the simple sign language of the Portuguese language, but a separate language, as evidenced by the fact that in Portugal a different sign language is used, Portuguese Sign Language (LGP). Like the various existing natural and human languages, it is composed of linguistic levels such as: phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. Just as in oral auditory languages there are words, in sign languages there are also lexical items, which are called signs. The difference is its modality of articulation, namely visual spatial, or kinesic visual, for others. Therefore, to communicate in Libras, it is not enough just to know signs. It is necessary to know your grammar to combine sentences, establishing communication correctly, avoiding the use of "signaled Portuguese". Signals arise from the combination of hand configurations, movements, and points of articulation — places in space or on the body where signals are made — and also from facial and body expressions that convey the feelings that are conveyed to listeners by voice intonation, which together make up the basic units of this language. Thus, Libras presents itself as a linguistic system for the transmission of ideas and facts, coming from communities of deaf people in Brazil. As with any language, there are also regional differences in Libras. Therefore, attention should be paid to its variations in each federative unit of Brazil. In addition to being recognized nationally since 2002, Libras has also been made official at the municipal level in Belo Horizonte, Curitiba, Ouro Preto and Salvador. In Rio de Janeiro, the teaching of Libras was made official in the curriculum of the municipal school system. April 24 was made official as the National Day of Brazilian Sign Language.

Despite the fact that Portuguese is the official language of Brazil and the vast majority of Brazilians speak only Portuguese, there are several other languages spoken in the country. According to the president of IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) there are an estimated 210 languages spoken in Brazil. 154 are Amerindian languages, while the others are languages brought by immigrants. The 1950 census was the last one to ask Brazilians which language they speak at home. Since then, the census does not ask about language. However, the census of 2010 asked respondents which languages they speak, allowing a better analysis of the languages spoken in Brazil. The first municipality to co officialize other languages alongside Portuguese was São Gabriel da Cachoeira, in the state of Amazonas, with the languages Nheengatu, Tukano and Baniwa. Since then, other Brazilian municipalities have co officialized other languages.

According to the 1940 census, after Portuguese, German was the most widely spoken language in Brazil. Although the Italian immigration to Brazil was much more significant than the German one, the German language had many more speakers than the Italian one, according to the census. The census revealed that two thirds of the children of German immigrants spoke German at home. In comparison, half of the children of Italians spoke Portuguese at home. The stronger preservation of the German language when compared to the Italian one has many factors: Italian is closer to Portuguese than German, leading to a faster assimilation of the Italian speakers. Also, the German immigrants used to educate their children in German schools. The Italians, on the other hand, had less organized ethnic schools and the cultural formation was centered in church, not in schools. Most of the children of Italians went to public schools, where Portuguese was spoken. Until World War II, some 1.5 million Italians had immigrated to Brazil, compared to only 250,000 Germans. However, the 1940 census revealed that German was spoken as a home language by 644,458 people, compared to only 458,054 speakers of Italian. Spaniards, who formed the third largest immigrant group in Brazil (after the Portuguese and Italians) were also quickly assimilated into the Portuguese speaking majority. Spanish is similar to Portuguese, which led to a fast assimilation. Moreover, many of the Spanish immigrants were from Galicia, where they also speak Galician, which is closer to Portuguese, sometimes even being considered two dialects of the same language. Despite the large influx of Spanish immigrants to Brazil from 1880 to 1930 (over 700,000 people) the census of 1940 revealed that only 74,000 people spoke Spanish in Brazil. Other languages such as Polish and Ukrainian, along with German and Italian, are spoken in rural areas of Southern Brazil, by small communities of descendants of immigrants, who are for the most part bilingual. There are whole regions in southern Brazil where people speak both Portuguese and one or more of these languages. For example, it is reported that more than 90% of the residents of the small city of Presidente Lucena, located in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, speak Hunsrik, a language Hunsrik, or Riograndenser Hunsrückisch, has around 3,000,000 native speakers in Brazil, while also having some speakers in Argentina, Paraguay and Venezuela. The language is most used in the countryside of the South Region states of Brazil, with a considerable amount of native speakers using it as their main or even only language.

In the city of São Paulo, Korean, Chinese and Japanese can be heard in the immigrants districts, like Liberdade. A Japanese language newspaper, the São Paulo Shinbun, had been published in the city of São Paulo since 1946, still printing paper editions until January 2019. There is a significant community of Japanese speakers in São Paulo, Paraná, Mato Grosso do Sul, Pará and Amazonas. Much smaller groups exist in Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul and other parts of Brazil. Some Chinese, especially from Macau, speak a Portuguese based creole language called Macanese (patuá or macaísta), aside from Hakka, Mandarin and Cantonese. Japanese immigration to Brazil started on June 18, 1908, when the Japanese ship Kasato Maru arrived in the Port of Santos, south of São Paulo, carrying the first 781 people to take advantage of a bilateral agreement promoting immigration. Half of them were from the southern part of the Okinawa Island, located about south of the rest of Japan, which had its own distinct language and culture dating back to before the island's annexation by Tokyo in 1879. The names on shop fronts are in Japanese and selling everything from Japanese food and kitchen utensils to traditional home decorations. Red painted archways, Japanese temples and a Japanese garden are present in this little Japanese corner of Brazil. Today, Brazil is home to the world's largest community of Japanese descendants outside of Japan, numbering about 1.5 million people.

Spanish is understood to various degrees by many but not all Brazilians, due to the similarities of the languages. However, it is hardly spoken well by individuals who have not taken specific education in the language, due to the substantial differences in phonology between the two languages. In recent years, Spanish has become more popular as a second or third language in Brazil due in large part to the economic advantages that Spanish fluency brings in doing business with other countries in the region, since seven of the ten countries that border Brazil use Spanish as an official language. However, it falls behind English, due to global importance. In São Paulo, the German Brazilian newspaper Brasil Post has been published for over fifty years. There are many other media organizations throughout the country specializing in church issues, music, language etc. The online newspaper La Rena is in Talian dialect and it offers Talian lessons. There are many other non Portuguese publications, bilingual web sites, radio and television programs throughout the country. In the state of Paraná, there are several communities of Poles, Ukrainians and other Slavics that live in rural areas and in some municipalities such as Curitiba, Irati, Guarapuava, Ponta Grossa and Prudentópolis. Polish and Ukrainian are still spoken, mainly by older people. In the city of Foz do Iguaçu (on the border with Paraguay and Argentina), there are many Arabic speakers, these people are mainly immigrants from Palestine, Lebanon and Syria. In the state of Rio Grande do Sul, there are several cities and communities colonized by Germans and Italians. Most small towns have German or Italian as their second language. In the state capital, Porto Alegre, it is easy to find people who speak one or both of them. There are also at least two ethnic neighborhoods in the country: Liberdade, bastion of Japanese immigrants, and Bixiga, stronghold of Italian immigrants, both in São Paulo; however, these neighborhoods do not count yet with specific legislation for the protection of Japanese and Italian languages in these sites. Brazilian Roma speak Caló, a mixed language which uses both Portuguese and Romani words.

The 21st century has seen the growth of a trend of co official languages in cities populated by immigrants (such as Italian and German) or indigenous in the north, both with support from the Ministry of Tourism, as was recently established in Santa Maria de Jetibá, Pomerode and Vila Pavão, where East Pomeranian also has co official status. The first municipality to adopt a co official language in Brazil was São Gabriel da Cachoeira, in 2002. Since then, other municipalities have attempted to adopt their own co official languages. Also in production is the documentary video Brasil Talian, with directed and written by André Costantin and executive producer of the historian Fernando Roveda. The pre launch occurred on 18 November 2011, the date that marked the start of production of the documentary. The states of Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul have Talian officially approved as a heritage language in these states, and Espírito Santo has the East Pomeranian, along with the German language, such as cultural heritage state. In 2019, Bill No. 489 was drafted, authored by Chico d'Ângelo, which provides linguistic rights for Brazilians, especially communities that use minority languages as their mother tongue. The Project was attached to Bill 304 of 2015, which establishes knowledge about the language, uses, customs and culture of the traditional peoples and communities and ethical minorities that form the Brazilian peoples in elementary school curricula. The Culture Commission approved the project on September 21, 2021. In 2015 Serafina Corrêa received the title of national capital of Talian. In 2019 Nova Erechim was recognized as the capital of Talian in Santa Catarina. In 2021, Governor Ratinho Júnior sanctioned state law 20,757, which makes the municipality of Colombo the capital of Talian in Paraná.