Luke Camagna Assignment 1: My Country February 23, 2012 Brazil Brazil is located in Eastern South America, boarded by Argentina,

Bolivia, Colombia, and a few other countries. Brazil has a mostly tropical climate and ranks 5th in the world with a population of 176,274,000 people, 55% of which are white (Brazil 1). Roman catholic is the dominant religion and is followed by 80% of the people. Brazil has a mixture of races and ethnicities resulting in a very rich diversity. Despite this rich diversity Brazil does have a class system. Few people would be describes as racist in Brazil however social discrimination based on skin color still occurs often. Class is determined by economic status and skin color. Brazil has a literacy rate of 88%. In Brazil language is one of the strongest elements of national unity. Portuguese is spoken by nearly 100% of the population. The number of languages listed in Brazil is 236, of those 181 are living languages and 55 have no known speakers and are therefore either endangered or extinct. A few of these extinct languages are Acro, Agavotaguerra, and Kamakan (Lewis). Being that Portuguese is such a dominant language in Brazil it is used to conduct business in government, education, and media institutions. However, English is often studied as a second language in schools and increasingly in private schools. It has replaced French as the principal second language among educated people. Portuguese is derived from a long chain of classes, the three largest being indo-European, Italic, and Ramanco (Lewis). The history of Portuguese becoming the

dominant language in Brazil goes back to the year 1500 when Portugal first colonized Brazil. A language called Tupi was the general language of Brazil along with Portuguese speaking immigrants. This Tupi language came from the Tupi-Guarani family spoken by the Indians who lived on the Brazilian seacoast. This was the primary language at the time because the Jesuit priests studied and taught the language. Portuguese began to overwhelm the Tupi language due to the large number of immigrants. In 1759 the Jesuits were expelled and Portuguese became the language of the country (Lewis). Portuguese inherited many words from indigenous languages. A new source of contribution was added to the Portuguese language in Brazil from the influx of African slaves. During the 18th century other differences between the American and European Portuguese developed. Brazilian Portuguese failed to adopt linguistic changes taking place in Portugal produced by French influence. Since then the split between the Portuguese and Brazilian variants of Portuguese has heightened. This gave Brazilian Portuguese its own unique dialect and separated it from that spoken in Portugal. Another language, which is nearly extinct in Brazil, is Ninam, which comes from the Yanomom class. There are only 470 remaining speakers and most are monolingual. There is a southern and northern dialect of this language and it developed through use in bibles. In Brazil Ninam is spoken in the Roraima region, at the northern most part of the country. The only other place this language is known to be spoken is Venezuela which boarders this region. The dominant Portuguese languages possess a threat to this language because some children in the Ninam

speaking area are beginning to learn Portuguese. This means that eventually the language will probably die off due to a lack of speakers (Ninam). When comparing the majority language of Portuguese in Brazil to the majority language of English in America they have some similarities. They are similar in the way that they differ from the other countries that speak these languages. For example, there is about as much difference between the Portuguese spoken in Brazil and that spoken in Portugal as between the English spoken in the United States and that spoken in the United Kingdom (Brazil Language). Another way these two majority languages can be related is in the way that they are written versus spoken. Written Brazilian Portuguese differs significantly from the spoken language; the rules of grammar are complex and allow much more flexibility than English. Many people who speak Portuguese fluently have difficulty writing it properly. This can be compared to the English language because many people write much differently than they speak or text message. One of Brazils neighboring countries is Argentina. In Argentina the national language is Spanish. Spanish is very similar to Portuguese and most Brazilians can understand it and also communicate in it, however Spanish speakers often have difficulty understanding spoken Portuguese. Argentina and Brazil also share many immigrant languages like Ukrainian, Standard German, and Lithuanian. Another neighboring country to Brazil is Colombia, where again the dominant language is Spanish. Bolivia also boarders Brazil, the national languages here are Spanish, North Bolibian Quechua, South Bolivian Quechua, and Central Aymara. Brazil shares the immigrant language of Standard German with Bolivia (Lewis).

In the United States there are 564,630 Portuguese or Portuguese Creole speakers (MLA Language Map). Most of these speakers are located along the coast of California and the east coast near Massachusetts and Connecticut. These speakers make up a very small portion of the United States language, in these most populated places; only about 5-13% of the people in that region speak the language. This dominance of the English language in America can be compared to the dominance of Portuguese in Brazil. From this assignment I learned not only about the languages spoken in Brazil but also about their culture. I was unaware that Portuguese was such a dominant language. Something that took me by surprise while doing research for this assignment was how many languages are endangered or have gone extinct. In Brazil alone there are 55 so one could only imagine how many there are in the entire world. I found it quite shocking how many languages are dying off due to the domination of one language in a certain country i.e. Portuguese in Brazil. I also learned how the migration of people to different parts of the world could have an impact on the languages spoken in that area or even overtake the previously spoken language.

Works Cited "Brazil (1)." Geo-Data: The World Geographical Encyclopedia. Ed. John F. McCoy. 3rd ed. Detroit: Gale, 2003. 73-78. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 23 Feb. 2012. "Brazil (2)." Worldmark Encyclopedia of the Nations. 11th ed. Vol. 6: World Leaders 2003. Detroit: Gale, 2004. 86-89. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 23 Feb. 2012. Brazil Language - Flags, Maps, Economy, History, Climate, Natural Resources, Current Issues, International Agreements, Population, Social Statistics, Political System." Photius Coutsoukis; Photius; Photios; Fotis Koutsoukis. Web. 22 Feb. 2012. Lewis, M. Paul (ed.), 2009. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Sixteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com/. "MLA Language Map." Object Moved. Web. 22 Feb. 2012. <http://arcgis.mla.org/mla/default.aspx>. "Ninam." Ethnologue Report for Language Code: Shb. Web. 22 Feb. 2012. <http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=shb>.