3.3.a. The History of the language in Brazil
When Portugal first colonized Brazil, a process that began with
discover in the year 1500, Tupi, or more precisely the
Tupinambá, one of the languages of the Tupi-Guarani family
spoken by indians who lived on the Brazilian seacoast, was used along
with Portuguese as the general language of the colony. This was
primarily because the Jesuit priests studied and taught the Tupi
language. In 1757, Tupi was banned by royal decree, although the
language had already been overwhelmed by Portuguese spoken by the
large number of immigrants from the mother country. When the Jesuits
were expelled in 1759, Portuguese became the language of the
country. However, Portuguese inherited words associated with flora and
fauna from indigenous languages. Among these words were
abacaxi (pineapple), mandioca (manioc flour),
caju (cashew), tatu (armadillo), and
piranha, the voracious fish, as well as proper and geographic
names.
The Portuguese language in Brazil received a new source of
contributions with the influx of African slaves. The African influence
came primarily from the Iorubá spoken by slaves from
Nigeria. Some of these words also found their way to
Europe. Iorubá contributions derived from words connected with
religion and the Afro-Brazilian cuisine. From the Angolan Quimbundo
language came words such as caçula, meaning the
youngest child, moleque (a street child), and the dance
samba.
During the 18th century, other differences between the American
and European Portuguese developed. At that time Brazilian Portuguese
failed to adopt linguistic changes taking place in Portugal produced
by French influence. The Brazilian Portuguese remained loyal to the
pronunciation used at the time of its discovery. However, when Don
João, the Portuguese king, and the royal entourage took refuge
in Brazil in 1808 (when Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Portugal), his
presence helped to reapproximate the Portuguese spoken in the
cities to the Portuguese of Portugal.
After Brazilian independence in 1822, Brazilian Portuguese became
influenced by Europeans who had migrated to the central and southern
parts of the country. This is the reason one finds in those areas
variations in pronunciation and a few superficial lexical
changes. These changes reflect the nationalities settling in each
area.
In the 20th century, the split between the Portuguese and Brazilian
variants of Portuguese heightened as the result of new words for
technological innovations. This happened because Portuguese lacked a
uniform procedure for adopting such words. Certain words took
different forms in different countries. For example: in Portugal one
hears comboio, and in Brazil one hears trem, both
meaning train. Autocarro in Portugal is the same thing as
ônibus in Brazil, both meaning bus. At the beginning of
this century, the nationalism and the individualism of the Romantic
movement began promoting the creation of a language norm based on the
Brazilian version of the Portuguese language. In 1922, the Modernists
reintroduced this argument, promoting a need to break with traditional
Portuguese models and to adopt the Brazilian speech pattern. This
opening by the Modernists led to the successful adoption of the
Brazilian norm in literature.
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