Languages in Brazil
Brazil is the only Portuguese-speaking country in America. The Brazilian Portuguese has its own character. It differs from the European variant in pronunciation and a slightly modified spelling and grammar. (Brazilian) Portuguese is the only official language and the mother tongue of at least 97% of the population . The Indian languages are only spoken by about 0.1% of the population, including Guaraní , Makú , Tupi and Gês , the latter two of which are mainly spoken in the Amazon region, where the influence of Europeans has remained minimal. In the coastal areas the Indian languages have been almost completely displaced. Guaraní was more important in colonial times and only just failed to become the country's official language. A total of 188 different languages and idioms are spoken in Brazil.
Due to immigration, there are numerous minority languages in Brazil. Up to 1.5 million Brazilians speak German as their mother tongue; Participants and descendants of the wave of emigration from Pomerania sometimes have a much better command of Lower Pomerania ( Low German ) while their High German does not reach a native level. Numerous descendants of Pomeranian immigrants ( Pomerano ) s live in the state of Espírito Santo . In addition, around 500,000 people speak Italian , 380,000 Japanese, and 37,000 Korean . It must be taken into account that the number of speakers is calculated very optimistically for the language minorities. Some of these ethnic groups belonged to the first settlers and their descendants almost only understand Portuguese. Brazilian dialects of the immigrant language often emerged in the towns that were considered centers for immigrants. Examples are Talian , Brazilian Italian, or the Riograndenser Hunsrückisch , Brazilian German.
Up into the 20th century there were entire communities (especially in the south) in which only German or Italian was spoken, as German emigrants and their descendants in particular had a good infrastructure of schools, clubs, etc. and mostly lived in relatively closed colonies. When a nationalization campaign was carried out during the authoritarian regime of the Estado Novo (1937–1945) (Vargas decrees 1938), the German community came under increasing pressure as the state forced the assimilation process. The entry of Brazil into the Second World War in 1942 provided the appropriate occasion to ban the languages of the enemy states as the languages of instruction and also in the private sector and to close German and Italian schools, whereupon Portuguese also found its way into these localities.
There are no truly representative and well-founded figures on the number of German native speakers in Brazil . According to estimates, however, there are around two to five million people of German origin living in Brazil, of whom around 850,000 to 900,000 are bilingual (German and Portuguese ) and could therefore be classified as native German speakers. This population group is mainly concentrated in the states of Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul in the south of the country and here more on small cities that are not on the coast. Examples of this are Pomerode , Santa Rosa de Lima or Treze Tilias , where large parts of the population still speak German. While this region was still mainly German-speaking at the beginning of the 20th century, the German language was replaced by Portuguese through assimilation and through suppression or even banning in the middle of the 20th century - especially during the Second World War . Over the years, however, the situation has changed significantly, so that today the German language is particularly promoted as a cultural heritage and the region around Blumenau even serves as a tourist figurehead, although the German language is only spoken to a limited extent here. German infrastructure in the form of newspapers and schools exists to a limited extent, but German is hardly available in the public sector, since Portuguese is the only official language and the damage caused by the suppression of the German language group in Brazil was too great and permanent to be reversible.
English is not as well established as a foreign language as in European countries. Although English is usually taught in schools, the language is slow to gain a foothold in Brazil. Even in the big cities, it is not a given that people speak or understand English. Usually, however, Brazilians understand at least some of Spanish , even if they don't speak the language themselves. As a result of the increased economic cooperation between the Latin American countries in Mercosul , the importance of Spanish over English will increase. In the border areas to other South American countries, the so-called Portunhol developed , a mixed language of Portuguese and Spanish, which facilitates communication. This mixed language is particularly common in the border area with Paraguay. This is mainly because the border town Ciudad del Este is an important trading center for the Brazilian street traders ("Sacoleiros").
German language in Brazil
Municipalities with German as the second official language
Sorted by state:
- Antonio Carlos
Municipalities in which German instruction is compulsory
- Santa Catarina
See also
- Brazilianization
- German Brazilian
- German speakers in Latin America
- List of states in Brazil
- Riograndenser Hunsrückisch
- Pomerano
literature
About dictionaries:
About the German vocabulary (inherited, loan and foreign words):
- Harald Wiese: A journey through time to the origins of our language. How Indo-European Studies explains our words. 2nd Edition. Logos Verlag, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-8325-1601-7 .
To language contacts of the German language;
- Johannes Bechert / Wolfgang Wildgen : Introduction to language contact research. Scientific Book Society , Darmstadt 1991.
- Csaba Földes: Contact German. On the theory of a variety type under transcultural conditions of multilingualism. Gunter Narr, Tübingen 2005.
- Claudia Maria Riehl: Language contact research. Narr, Tübingen 2004.
About history:
- Wolfgang Krischke: What does German mean here? - A short history of the German language . C. H. Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-59243-0 . Generally understandable presentation.