A Brief Sketch of the Lusophone World
Columnist Mateus Miranda explores the curiosities of the Lusophone world, drawing from his experiences as a native Brazilian Portuguese instructor living around the globe.
A: Hi! I’m from Brazil.
B: ¡Hola! ¿Cómo estás?
The dialogue above is not rare after introducing yourself as a Brazilian native. According to Article 13 of the Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil, “Portuguese is the official language of the Federative Republic of Brazil”. However, it is a common misconception that people think we speak Spanish (or Brazilian!) and don’t get me wrong - I don’t blame them!
To make a (very) long story short, it was in 1494, when the Treaty of Tordesillas between Spain and Portugal was signed in which both Crowns divided the unexplored “New World”. It was in 1500 when Pedro Álvares Cabral, a navigator from Portugal, was en route to India but ended up landing in Brazil after mistakenly sailing far west of his destination, therefore claiming it for Portugal.
On the linguistics side, before Portuguese became the official language in Brazil, it is estimated that more than four million Brazilian Indians were killed since European arrival in what is today Brazil’s territory, and many languages went extinct. Unfortunately, nowadays all Brazilian indigenous languages that remain can be considered endangered; but Portuguese, a Romance language (and also part of the Indo-European language family), is far from it.
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Credit: Mateus Miranda
As a Portuguese instructor, I usually give my students a pop quiz warm-up before our first lesson with a few questions about the Lusophone World. You can try to answer some questions here and see how that goes!
(1) Rio de Janeiro was once the capital of Portugal.
(2) Brazil was influenced by French culture.
(3) Portuguese is spoken in Africa.
(4) Portuguese is spoken in India.
(5) Portuguese spoken in Portugal is similar to that which is spoken in Brazil.
Now, let me briefly go through the answers!
From my experience, students are usually very surprised when they learn that Rio de Janeiro, perhaps the most famous city in Brazil (along with the megacity São Paulo), was the capital of Portugal for thirteen years. In 1808, the Portuguese Royal family escaped Lisbon to Brazil, which was still a colony at that time, under the security of the English Royal Navy after Napoleon I of France invaded Portugal. On a side note, it is surprising to those who found out it is not only no longer the capital of Brazil - though it was from 1763 to 1960 – nor is the capital Buenos Aires, as many people think (the capital of Brazil’s neighbor Argentina). If you answered Brasília is the capital of Brazil, you are correct!
Brazil was highly influenced by French art and culture after the arrival of The French Artistic Mission in the country. Painters such as Jean-Baptiste Debret, Nicolas-Antoine Taunay and others were invited by the King of Portugal John VI. They established the Royal School of Sciences, Arts and Crafts in Rio de Janeiro, which highly influenced the city’s culture and architecture until the 1940s. Perhaps the most famous structure resulting from this influence is the Theatro Municipal, an opera house inspired by the Paris Opéra.
Theatro Municipal, Rio de Janeiro.
Source: http://visit.rio/en/que_fazer/municipaltheater/
Although Portuguese is spoken by over 200 million people in Brazil, it is also spoken in six African countries. These are known as the PALOP countries, which stands for African Countries of Portuguese Official Language (Países Africanos de Língua Oficial Portuguesa). They are Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé e Príncipe Mozambique.
Goa, a state in India, was once a colony for Portugal after being invaded in 1510. The number of Portuguese speakers has dropped sharply over the years and is mainly learned there as a second language and spoken along with other languages. The Portuguese brought to the region a different lifestyle than the rest of the country, which highly influenced the architecture and gastronomy.
Finally, the Portuguese spoken in all countries carries its own features, but we do distinguish between Brazilian and European Portuguese; the vowel reduction or deletion is the most striking difference. Portuguese from Mozambique, for instance, is closer to the European one. Throughout the 20th century, many attempts trying to unify Portuguese orthography were made without any success. The Portuguese Language Orthographic Agreement was signed in 1990 between the Brazilian Academy of Letters, the Lisbon Academy of Sciences, Class of Letters and representatives of Lusophone Africa with the aim of establishing a set of rules in order to unify the Portuguese language orthography. In Brazil, there was a period of adaptation that lasted from 2009 until 2016 when it was definitively established.
We have come to the end of our very first column of the Lusophone World! Of course, there are many more curiosities, but if you are interested in travelling to a Portuguese speaking country, are learning or want to learn the language or are just curious about the Lusophone world, stay tuned for the articles to come!