You cannot ignore Brazil in the geography of South America and language diversity. As a result, it is a common question what language do they speak in Brazil. In several countries of South America, Spanish is a primary language, but Portuguese is the most spoken language because of Brazil.
Along with Bossa Nova, Samba and Carnaval, Portuguese is spoken by everyone. In fact, everyone is familiar with Portuguese, more or less. It does not mean other languages do not exist because there is room for other languages, such as Vlax Romani, Dutch, Spanish and Japanese.
Indeed, Brazil is a bio-diverse area with amazing linguistic and cultural diversity. You will find biological richness and linguistic variance in the deep Amazonian rainforest. People speak almost 274 native languages from 305 different civilizations.
Sao Paulo is the largest city around the globe with Portuguese speakers. It is home for sizable Jewish, Chinese, Italian, and Arab communities.
What language do they speak in Brazil?
For most Brazilians, Portuguese is a primary language, but several foreign words play an important role in expanding the nationwide vocabulary. The language has experienced several transformations in the former colony and the motherland. Remember, it was introduced in Brazil in the sixteen century.
Spanish-speaking, Japanese, Germans, and Italian immigrants introduced new expressions and words in Brazilian Portuguese. Both countries have standardized spellings, but meanings of language, vocabularies, and pronunciations have diverged widely. Due to this change, several Brazilians can understand Spanish language and Latin American languages.
Foreign technologies and products also introduced new terms. For instance, the farewell (tchau) ubiquitous expression was from Italian ciao. In this situation, it is difficult to say what language do they speak in Brazil because there are numerous languages.
Language of Indigenous People
Native people of Brazil speak several discrete languages; therefore, you will find a great divergence of languages in this country. The Tupí-Guaraní or Tupian language group has influenced the place-names of Brazilians and added thousands of expressions and words to Portuguese in Brazil. Portuguese was useful for communicating with Indians.
Native Brazilians use Tupian as a principal language, serving as lingua franca among Portuguese and Indian traders, adventurers, administrators, and missionaries. It was frequently used in western Brazil and the Amazon region until the nineteenth century. Due to Tupian influence, Brazilians enunciate clearly and use nasal speech models instead of their Iberian counterparts.
Portuguese Primacy in Brazil
In 1500, the Portuguese language touched the American coasts for the first time because Pedro Álvares Cabral (Portuguese navigator) reached Brazil. When Cabral arrived, almost 6 – 10 million Amerindian individuals in Brazil spoke nearly 1,300 different languages. Nowadays, almost 170,000 people speak 181 languages.
Modern Brazilian Portuguese is completely different from the European version of Portuguese because of Amerindian and African language traces. Brazil has more than 205 million people speaking Portuguese compared to 10 million people in Portugal. Now the answer to what language do they speak in Brazil is clear. Almost 99 percent of the Brazilian population speak Portuguese.
