The portuguese language in Brazil: multiple peoples, multiple forms

Abstract

This paper looks at the role of African, Amerindian, and Portuguese peoples in shaping and spreading the Portuguese language in Brazil from an interdisciplinary approach. Drawing from secondary and primary sources – such as Antônio da Costa Peixoto’s New Book of the Mina General Language (1741) and Friar Cannecattim’s Dictionary of the Bunda or Angolan Language (1804) – it explores the interplay between language, power, and identity to historicise the process by which Portuguese became the primary language in Brazil, despite its multilingual landscape. In doing so, it challenges the idea that the spread of Portuguese and language shift was always a conscious product of the Portuguese Crown and a result of open violent imposition. On the contrary, the spread and consolidation of Portuguese deeply depended on the missionaries, the population, and symbolic colonial practices. Additionally, the fact that Portuguese prevailed as the main language spoken in Brazil has not precluded it from being profoundly intertwined with Amerindian and African languages. Such languages formed a multilingual society, being largely responsible for the differentiation between European and Brazilian Portuguese.