Brazilian Portuguese 

Brazilian Portuguese is a group of Portuguese dialects used by the majority of the 190 million residents of Brazil. A few million Brazilian emigrants in the United States, United Kingdom, Portugal, Canada, Japan, and Paraguay also integrate Portuguese into their everyday life. It is said that the differences between Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese are like those between British and American English. The differences in the spoken language are quite a bit more evident than those in the written language.

History

The existence of Portuguese in Brazil is due to Portuguese immigration in the Americas. The first Portuguese-speaking settlers arrived in Brazil during the 16^th century. In spite of this, the language was not commonly used at that time. For a while, Portuguese existed side-by-side with Língua Gera, which was a lingua franca derived from Amerindian languages that was used by the Jesuit missionaries.

Portuguese became the national language in Brazil at the end of the 18^th century. The rise of Portuguese immigration to the Brazilian inlands made the Portuguese language more common. The Portuguese settlers introduced their language and soon became a vital ethnic group for the country.

In the 16^th century, the failed immigration efforts made by the French in Rio de Janeiro and the Dutch in the Northeast in the 17th century hardly affected Portuguese. In the late 19^th and early 20^th century, there was a large increase in non-Portuguese-speaking immigration (mainly from Italy, Spain, Germany, Poland, Japan and Lebanon). In spite of this, the languages dissolved into the Portuguese-speaking majority in a very short amount. This was the case for most regions of Brazil apart from some regions of the three southern states (in the case of Germans, Italians and Slavs) and rural parts of São Paulo (Italians and Japanese).

Brazilian Portuguese Today

Currently, most of the Brazilian population speaks Portuguese as their native tongue. This occurs almost everywhere except for some of the little villages that have descendants of European and Japanese immigrants. These appear mainly in the South and Southeast. It also occurs in the Amerindian villages where the inhabitants comprise a very small part of the population. In spite of this, even these populations commonly speak Portuguese in order to communicate with others and to understand the language used on TV and on the radio.

In recent history, Brazilian Portuguese has acted as a significant cultural influence to the rest of the Portuguese-speaking world. This is because of the fame Brazilian music and soap operas have gained.