Co-official Languages in Brazil
Brazil accounts for a large portion of both South America’s geography and, as it so happens, its language diversity. Even São Paulo, the largest Portuguese-speaking city in the world, is home to a sizable Arab, Italian, Chinese and Jewish community.
There are 217 indigenous languages that people speak in Brazil. And most of these languages are spoken in Northern Brazil. But today, there are only about 10,000 to 40,000 native speakers of these languages. At UTS, we try to provide details of the lingoes relevant for our clients. This article provides information about the co-official Brazil languages that people speak in Brazil.
According to the 1940 Census, after Portuguese, German was the most widely spoken language in Brazil. But today, states like the Rio Grande do Sul are trying to reverse that trend and immigrant languages such as German and Italian are being reintroduced into the curriculum again with the German dialect. UTS aims to provide information about all the immigrant languages which German immigrants used to speak. So, let’s take a look at the co-official languages of Brazil!
Co-official languages in Brazil
The 21st century has seen the growth of a trend of co-official languages in cities populated by immigrants such as German and Italian or indigenous in the north. The ministry of tourism takes responsibility for the establishment of co-official lingoes. The German language has the co-official status for indigenous people. It is estimated that out of the 5% of Brazilians who speak an additional language, 3% speak English. Although the Italian immigration to Brazil was much more significant than the German one, the German language had many more German speakers than the Italian one, according to the Census. There were several African languages as well that have disappeared from the history of Brazil. Since the 20th century, there are no more records of speakers of the African language that people speak in the country.
In the Brazilian population, the first municipality to adopt a co-official language in Brazil was São Gabriel da Cachoeira, in 2002. Since then, other municipalities have attempted to adopt their own co-official languages. The states of Santa Catarina and the Rio Grande do Sul use Talian as their officially approved heritage language. Moreover, Espírito Santo has the East Pomeranian dialect, along with the German language as a cultural heritage. Other Brazilian states that are using the co-official languages include Rio De Janeiro, Salvador, Blumenau, Caxias do Sul, and some other. However, the co-official lingoes have been rapidly by the Portuguese in the last few decades and partly due to a government decision to integrate immigrant populations.
