domingo, 27 de mayo de 2012

Brazil


Brazil
Official Languages
Portuguese is spoken by almost 100 percent of the population.  The difference in the Portuguese spoken in Brazil compared to Portugal is easily compared to the difference between English spoken in the United States compared to the United Kingdom.  There are only variations in accents and vocabs in Portuguese.  There are no dialects that differ in Portuguese.  There are approximately 230 languages listed for the country of Brazil.  Out of those languages there are 181 that are still living languages and there are approximately 50 that have no known speakers and are therefore dead languages.  Some of the immigrant languages include Irish Gaelic, Italian, Assyrian Neo-aramaic and German.  There are about 380,000 Japanese speakers. 


History
Brazil was claimed part of Portugal by Pedro Alvarez Cabral in the early 1500’s.  He named it first Veracruise.  Various races have been inhabited in Brazil throughout 8,000 years in history.  This was found out by fossil records.  Brazil has been invaded by many different countries over the lapse of time.  These countries include France, the Netherlands, and Portugal.  Early on Brazil was separated into portions of land which were then donated to Portuguese noblemen.  When the king of Portugal found out the system was not sufficient, the king took direct control of the country.  Brazil won independence from the Portuguese on September 7th, 1842. 



Interesting Facts
The written language of Portuguese and the spoken language are different.  There are very few people who can correctly write the Portuguese language correctly.  English is often studied in school and has replaced French as the second language among the educated people.  The population of Brazil is around 187 million people.  The literacy rate is 88 percent.  In the Americas, Brazil is the only Portuguese speaking country.  This gives Brazil a very different culture than the neighboring Spanish-speaking countries.  Portuguese is the only language that is used in the schooling system, newspapers and media including TV and radio.  

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