Uruguayan Portuguese

Border of Peace between Rivera and Livramento.

Uruguayan Portuguese, also known as Fronteiriço, is a variety of Portuguese with influences from Spanish. It is spoken in northern Uruguay, near the Brazilian border, mainly in the region of the twin cities of Rivera (Uruguay) and Santana do Livramento (Brazil). This section of the frontier is called Frontera de la Paz (Border of Peace), because there is no legal obstacle to crossing the border between the two countries.

The varieties of Uruguayan Portuguese share many similarities with the countryside dialects of the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, such as the denasalization of final unstressed nasal vowels, replacement of lateral palatal /ʎ/ with semivowel /j/, failure to apply the raising rule to final unstressed /e/, alveolar trill /r/ instead of the guttural R, and lateral realization of coda /l/ instead of L-vocalization.^[3]

Recent changes in Uruguayan Portuguese include the urbanization of this variety, acquiring characteristics from urban Brazilian Portuguese such as distinction between /ʎ/ and /j/, affrication of /t/ and /d/ before /i/ and /ĩ/, and other features of Brazilian broadcast media.^[4]

History

The origin of Portuguese in Uruguay can be traced back to the time of the dominion of the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal, and the Empire of Brazil. In those times, the ownership of those lands were not very well defined, passing back and forth from the hands of one crown to the other.

Portuguese was the only language spoken throughout northern Uruguay until the end of the 19th century. To assure the homogeneity of the newly formed country, the government made an effort to impose the Spanish language into lusophones communities through educational policies and language planning, and the bilingualism became widespread and diglossic.^[5]

The varieties of Uruguayan Portuguese varies in dialect continuum which range from Rioplatense Spanish to Brazilian Portuguese. Nevertheless, it has one variant which is the most used, and could be taken as a case study: this variant is geographically located on the area having the cities of Rivera and Santana do Livramento as its center, and expanding over a strip of several kilometers parallel to the border, including territory of both nations.

Phonology and orthography

The Riverense language does not possess a formally defined orthography, but in this article an orthography of Portuñol will be presented in order to enable its phonemes to be represented in the most accurate and consistent possible way, highlighting the phonologic features of this language variety. It should be noted that not all Portuñol-speaking persons use the same pronunciation for the same words (as is the case with most languages). Nevertheless, the script that is chosen is very representative of the most frequent and distinctive features.

The chosen representation is the closest to the one that would be used if we tried to transcribe the phonemes to the Spanish language (because this is the language taught to Uruguayans, which is the nationality of the majority of speakers of this dialect), except for the phonemes that can't be represented through the Spanish alphabet, like, for example the nasal vowels.

Spanish vowels

The Spanish vowels are the ones which are pronounced like the five vowels of the Spanish language (they also exist in Portuguese):

Portuguese vowels

These vowels are found in Portuguese, but not in Spanish.

Semiopen vowels

They are like the vowels e and o, but pronounced in a more open way, closer to an a.

Distinguishing the open-mid vowels (é, ó) is very important because they can completely change the meaning of a word, like in the following examples:

avó [aˈvɔ] (grandmother) and avô [aˈvo] (grandfather)

véio [ˈvɛjo] (old (m.)) and veio [ˈvejo] (he came - from the verb ví [to come])

véia [ˈvɛja] (old (f.)) and veia [ˈveja] (vein)

póso [ˈpɔso] ((I) can) and poso [ˈposo] (well)

Nasal vowels

The nasal vowels are the vowels which are produced by expiring the air partly through the nose and partly through the mouth. They don't exist in Spanish and therefore are generally derived from Portuguese words.

(*) before s, sh, y, z, ce, ci.

(**) before s, sh, y, z, ce, ci, or when it is the first syllable and is not followed by ga, gue, gui, go, gu, ca, que, qui, co, cu or k.

Distinguishing nasal vowels is very important, because they can completely change the meaning of the word, like in the following examples:

paũ [ˈpaw̃] (bread) and pau [ˈpaw] (stick)

nũ [nũ] (in a (m.)) and nu [nu] (in the (m.))

nũa [ˈnũ.a] (in a (f.)) and núa [ˈnu.a] (naked (f.))

ũ [ũ] (one, a (m.)) and u [u] (the (m.))

cũ [kũ] (with) and cu [ˈku] (anus - vulgar term)

ũs [ũs] (some (m.)) and us [us] (the (m.pl.))

Consonants

In the next table, when there is a reference to Spanish, it refers to the Rioplatense Spanish dialect, and where there is a reference to Portuguese, it refers to Brazilian Portuguese and more specifically the Gaúcho dialect (from the Brazilian Southern state of Rio Grande do Sul).

See also

• Differences between Spanish and Portuguese

References

Bibliography

• CARVALHO, Ana Maria. Variation and diffusion of Uruguayan Portuguese in a bilingual border town, by Ana Maria Carvalho, University of California at Berkeley USA. (PDF)
• Lipski, John M. (2006). "Too close for comfort? The genesis of "portuñol/portunhol"" (PDF). Selected Proceedings of the 8th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium. ed. Timothy L. Face and Carol A. Klee, 1-22. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.  (PDF)
• Nicolás Brian, Claudia Brovetto, Javier Geymonat, Portugués del Uruguay y educación bilingüe
• Penny, Ralph (2001). "Variation and Change in Spanish". Cambridge University Press.  [Contains a section on Portuñol].
• Carvalho, Ana Maria (2004), "I speak like the guys on TV: Palatalization and the urbanization of Uruguayan Portuguese", Language Variation and Change, 16 (2): 127–151, doi:10.1017/S0954394504162030 

External links

• Page about Uruguayan Portunhol (in Portuguese) at Unicamp - University of Campinas, São Paulo (in Portuguese)
• Adolfo Elizaincín website
• (Interlingua) (English) (Portuguese) (Spanish) Portuñol, a new language that is gaining popularity among people who live close to the borders of Brazil and its neighboring Spanish-speaking countries

Languages of Brazil
Official language	Portuguese
Regional languages	German Pomeranian Riograndenser Hunsrückisch Italian Talian
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Interlanguages	Cafundó Lanc-Patuá Macarrônico Portunhol Fronteiriço
Sign languages	Brazilian Sign Ka'apor Sign