| Caipira | |
|---|---|
| Pronunciation | locally[kajˈpi.ɹɐ] |
| Native to | Brazil |
| Region | Paulistania |
| Ethnicity | Caipiras |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | None |
| Linguasphere | 51-AAA-am |
| This article containsIPA phonetic symbols. Without properrendering support, you may seequestion marks, boxes, or other symbols instead ofUnicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA. | |
Caipira (Caipira pronunciation: [kajˈpiɹɐ] or [kajˈpiɹ];Portuguese pronunciation:[kajˈpiɾɐ]) is adialect of thePortuguese language spoken in localities ofCaipira influence, mainly in the interior of the state ofSão Paulo, in the eastern south ofMato Grosso do Sul, in theTriângulo[1] and southernMinas Gerais, in the south ofGoiás, in the far north, center and west ofParaná, as well as in other regions of the interior of the state. Its delimitation and characterization dates back to 1920, withAmadeu Amaral's work,O Dialecto Caipira.
The formation of the caipira dialect began with the arrival of the Portuguese inSão Vicente in the sixteenth century. Ongoing research points to several influences, such asGalician-Portuguese, represented in some archaic aspects of the dialect, and thelíngua geral paulista, a Tupian Portuguese-like creole codified by the Jesuits.[2] The westward colonial expansion by theBandeirantes expedition spread the dialect throughout a dialectal and cultural continuum called Paulistania[3] in the provinces ofSão Paulo,Mato Grosso (later,Mato Grosso do Sul andRondônia),Goiás,Federal District, andMinas Gerais.
In the 1920s, the scholar Amadeu Amaral published a grammar and predicted the imminentdeath of the Caipira dialect, caused by urbanization and the coming wave of mass immigration resulting from the monoculture of coffee.[4] However, the dialect survived in rural subculture, with music, folk stories (causos), and asubstratum in city-dwellers' speech, recorded by folklorists and linguists, although someCaipira variants were already heard by the 1790s to 1890s.[5]
Although thecaipira accent originated inthe state of São Paulo, the middle and upper class sociolect ofthe state capital is now a very different variety closer to standard Portuguese but with some Italian-influenced elements, and working-classpaulistanos may sound somewhat likecaipira to people of other parts of Brazil, such as Bahia and Rio de Janeiro.Caipira is spoken mostly in the countryside[6]
Seethe dedicated article on the topic of prestige.
Linguistic bias orpreconceito linguistico is a theme that gained relevancy in the discussion of Brazilian Portuguese by Brazilian linguists, perhaps because of the work "Preconceito linguístico: o que é, como se faz" byMarcos Bagno, the same author describes it as a subtype ofsocial bias since according to him, it attacks the people speaking in a specific manner and not the manner itself,Aldo Bizzocchi, linguist who owns the blogDiário de um linguista (Diary of a linguist) and the YouTube channelPlanetalingua (Planet-suffix associated with languages, "The world of languages"), that perceives any sort of bias towards ethic,LGBT, gender identities and biological sexes while understanding it as resource that has the capacity of save lives, as the byproduct of ignorancy[7][8] says that this discrimination based on dialectal variation can be seen even in some seemingly innocent scenarios like in Brazilian comedy whereCaipiras but alsoNordestinos (Northeastener (in Brazil)), which are also people with "weird accents" (Nordestino dialect) are always comedic entities[9]
Representation of this level of prestige ofCaipira can be seen inChico Bento, some characters sometimes show some unacceptability towards the manner of speech of the main character,Chico Bento and his father, the achademic paper that is titledUma analise sociolinguística da linguagem de Chico Bento em alguns quadrinhos de gibi (A sociolinguistic analysis on the speech of Chico Bento in some scenes found in comic books) byNorte Cientifico sees it as a recurrent theme in the series, the abstraction that the way he speaks fits into is usually understood to be "wrong" by institutions like schools and media such as TV, Ads, Books,[10] possibly because linguistics is a less known science.
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There may be some variation between speakers. The following is a description of various features of this dialect that is sometimes described as having a significant number of particularities.[11]
Phonetically, the most important differences in comparison with standard Brazilian Portuguese are thepostalveolar orretroflex approximants ([ɹ~ɻ]) for⟨r⟩ as allophone ofEuropean andpaulistano[r~ɹ][12] in the syllable coda (/ʁ/ in the syllable coda for most Brazilian dialects), as in most areas there's [u ~ ʊ] realization of coda <l>, although not as in most area, it can also be pronounced as the coda <r> of it,[ɹ~ɻ][5]
The most common coda or allophones ofCaipira is not the same as those in urban areas of hinterland São Paulo and some speakers of the capital and the coast,alveolar approximant[ɹ] andr-colored vowel. SomeCaipira speakers may use those instead.[original research?]
As inNordestino (the Northeastern) dialect, there is a merger of/ʎ/ <lh> into the semivowel/j/, although, unlike Nordestino, this can't happen for its nasal equivalent and similar to, but not exactly likeyeísmo ([/ʎ/] → [ʝ]) is a feature of caipira, some may not merge/ʎ/ into[j][original research?] or may vocalize the <l>.[original research?] Rarer pronunciations include using approximants forall instances in which European speakers of Portuguese have[ɾ],[original research?] including the intervocalic and post-consonantal ones (like inAmerican English) or using a palatal approximant[j] instead of a rhotic approximant. That, while more common in theCaipira area by its particular phonology, is more often associated withspeech-language pathology.
The lowering of \i\ to [e] happens in some context inCaipira speech, so <país> "country" gets realized as [päes] in Caipira. This can also happen with diphthongs and semi-vowels, \i j\ become [e] and \w u\ become [o].[5]
This phenomenon happens in most dialects, although not all (theSulista andPaulista accents do not have this feature.[13])
In this dialect, it occurs in 'Vocalic Groups' (cães, areas, ... but not diphthongs like mais \aj\, leite \ej\) and in stressed vowels and the result of the heightening is [i] and [u]. Elision often happens in cases where it happens.[5]
Certain vowels start to glide to a [j] sound before coda <s> as in other dialects (this mergesmas andmais, that difference may be confusing for someone that's why there's a significant amount of material explaining the differences between the two[14]),[15] this may be analyzed as adding a [j], this pronunciation, there are identified cases where this sort of shift happens before <n> inCaipira as in some idiolects ofPaulistano,[16] that is the dialect spoken casually in the urban regions of the southeast,[5] this sort of realization was historically registered typically only in other vernaculars but that doesn't mean it doesn't occur in more educated speakers, those that know the standard but may do this in familiar, colloquial or informal registers of language[5][17]
It frequently happens with \r\ (Example: [pro]→ [po]) in specific situations, those aren't the same as what may happen in dialects likePaulistano where final rhotics in infinitives of verbs may get removed, elision sometimes described, more informally in Portuguese as "comendo" (that usually passes the idea of consuming food)[18] but also with vowels (Example: the first <e> in <cadáveres> and <inspetor> get deleted), there are reported cases of this happening in the 1840s and a vowel before <nh> may not get realized[5]
There's the usage of a vowel to break infrequent consonant clusters[5] as in some dialects,[19]Caipira usually uses [e], but there are dialects that use a sound more like [i][20] (advogado→ adevogado) but there are cases of rhotic epenthesis (debuta→ debruta), sometimes it also happens because ofhypercorrection, (inclusive→ inclusivel), epenthesis also occurs more broadly in Brazilian Portuguese when borrowing a word in certain contexts.[21]
This process happens in \p f\ + \r\ + \V\ sequences where the rhotic + vowel position invert, that also in other situations like with the postposition <em> (which gets realized as [ni]), the rhotic may go to a different syllable (pedestres→ pedrestes). This category of sound together with hypothesis change happens frequently with <r> as noted by the linguist Amaral, it was sometimes found that a sound took what was the place of a similar sound (fétido→ fedito).[5]
Words may gain or lose nasalization ([NASAL+]) (ordenou→ ordeou & economizar→ enconomizar). The addition of nasalization may happen with \i\ and \e\ in initial position on their own. Sometimes word final nasalization is found in word final position (contagem→ contage), thus merging "fala" (3rd person singular) with "falam" (3rd person plural). In some representations likeChico Bento, it can be seen.[5][22]
Things may gain voice when in between voiced sounds (precisa→ perciza). Even as early as the 1808 there were phenoma like devoicing ([bt]→ [pt])[5]
Unstressed \ow\, \aj\, \ej\, \õw\ and \ẽj\ may lose their semi-vowel,[5] but monothongization is in no way limited toCaipira Portuguese and can be observed in other varieties (that includes Portuguese varieties[23]), the [ow]→ [o], which results in the short version of the temporal copula <estou> being \to\ (<tô> or <to>) and not \tow\, the broad range of how much of Portugal is affected by this shift is from half to 2/3 of Portugal,[5][24] others like \ej\→ [e] and \aj\→ [a] also affect other regions.[25]
| Caipira | Portuguese | Galician | English |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ocê, Mecê | Você, Tu | Ti, Te | You |
| Nóis, Nói | Nós | Nós | We |
| Home | Homem | Home | Man |
| Muié | Mulher | Muller | Woman |
| Ermão | Irmão | Irmán | Brother |
| Ansim | Assim | Así | Like this / So / Thus |
| Inté | Até | Ata, Até | Until / Even |
| Nhô | Senhor, Seu | Señor | Sir, Mr. |
| Sodade | Saudade | Saudade | Longing, Nostalgia |
| Musga | Música | Música | Music |
| Costeá | Castigar | Castigar | To punish |
| Çucre | Açúcar | Azucre | Sugar |
| Coresma | Quaresma | Coresma | Lent |
| Derde | Desde | Dende | Since |
| Despoi | Depois | Despois | After / Later |
| Estória | História | História | History / Story |
| Far, Fai | Faz | Fai | Does / Makes |
| Mea | Minha | Miña | My (feminine) |
| Véve | Vive | Vive | Live |
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Observed inflectional morphology development; some (possibly most) of those are not restricted to theCaipira area, formed through contractions.
Gains:
Loss:
Shift in usage
Caipira is the Brazilian dialect by far most influenced by thelínguas gerais, which is said to be a recent decreolization of them into a more standard Brazilian Portuguese. Nevertheless, the decreolization was successful, and despite all the differences, a speaker of vernacular Brazilian Portuguese of other regions has no difficulty in understandingcaipira at all, but foreigners who learned to deal only with standard lusitanizing Brazilian Portuguese may have as much difficulty withcaipira as they would have with other colloquial and vernacular registers of the language.
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The words used are extremely similar to that of other venecular varieties in Brazil (ex: <fugaz> almost always not being used,[32] <industria> shifting in meaning and some combinations like <já que> becoming grammatalized[33]) but there are some expressions that are typicallycaipira, some of those are:[34]
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There is no standard orthography, and Brazilians are taught only the standard variant when learning Portuguese in schools (among the reasons why the dialect was often thought of as endangered in the course of socio-economic development of the country). A nonstandard orthography intended to conveycaipira pronunciation is featured prominently in the popular children's comic bookChico Bento, in which some characters speak in it, the table below shows how it usually represents certain phonological aspects of the speech of theCaipira.
These systems may highlight pragmatic-sociolinguistic expectations not being followed inCaipira, like writingCockney or any exceedingly venecular speech differently.
| Non-standard Phonetic Alteration | Standard spelling | InformalCaipira |
|---|---|---|
| Iotization | <lh> | <i>[10] |
| Heightening | <e> <o> | <i> <u> |
| Rhoticism | ø | <r>[10] |
| Disalizing | Orthographic vowel with atilde (i.e.:a vsã, similar to the approximation symbol)1[22] | Orthographic vowel<m> or <n>, if a tilde is on top, it is removed |
| Reversion in order | Works in reference to how the standard and other varieties are realized | Reversion of typical orthographic sequence2[36] |
| Iotization before /s/ | Orthographic vowel<s> | Orthographic vowel<is>[36] |
| Monothongnization | <ou> <ei> <ai> | <ô> <e> <a>[36][37] |
| Disrhoticism | <ar> <er> | <á> <ê>[37] |
