 | This article has multiple issues. Please helpimprove it or discuss these issues on thetalk page.(Learn how and when to remove these messages) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
|
Carioca (Portuguese pronunciation:[kaɾiˈɔkɐ]ⓘor[kɐɾiˈɔkɐ]) is ademonym used to refer to residents of thecity of Rio de Janeiro, inBrazil and their culture.
Like other Brazilians,Cariocas speakPortuguese. Thecarioca accent andsociolect (also simply called "carioca", see below) are one of the most widely recognized in Brazil, in part becauseTV Globo, the most popular TV network in Brazil, is headquartered in Rio de Janeiro. Thus, many Brazilian TV programs, from news and documentary to entertainment (such as thetelenovelas), featurecarioca-acting and -speaking talent.
The original meaning of the term is controversial, maybe fromTupi language "kari' oka", meaning "white house" as the whitewashed stone houses of European settlers or even the colonists themselves, by merging "kara'iwa" (white man) and "oka" (house). Others propose the "beloved eyes" or "black eyes" meanings, derived from "kara" (beloved or black) and "oka" (eye). Currently, the more accepted origin in academia is the meaning derived from "kariîó oka", which comes from Tupi "house ofcarijó", which wasGuaraní, a nativetribe of Rio de Janeiro who lived in the vicinity of theCarioca River, between the neighborhoods ofGlória andFlamengo.
The archaic demonym for the state of Rio de Janeiro isFluminense, taken from the Latin wordflūmen, meaning "river". Despite the fact thatCarioca is a more ancient demonym of Rio de Janeiro's inhabitants (known since 1502), it was replaced byfluminense in 1783, when the latter was sanctioned as the official demonym of the Royal Captainship of Rio de Janeiro (later the Province of Rio de Janeiro).
In 1763, the colonial capital of Brazil was transferred fromSalvador to Rio de Janeiro. From 1783 and during the rest of the colonial period and then theindependent empire,Carioca remained only as a nickname by which other Brazilians called the inhabitants of Rio (city and province). During the first years of the Brazilian Republic,Carioca was the name given to those who lived in the slums or a pejorative way to refer to the bureaucratic elite of theFederal District.
In 1960, when Brazil’s capital and theFederal District were transferred from Rio de Janeiro to newly builtBrasília, the city of Rio de Janeiro was reorganized as the state ofGuanabara. During this transition,Carioca was recognized as a co-official demonym alongsideGuanabarino, both referring to residents of the former capital.
In 1975, during the presidency ofErnesto Geisel under Brazil’s military dictatorship, the State of Guanabara was merged with the neighboring State of Rio de Janeiro. Following the merger, the city of Rio de Janeiro replacedNiterói as the capital of the unified state, andCarioca became the official demonym for inhabitants of the city.
Nowadays, Carioca is used to exclusively refer to those born in the city of Rio de Janeiro, while everyone born in the state of Rio de Janeiro is referred to as a Fluminense.[1]
Carioca people have invented a few sports; the most famous isfootvolley.
Cariocas are credited with creating thebossa nova style of music.
FamousCariocas in film include "Brazilian bombshell"Carmen Miranda, a Portuguese-born Brazilian woman who grew up in Rio de Janeiro. The eponymous song "Carioca", from the 1933 filmFlying Down to Rio, has become ajazz standard.
Carnaval Carioca is the Portuguese name for the largestBrazilian Carnival, theRio Carnival.[2]
Samba Carioca is a localized style ofBrazilian Samba.
How to be a Carioca byPriscilla Ann Goslin provides advice to visitors to the city on how to fit in with the local culture and lifestyle. It has sold over 350,000 copies since being first published in 1992 and provided the inspiration for a Portuguese television series of the same name that was released in 2023.[3][4]
There is an exercise drill used for dynamic stretching calledCarioca. It consists of a repeating Samba dance step.[5][6]
| Carioca | |
|---|---|
| Carioca,sotaque | |
| Pronunciation | Portuguese pronunciation:[kaɾiˈɔkɐ]ⓘor[kɐɾiˈɔkɐ] |
| Region | Rio de Janeiro |
Indo-European
| |
| Portuguese alphabet | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| IETF | pt-u-sd-brrj |
The Portuguese spoken across the states of Rio de Janeiro andEspírito Santo and neighboring towns inMinas Gerais (and to a certain extent the city ofFlorianópolis), has similar features, hardly different from one another so cities such asParaty,Resende,Campos dos Goytacazes,Cachoeiro de Itapemirim,Vila Velha andLinhares may be said to have the same dialect as Rio de Janeiro, as they are hardly perceived as strong regional variants by people from other parts of Brazil.
TheBrazilian Portuguese variant spoken in the city of Rio de Janeiro (and metropolitan area) is calledCarioca, and it is calledSotaque locally, literally translated as "accent". It can be said that Rio de Janeiro presents asociolect inside the majorFluminense-Capixaba dialect, as speakers inside the city may be easily recognizable more by their slang than the way the phonology of their speech, which is closer to the standard Brazilian Portuguese in the media than other variants. It is known especially for several distinctive traits new to either variant (European or Brazilian) of thePortuguese language:
The traits (particularly thechiado, apalatalization process that creates a postalveolar pronunciation of codas andz and affricate pronunciation of[ti] and[di] andte andderhymes), as a whole and consistent among the vast majority of speakers, were once specifically characteristic of Rio de Janeiro speech and distinguished particularly from the pronunciation of São Paulo and areas further south, which formerly had adapted none of the characteristics. Thechiado of the coda sibilant is thought to date from the early 1800s occupation of the city by the Portuguese royal family, as European Portuguese had a similar characteristic for the postalveolar codas.
More recently, however, all of the traits have spread throughout much of the country by the cultural influence of the city that diminished thesocial marker character the lack of palatalization once had (a part of assimilation of the caboclo minorities in most of South and Southeast Brazil). Affrication is today widespread, if not nearly omnipresent among young Brazilians, and coda guttural r is also found nationwide (their presence in Brazil is a general heritage of Tupi speech too) but less among speakers in the 5 southernmost states other than Rio de Janeiro, and if accent is a good social indicator, 95-105 million Brazilians consistently palatalize coda sibilant in some instances (but as in Rio de Janeiro, it is only a marker of adoption of foreign phonology at large in Florianópolis and Belém: palatalization, as in any other Romance language, is a very old process in Portuguese and its lacking in some dialect rather than reflecting a specific set of Galician, Spanish and indigenous influences on their formation).
Another common characteristic ofCarioca speech is, in a stressed final syllable, the addition of /j/ before coda /s/ (mas,dez may become[majʃ],[dɛjʃ], which can also be noted ambiguously as[mɐ̞ⁱʃ],[dɛⁱʃ]). The change may have originated in the Northeast, where pronunciations such asJesus[ʒeˈzujs] have long been heard. Also immigration from Northeastern Brazil and Spanish immigration causes debuccalization of the coda sibilant:mesmo[meɦmu]. Many Brazilians assume that is specific to Rio, but in the Northeast, debuccalization has long been a strong and advanced phonological process that may also affect onset sibilants/s/ and/z/ as well as other consonants, primarily[v].
There are some grammatical characteristics of this sociolect as well, an important one is the mixing of second person pronounsvocê andtu, even in the same speech. For instance, whilenormative Portuguese requireslhe as the oblique forvocê andte as oblique fortu, inCarioca slang, the once formalvocê (now widespread as an informal pronoun in many Brazilian Portuguese varieties) is used for all cases. In informal speech, the pronountu is retained, but with the verb forms belonging to the form você:Tu foi na festa? ("Did you go to the party?"). So the verbal forms are the same for bothvocê andtu.
ManyCariocas and manyPaulistas (from the coast, capital city or hinterland) shortenvocê and usecê instead:Cê vai pra casa agora? ("Are you going home now?"). That, however, is common only on the spoken language and is rarely written.
Slang words among youngsters from Rio de Janeiro includecaraca! (gosh!) [now spread throughout Brazil],e aê? andqualé/quaé/coé? (literally "which is [it]", carrying a meaning similar to "What's up?"),maneiro ("cool", "fine", "interesting", "amusing"),mermão ("bro", contraction ofmeu irmão),caô (a lie), andsinistro (in standard Portuguese, "sinister"; in slang, "awesome," "terrific," but also "terrible," "troublesome," "frightening," "weird"). Many of these slang words can be found in practically all of Brazil by to cultural influence from the city. Much slang from Rio de Janeiro spreads across Brazil and may be not known as originally from there, and those less culturally accepted elsewhere are sometimes used to shun not only the speech of a certain subculture, age group or social class but also the whole accent.
{{citation}}: CS1 maint: work parameter with ISBN (link)