Language
As in all Brazil, Portuguese is the main spoken language. A few expressions of Spanish origin are common (such as "gracias" instead of "obrigado", or the expletive "tchê") etc., due to the proximity with Argentina and Uruguay and their common Gaucho past. Also a few words of German origin, particularly referring to culinary, have entered the vocabulary, such as "chimia" (from "schmier") and "cuca" (from "kuecher"). Words of Indian Guarani language origin also make up the vocabulary. Example is the largely used word "guri", meaning "boy".
The gaúchos are also famous by their use of the pronoun "tu", instead of "você". In the traditional gaúcho dialect of the Pampas, the verb is conjugated correctly in the second person singular, just like the European Portuguese (tu cantas, tu bates, tu partes, tu pões). In the colloquial Portuguese of Porto Alegre, however, the verb is conjugated in the second person as in the third person (tu canta, tu bate, tu parte, tu põe).
Read more about this topic: Rio Grande Do Sul
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“One can say of language that it is potentially the only human home, the only dwelling place that cannot be hostile to man.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)
“The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book—a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the Devil; for which reason I have long since as good as renounced it.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)