Linguistic facts about Brazil

Did you know that..................?

• The official language in Brazil is Portuguese;
• Portuguese is spoken all over this huge South American country;
• It is not the only official language, however. LIBRAS - the Brazilian Sign Language - is official too.
• In Brazil, many immigrant and native languages are also spoken. German, Japanese, Korean, Chinese are some examples for the first case. In addition, there are about 180 native languages spoken by indios (Native Brazilians).
• A new orthography for Portuguese was approved by all Portuguese-speaking countries and was put into effect in 2009.
• Portuguese comes from Latin.
• Before Portuguese became an official and widely spoken language, the 'língua geral' (general language), a mixture of several native languages, mostly Tupi, was the main means of communication in the country.