| Caipira dialect | |
| Pronunciation: | pronounced as /pt/, pronounced as /kajˈpi.ɹɐ/ |
| States: | Brazil |
| Familycolor: | Indo-European |
| Fam2: | Italic |
| Fam3: | Latino-Faliscan |
| Fam4: | Latin |
| Fam5: | Romance |
| Fam6: | Italo-Western |
| Fam7: | Western Romance |
| Fam8: | Gallo-Iberian |
| Fam9: | Iberian Romance |
| Fam10: | West Iberian |
| Fam11: | Galician–Portuguese |
| Fam12: | Portuguese |
| Fam13: | Brazilian Portuguese |
| Isoexception: | dialect |
| Lingua: | 51-AAA-am |
| Glotto: | none |
| Notice: | IPA |
| Ethnicity: | Caipiras |
| Region: | Paulistania |
Caipira is a dialect of the Portuguese language spoken in localities of Caipira influence, mainly in the interior of the state of São Paulo, in the eastern south of Mato Grosso do Sul, in the Triângulo[1] and southern Minas Gerais, in the south of Goiás, in the far north, center and west of Paraná, as well as in other regions of the interior of the state. Its delimitation and characterization dates back to 1920, with Amadeu Amaral's work, O Dialecto Caipira.
The formation of the caipira dialect began with the arrival of the Portuguese in São Vicente in the sixteenth century. Ongoing research points to several influences, such as Galician-Portuguese, represented in some archaic aspects of the dialect, and the língua geral paulista, a Tupian Portuguese-like creole codified by the Jesuits.[2] The westward colonial expansion by the Bandeirantes expedition spread the dialect throughout a dialectal and cultural continuum called Paulistania[3] in the provinces of São Paulo, Mato Grosso (later, Mato Grosso do Sul and Rondônia), Goiás, Federal District, and Minas Gerais.
In the 1920s, the scholar Amadeu Amaral published a grammar and predicted the imminent death 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 a substratum in city-dwellers' speech, recorded by folklorists and linguists, although some Caipira variants were already heard by the 1790s to 1890s.
Although the caipira accent originated in the state of São Paulo, the middle and upper class sociolect of the state capital is now a very different variety closer to standard Portuguese but with some Italian-influenced elements, and working-class paulistanos may sound somewhat like caipira to people of other parts of Brazil, such as Bahia and Rio de Janeiro. Caipira is spoken mostly in the countryside[5]
See the dedicated article on the topic of prestige.
Linguistic bias or preconceito 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" by Marcos Bagno, the same author describes it as a subtype of social 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 blog Diário de um linguista (Diary of a linguist) and the YouTube channel Planetalingua (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[6] [7] says that this discrimination based on dialectal variation can be seen even in some seemingly innocent scenarios like in Brazilian comedy where Caipiras but also Nordestinos (Northeastener (in Brazil)), which are also people with "weird accents" (Nordestino dialect) are always comedic entities[8]
Representation of this level of prestige of Caipira can be seen in Chico 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 titled Uma 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) by Norte 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, possibly because linguistics is a less known science.
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.[9]
Phonetically, the most important differences in comparison with standard Brazilian Portuguese are the postalveolar or retroflex approximants (pronounced as /[{{IPA link|ɹ}} ~ {{IPA link|ɻ}}]/) for as allophone of European and paulistano pronounced as /[r ~ ɹ]/[10] in the syllable coda (pronounced as /link/ in the syllable coda for most Brazilian dialects), as in most areas there's [<nowiki/>[[Voiced labial–velar approximant|u]] ~ ʊ] realization of coda
The most common coda ar allophones of caipira is not the same of those in urban areas of hinterland São Paulo and some speakers of the capital and the coast, alveolar approximant pronounced as /link/ and r-colored vowel. Some caipira speakers may use those instead.
The merger of pronounced as /link/
The lowering of \i\ to [e] happens in some context in caipira speech, so
This phenomenon happens in most dialects although not all (the Sulita and Paulista accents do not have this feature.[12])
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.
Certain vowels start to glide to a [j] sound before coda <s> as in other dialects (this merges mas and mais, that difference may be confusing for someone that's why there's a significant amount of material explaining the differences between the two[13]),[14] this may be analyzed as adding a [j], this pronunciation, there are identified cases where this sort of shift happens before
It frequently happens with \r\ (Example: [pro] → [po]) in specific situations, those aren't the same as what may happen in dialects like Paulistano 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) [17] but also with vowels (Example: the first
There's the usage of a vowel to break unfrequent consonant clusters as in some dialects,[18] Caipira usually uses [e], but there are dialects that use a sound more like [i][19] (advogado → adevogado) but there are cases of rhotic epenthesis (debuta → debruta), sometimes it also happens because of hypercorrection, (inclusive → inclusivel), epenthesis also occurs more broadly in Brazilian Portuguese when borrowing a word in certain contexts.[20]
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
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 like Chico Bento, it can be seen.[21]
Things may gain voice when in between voiced sounds (precisa → perciza). Even as early as the 1808 there were phenoma like devoicing ([bt] → [pt])
Unstressed \ow\, \aj\, \ej\, \õw\ and \ẽj\ may lose their semi-vowel, but monothongization is in no way limited to Caipira Portuguese and can be observed in other varieties (that includes Portuguese varieties[22]), the [ow] → [o], which results in the short version of the temporal copula
| Rio de Janeiro | São Paulo | Caipira | English | |||
| Spelling | Pronunciation (IPA) | Pronunciation (IPA) | ||||
| flor | pronounced as /['floχ ~ 'floh]/ | pronounced as /[ˈflo(ɾ) ~ 'flo(ɹ)]/ | frô, flô | pronounced as /[ˈfɾo ~ ˈflo]/ | flower | |
| falso | pronounced as /[ˈfau̯sʊ]/ | farso | pronounced as /[ˈfaɻsʊ]/ | false | ||
| melhor | pronounced as /[mɪˈʎɔχ ~ mɪˈʎɔh]/ | pronounced as /[mɪˈʎɔ(ɾ) ~ mɪˈʎɔ(ɹ)]/ | mió, mior | pronounced as /[miˈjɔ ~ miˈɔɻ]/ | better | |
| voar | pronounced as /[vʊˈäχ ~ vʊˈäh]/ | pronounced as /[vʊˈä(ɾ) ~ vʊˈä(ɹ)]/ | avuá | pronounced as /[ɐ̞vʊˈa]/ | to fly | |
| por quê? | pronounced as /[pʊχˈke ~ pʊhˈke]/ | pronounced as /[puɾˈke ~ puɹˈke]/ | pur quê? | pronounced as /[puɻˈke ~ pʊɻˈke]/ | why? | |
| ganhamos | pronounced as /[ɡɐ̃ˈȷ̃ɐ̃mʊʃ]/ | pronounced as /[ɡɐ̃ˈȷ̃ɐ̃mʊs]/ | ganhemo | pronounced as /[ɡɐ̃ˈ ȷ̃ẽ̞mʊ]/ | we won | |
| chegamos | pronounced as /[ʃɪˈɡɐ̃muʃ]/ | pronounced as /[ʃeˈɡɐ̃mʊs]/ | cheguemo | pronounced as /[ʃɛˈɡẽ̞mʊ]/ | we came | |
| voltamos | pronounced as /[vo̞u̯ˈtɐ̃mʊʃ]/ | pronounced as /[vo̞u̯ˈtɐ̃mʊs]/ | vortemo | pronounced as /[vo̞ɻˈtẽ̞mʊ]/ | we came back | |
| bêbado | pronounced as /[ˈbebadʊ]/ | beudo | pronounced as /[ˈbeʊ̯dʊ]/ | drunk | ||
The vowels \o e\ which are close to close-mid vowels (whose exact quality differ) are usually heightened in specific contexts, but sometimes speakers don't heighten thesr
Observed inflectional morphology development; some (possibly most) of those are not restricted to the Caipira area, formed through contractions.
Gains:
Loss:
Shift in usage
Caipira is the Brazilian dialect by far most influenced by the línguas 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 understanding caipira at all, but foreigners who learned to deal only with standard lusitanizing Brazilian Portuguese may have as much difficulty with caipira as they would have with other colloquial and vernacular registers of the language.
The words used are extremely similar to that of other venecular varieties in Brazil (ex:
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 convey caipira pronunciation is featured prominently in the popular children's comic book Chico Bento, in which some characters speak in it, the table below shows how it usually represents certain phonological aspects of the speech of the Caipira.
These systems may highlight pragmatic-sociolinguistic expectations not being followed in Caipira, like writing Cockney or any exceedingly venecular speech differently.
| Non-standardPhonetic Alteration | Standard spelling | Informal Caipira | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Iotization | <i>|-|Heightening| | Orthographic vowel | |
| Monothongnization | <ô> | ||
| Disrhoticism | <á> <ê> |
