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:
“UG [universal grammar] may be regarded as a characterization of the genetically determined language faculty. One may think of this faculty as a ‘language acquisition device,’ an innate component of the human mind that yields a particular language through interaction with present experience, a device that converts experience into a system of knowledge attained: knowledge of one or another language.”
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“We have tried so hard to adulterate our hearts, and have so greatly abused the microscope to study the hideous excrescences and shameful warts which cover them and which we take pleasure in magnifying, that it is impossible for us to speak the language of other men.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)