Brief history of general languages and language policies in Colonial Brazil

Abstract

Brazil is a multilingual and multicultural country and was so even before the Europeans arrived in the territory. Over the centuries, contact and conflict between European and African languages with indigenous languages have influenced the variety of Portuguese spoken in the country since the 16th century. In this paper[1], we present an overview of Brazil’s languages, referring to the so-called general languages and the language policies in favor of the Portuguese language in the period. To this end, we resort to the contributions of scholars who investigate the use of language in society or “social history of language” (Burke 2002, Freire 2003); some concepts derived from the field of language policy; notions of heritage and indigenous culture. It is shown that the policies of colonization were harmful to linguistic diversity, as in the case of the Nheengatu language spoken until today in the North of the country, due to the continuous resistance of the speakers of the language.