Rio Grande do Sul country Brazil
Rio Grande do Sul (UK: , US: , Portuguese: [ˈʁi.u ˈɡɾɐ̃dʒ(i) du ˈsuw] (listen); lit. "Great River of the South") is a state in the southern region of Brazil. It is the fifth-most-populous state and the ninth largest by area. Located in the southernmost part of the country, Rio Grande do Sul is bordered clockwise by Santa Catarina to the north and northeast, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, the Uruguayan departments of Rocha, Treinta y Tres, Cerro Largo, Rivera and Artigas to the south and southwest, and the Argentine provinces of Corrientes and Misiones to the west and northwest.  The capital and largest city is Porto Alegre.  The state has the highest life expectancy in Brazil, and the crime rate is relatively low compared to the Brazilian national average. Despite the high standard of living, unemployment is still high in the state, as of 2017. The state has 5.4% of the Brazilian population and it is responsible for 6.6% of the Brazilian GDP.
The state shares a gaucho culture with its neighbors Argentina and Uruguay. Before the arrival of Portuguese and Spanish settlers, it was inhabited mostly by the Guarani and Kaingang peoples (with smaller populations of Charrúa and Minuane).  The first Europeans there were Jesuits, followed by settlers from the Azores. In the 19th century it was the scene of conflicts including the Ragamuffin War and the Paraguayan War. Large waves of German and Italian migration have shaped the state as well.Economy
The industrial sector is the largest component of GDP at 43%, followed by the service sector at 41%. Agriculture represents 16% of GDP (2004). Rio Grande do Sul exports: footwear 18%, soybeans 14%, tobacco 13.6%, vehicles 8%, frozen meat 7.2%, chemicals 6.8%, and leather 5% (2002).
Share of the Brazilian economy: 7% (2005).
One of the most prosperous Brazilian states, Rio Grande do Sul is known especially for its grain production, viticulture, ranching, and for its considerable industrial output.
In 1827, emigrants from Idar-Oberstein discovered the world's most important agate deposit in Rio Grande do Sul. As early as 1834, the first delivery of agate from Rio Grande do Sul had been made to Idar-Oberstein. The Brazilian agate exhibited very even layers, much more even than those seen in the local agates. This made them especially good for making engraved gems.
In agriculture, the state stands out in the production of soybeans, maize, wheat, rice, tobacco, grape, apple, cassava and yerba mate, in addition to also producing oat, barley, orange, peach, fig, tangerine, persimmon and strawberry.
In 2020, the South Region produced 32% of the national total of cereals, vegetables and oilseeds. There were 77.2 million tons, second place in Brazil, losing only to the Midwest. Rio Grande do Sul (14.3%) was the 3rd largest producer in the country.Rio Grande do Sul is the largest producer of rice in the country, with 70.5% of Brazil's production, close to 7.3 million tons in 2020. It is also the largest producer of tobacco in Brazil, and is the largest exporter in the world. Brazil is the second largest producer in the world and leader in tobacco exports since the 1990s, with 98% of Brazilian production being carried out in the South Region. The state is responsible for 90% of the national production of grapes, and produces 90% of the wine produced in the country, 85% of the sparkling wine, and 90% of the grape juice, mainly in the area of Caxias do Sul and surroundings: 664.2 thousand tons of grape in 2018.In soy, Rio Grande do Sul is the 3rd largest producer in the country, with about 16% of national production. It produced 19.3 million tons. In 2017, it was also 3rd largest producer of maize.Rio Grande do Sul is also the largest national producer of wheat, with 2.3 million tons in 2019. The South Region is also the largest producer of oats in Brazil. In 2019, national production was close to 800 thousand tons, being almost all carried out in the South (Paraná and Rio Grande do Sul).The three Southern States of the country are responsible for 95% of the national production of apple, and Santa Catarina appears at the top of the production list, disputing with Rio Grande do Sul. Rio Grande do Sul harvests 45% of Brazilian apples, and is the largest exporter of apples in the country. The region in the vicinity of Vacaria is the highlight: it concentrates 88% of the state's production and 37% of the national production.In cassava production, Brazil produced a total of 17.6 million tons in 2018. The state was the 4th largest producer in the country, with almost 1 million tons.About orange, Rio Grande do Sul was the 5th largest producer in Brazil in 2018, with a total of 367 thousand tons.Rio Grande do Sul is the largest producer of peaches in Brazil, with half the volume harvested in Brazil in 2018. It is also the largest producer of fig in the country, according to data from 2018. In 2018, Rio Grande do Sul was the 3rd largest producers of tangerine in Brazil. Rio Grande do Sul is also responsible for 19% of Brazil's persimmon production, being the 2nd largest national producer. In 2019, in Brazil, there was a total production area of around 4 thousand hectares of strawberry. Rio Grande do Sul was the 3rd largest producer.In 2019, Brazil produced about 900 thousand tons of yerba mate annually. Paraná is the largest producer in volume and Rio Grande do Sul in plantation areas (and where the sector is more industrialized). According to 2017 data, Paraná harvested 301 thousand tons of yerba mate by extractive method, while Rio Grande do Sul harvested 17 thousand tons. On the other hand, while the gauchos harvested 302 thousand tons of planted grass, the Paraná harvested 237 thousand tons in this method. The productive potential of yerba mate is still little explored in Brazil, with a good part of the harvest carried out by the extractive system and with low levels of productivity. However, many new producers are adopting more professional and efficient production systems, with technical acuity of management and globalized market vision. This tends to increase Brazil's export of this product.In 2018, the state's cattle herd was 12.5 million head, 7th place in the country, 6.5% of Brazil's cattle herd.In 2019, Rio Grande do Sul produced a total of 4.5 billion liters of milk, making it the third largest producer in the country, with 13.0% of the country's total.In sheep farming, in 2017 the South Region was the 2nd largest in the country, with 4.2 million heads. Rio Grande do Sul has 94% of the country's wool production.In pork, the 3 southern states are the largest producers in the country. Brazil had 41.1 million head in 2017. Rio Grande do Sul (14.6%) is the 3rd largest producer.The Brazilian poultry flock, in 2018, was of the order of 1.5 billion heads. In 2017, the main poultry producing states in Brazil were Paraná (25.3%), São Paulo (14.0%), and Rio Grande do Sul (11.0%). In terms of chickens, in 2017 there were 242.8 million heads in the country. Among the states that were the largest producers, São Paulo led with 21.9%, followed by Paraná (10.1%) and Rio Grande do Sul (8.8%). In the production of chicken eggs, the state ranks fifth in Brazil, with 8% of national production. There were 354 million dozen in 2018.The South region was the main producer of honey in the country in 2017, accounting for 39.7% of the national total. Rio Grande do Sul was the largest producer in the country, with 15.2%.Regarding mining, the state is a major producer of gemstones. Brazil is the world's largest producer of amethyst and agate, and Rio Grande do Sul is the largest producer in the country. Agate has local extraction since 1830. The largest producer of amethyst in Brazil is the city of Ametista do Sul. This stone was very rare and expensive worldwide, until the discovery of large deposits in Brazil, causing its value to drop considerably. There is also some jasper and opal in the state.Gaúcho Portuguese phonology
Phonemes of Porto-alegrense Portuguese
Although this process is very common in the Southeast, in Gaúcho Portuguese the letters "s" and "z" are never pronounced as palato-alveolar consonants in coda position (e.g., pasto "pasture" is [ˈpaʃtu] in Rio de Janeiro, but [ˈpastu] in Porto Alegre).
In Rio Grande do Sul, as in most of Brazil, the letters "t" and "d" are pronounced as palato-alveolar affricate consonants, when immediately succeeded by the vowel "i" (a process very similar to Russian palatalization and which, however, does not happen in the varieties of the Pampas). Moreover, the unstressed "e" and "o" are often "reduced" into /ɪ/ and /ʊ/, respectively. Therefore, in Porto Alegre, the unstressed "te" syllables are pronounced /tʃi/, for example, while in the Pampas they are usually pronounced /tɪ/:
Porto Alegre: antigamente – /ɐ̃(n)ˌtʃiɡaˈmeȷ̃tʃʲ/ or /ɐ̃(n)ˌtʃiɡaˈmentʃʲ/
Gaúcho Pampas: antigamente – /ɐ̃ˌtʃiɡaˈme̞nte̞/
(compare Spanish: antiguamente – /ãn̪t̪iɣ̞waˈmẽ̞n̪t̪e̞/)
The dialect of the Pampas had suffered a stronger influence of Spanish language, while the dialect of Porto Alegre suffers modern influences of the Southeastern varieties.
Also, the vowel nasalization in Porto-alegrense Portuguese is far different from that seen in French, for example. In French, the nasalization extends uniformly through the entire vowel. In Porto Alegre, the nasalization begins almost imperceptibly, and then gets far stronger in the end of the vowel, therefore being closer to the nasalization of Hindi-Urdu phonology (see Anusvara). In some cases, the nasal archiphoneme actually represents the addition of a nasal consonant, like /m, n, ŋ, ȷ̃, w̃ , ɰ̃/.
manta = /ˈmɐ̃ntɐ/
tampa = /ˈtɐ̃mpɐ/
banco = /ˈbɐ̃ŋku/
bem = /bẽȷ̃/
bom = /bõʊ̯̃/ or /ˈbõɰ̃/ or /ˈbõŋ/
pan = /ˈpɐ̃ɰ̃/ or /ˈpɐ̃ŋ/
It is also noteworthy that, in everyday speech, many unstressed vowels are not fully pronounced as they are supposed to be. For example:
toque = /ˈtɔkʲ/
mente = /ˈmẽȷ̃tʃ/
pouco = /ˈpokʊ̥/
Essentially, the vowels [e] and [i] are both reduced and devoiced (or completely deleted) in word-final position, and sometimes also when unstressed and between consonants, always palatalizing the previous consonant. The vowels [o] and [u] are also reduced and devoiced to [ʊ̥], analogously to what happens in Japanese (see Japanese phonology#Devoicing). More rarely, [a] may become [ɐ̥] as well.
Nation State Land Territory