page_title: Languages of Brazil
section_title: European immigrant languages
hierarchical_section_title: Languages of Brazil / Minority languages / Immigrant languages / European immigrant languages
caption_attribution_description: Português: Região da Liberdade no centro de São Paulo. Em destaque na foto, a herança cultural japonesa.English: Liberdade region in São Paulo's downtown. The japanese cultural heritage can be seen in the picture.
context_page_description: Portuguese is the official and national language of Brazil and is widely spoken by most of the population. The Portuguese dialects spoken in Brazil are collectively known as Brazilian Portuguese. The Brazilian Sign Language also has official status at the federal level.
  Aside from Portuguese, the country has also numerous minority languages, including indigenous languages, such as Nheengatu, and languages of more recent European and Asian immigrants, such as Italian, German and Japanese. In some municipalities, those minor languages have official status: Nheengatu, for example, is an official language in São Gabriel da Cachoeira, while a number of German dialects are official in nine southern municipalities. Hunsrik is a germanic language also spoken in Argentina, Paraguay and Venezuela, which derived from the Hunsrückisch dialect. Hunsrik has official status in Antônio Carlos and Santa Maria do Herval, and is recognized by the state of Rio Grande do Sul as part of its historical and cultural heritage. Polish and Ukrainian are largely spoken in the State of Paraná, immigrants originally from the former Austro-Hungarian Empire., the Galicia Province.
context_section_description: According to the 1940 Census, after Portuguese, German was the most widely spoken language in Brazil. Although the Italian immigration to Brazil was much more significant than the German one, the German language had many more speakers than the Italian one, according to the Census. The Census revealed that two-thirds of the children of German immigrants spoke German at home. In comparison, half of the children of Italians spoke Portuguese at home. The stronger preservation of the German language when compared to the Italian one has many factors: Italian is closer to Portuguese than German, leading to a faster assimilation of the Italian speakers. (One might compare this to the United States, where a huge wave of German immigrants almost completely switched to English and assimilated more thoroughly than the Italian-Americans.) Also, the German immigrants used to educate their children in German schools. The Italians, on the other hand, had less organized ethnic schools and the cultural formation was centered in church, not in schools. Most of the children of Italians went to public schools, where Portuguese was spoken. Until World War II, some 1.5 million Italians had immigrated to Brazil, compared to only 250,000 Germans. However, the 1940 Census revealed that German was spoken as a home language by 644,458 people, compared to only 458,054 speakers of Italian.
  Spaniards, who formed the third largest immigrant group in Brazil (after the Portuguese and Italians) were also quickly assimilated into the Portuguese-speaking majority. Spanish is similar to Portuguese, which led to a fast assimilation. Moreover, many of the Spanish immigrants were from Galicia, where they also speaks Galician, which is closer to Portuguese, sometimes even being considered two dialects of the same language. Despite the large influx of Spanish immigrants to Brazil from 1880 to 1930 (over 700,000 people) the Census of 1940 revealed that only 74,000 people spoke Spanish in Brazil.
  Other languages such as Polish and Ukrainian, along with German and Italian, are spoken in rural areas of Southern Brazil, by small communities of descendants of immigrants, who are for the most part bilingual. There are whole regions in southern Brazil where people speak both Portuguese and one or more of these languages. For example, it is reported that more than 90% of the residents of the small city of Presidente Lucena, located in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, speak Hunsrik, a language derived from the Hunsrückisch dialect of German. Hunsrik, or Riograndenser Hunsrückisch, has around 3,000,000 native speakers in Brazil, while also having some speakers in Argentina, Paraguay and Venezuela. The language is most used in the countryside of the South Region states of Brazil, with a considerable amount of native speakers using it as their main or even only language. 
  Some immigrant communities in southern Brazil, chiefly the German and the Italian ones, have lasted long enough to develop distinctive dialects from their original European sources. For example, Brazilian German, a broad category which includes the Hunsrik language, but also East Pomerian and Plautdietsch dialects. In the Serra Gaúcha region, we can find Italian dialects such as Talian or italiano riograndense, based on the Venetian language.
  Other German dialects were transplanted to this part of Brazil. For example, the Austrian dialect spoken in Dreizehnlinden or Treze Tílias in the state of Santa Catarina; or the dialect Schwowisch (Standard German: "Schwäbisch"), from Donauschwaben immigrants, is spoken in Entre Rios, Guarapuava, in the state of Paraná; or the East Pomeranian dialect spoken in many different parts of southern Brazil (in the states of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, Paraná, Espírito Santo, São Paulo, etc.). Plautdietsch is spoken by the descendants of Russian Mennonites. However, these languages have been rapidly replaced by Portuguese in the last few decades, partly due to a government decision to integrate immigrant populations. Today, states like Rio Grande do Sul are trying to reve
caption: Liberdade, São Paulo, has the largest concentration of ethnic Japanese outside Japan.
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