Why Do Brazilians Speak Portuguese And Not Spanish?

Brazilian Potuguese (source)

During the Opening Ceremony of the 2016 Summer Games, more than 10,000 athletes from 207 teams paraded into the Rio De Janeiro Stadium. But many viewers were puzzled, as the teams appeared to have come out in the wrong order. In fact, it was alphabetical order according to the native language of Brazil, which is Portuguese. Brazil is the main nation in Latin America that uses Portuguese, not Spanish, as its primary language.

So why do Brazilians speak Portuguese? Well, it all stems back to the late 15th century, when Christopher Columbus and other voyagers were exploring the Atlantic. Soon after Columbus discovered the New World, Spain rushed to secure sovereignty over it, before any other countries, namely Portugal, could do the same.

So in 1494, Spain and Portugal signed the Treaty of Tordesillas, which divided their claims along the line of demarcation. Spain was given exclusive rights to all lands west of the line, while Portugal was free to conquer anything to the east. This arrangement paved the way for Spain to colonize much of what is today Latin America, which is why those countries speak Spanish. Meanwhile, Portugal was only given a sliver of land off the Atlantic - what is today the east coast of Brazil.

Although present-day Brazil was officially discovered and claimed by Portugal in the year 1500, the Portuguese left it largely unoccupied until around 1530. Their renewed interest in the region was due to Brazilwood; a unique tree found on the coast that can be processed into a bright red dye. This is, as you might guess, how Brazil got its name. But interestingly, Brazilwood didn’t turn out to be all that significant to Brazil’s development. Instead, the colony’s cash crop was sugarcane.

In the late 16th century, sugar was in high demand, and Brazil’s economy relied heavily on it. So when other European powers began competing with Brazil’s monopoly, Brazilian plantation owners began migrating inland in search of more fertile land. Through these expeditions, gold was discovered, and in the late 1600’s a gold rush ensued. This led to further expansion, and over the next century the borders of modern Brazil were drawn.

Roughly a century later, Brazil gained full independence. Of course, the Portuguese did not really “discover” Brazil. When they first arrived, millions of indigenous people were already living in the region. The Portuguese enslaved the native population almost immediately, however when tensions flared between native groups and colonizers, the Portuguese began importing slaves from Africa. Over the course of roughly three centuries, Brazil imported an estimated four million African slaves - so many, that at one point they outnumbered immigrants by 5 to 1.

As history unfolded, what was once European Portuguese adopted bits and pieces of dialect from other languages: first from Natives, then from African slaves and finally European immigrants. Today, Brazilian and European Portuguese have slight contrasts in syntax and vocabulary and major differences in pronunciation. Nevertheless, the languages remain very similar.