Carioca ( ) is a Portuguese adjective or demonym word
that refers to the metropolitan area of the city of Rio de Janeiro
, Brazil
. The
original word "Kara'i oca" comes from the indigenous Amerindian
language of the
Tupi people, meaning
"White Man's House".
It is said that the first
Portuguese dwellings in Rio de Janeiro
were placed along a limpid
stream, which soon
got the Portuguese name "Carioca". The last PNAD (National Research
for Sample of Domiciles) census numbers for the state of Rio de
Janeiro are: 6,278,704
White people
(53.6%), 3,935,904
Pardo people (33.6%),
1,440,822
Black people (12.3%) and
58,000
Asian or
Amerindian people (0.5%).
Cariocas, like other Brazilians, speak Portuguese.
According to a survey published in American Scientist Magazine, the
Cariocas of Rio de Janeiro exhibited great friendliness and offered
to help in various situations. A quote from the article mentioned
pointed to the following :
In
contrast, the demonym meaning for the state of Rio de
Janeiro
is fluminense, taken from the Latin word "flumen", meaning "River".
Carioca Dialect
The variety of Brazilian
Portuguese
language spoken in the city of Rio de Janeiro is called
"Carioca". In written form, the Carioca accent follows the standard
Brazilian Portuguese influence.
On the other hand, this speech has several distinctive traits, such
as in the pronunciation of final "s": it becomes the
postalveolar .
Guttural
R can be a
velar , a
uvular or a
glottal . Also,
the consonants
t and
d before
i or
unstressed
e become affricatives and .
There are some grammar divergences in colloquial speech, an
important difference is the mixing of the second person pronoun
"
você" and the obliquous pronoun "
te" in the same
speech, while standard Portuguese requires "
lhe" as
obliquous for "
você", and "
te" as obliquous for
"
tu". In very informal Carioca speech, the pronoun
tu is retained, but with the verb forms belonging to the
form você: "
Tu foi na festa?" (Did you go to the party?).
However, this usage is considered slangy and is avoided by many
speakers.
The slightly different variety of Brazilian Portuguese language
spoken in the remainder of the state of Rio de Janeiro is called
"Fluminense".
The so called chiado (pronouncing
instead of ), typical of the city of Rio, is absent in the
Southwestern varieties of Fluminense (around Paraty
, Barra Mansa
and Volta
Redonda
). In the Northern varieties of Fluminense (from
the city of Niterói
northwards),
usage similar to the Capixaba accent may be
observed. For instance, the article is most likely dropped
before personal names (using
Maria where Cariocas would
say
a Maria) and with certain words such as
papai,
mamãe,
fulano (
de papai
instead of
do papai;
por mamãe instead of
pela mamãe;
com fulano instead of
com o
fulano).
Around Campos
, rhotacism is common in
informal usage (Cráudia for Cláudia), as well as
some words from the nearby Capixaba dialect, such as pocar
for explodir (to explode) or pocar fora for
ir embora (to go away).
Slang words from Rio de Janeiro include
caraca! (gosh!)
[now spread throughout Brazil],
e aê? and
coé?
(whuzzup?), and
maneiro and
sinistro (both in the
sense of "awesome"), some of these slang words can be found in
other regions of Brazil.
See also
References
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