Uruguayan Portuguese (, ), also known as () and Riverense, and referred to by its speakers as (), is a variety of Portuguese in

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sou ...

with heavy influence from

Rioplatense Spanish Rioplatense Spanish (), also known as Rioplatense Castilian, is a variety of Spanish spoken mainly in and around the Río de la Plata Basin of Argentina and Uruguay. It is also referred to as River Plate Spanish or Argentine Spanish. It is ...

. It is spoken in north-eastern

Uruguay Uruguay (; ), officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay ( es, República Oriental del Uruguay), is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast; while bordering ...

, near the Brazilian border, mainly in the region of the twin cities of

Rivera Rivera () is the capital of Rivera Department of Uruguay. The border with Brazil joins it with the Brazilian city of Santana do Livramento, which is only a street away from it, at the north end of Route 5. Together, they form an urban area of aro ...

(Uruguay) and

Santana do Livramento Santana do Livramento is a city in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. It is located along the border with the city of Rivera, Uruguay, forming together an international city of almost 170,000 inhabitants. Santana do Livramento was founded on ...

(Brazil). This section of the frontier is called ("Border of Peace"), because there is no legal obstacle to crossing the

border Borders are usually defined as geographical boundaries, imposed either by features such as oceans and terrain, or by political entities such as governments, sovereign states, federated states, and other subnational entities. Political borders ca ...

between the two countries. The varieties of Uruguayan Portuguese share many similarities with the countryside dialects of the southern Brazilian state of

Rio Grande do Sul Rio Grande do Sul (, , ; "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 border ...

, such as the denasalization of final unstressed nasal vowels, replacement of lateral palatal with

semivowel In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel, glide or semiconsonant is a sound that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary, rather than as the nucleus of a syllable. Examples of semivowels in English are the c ...

, no raising of final unstressed ,

alveolar trill The voiced alveolar trill is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar trills is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is ...

instead of the

guttural R Guttural R is the phenomenon whereby a rhotic consonant (an "R-like" sound) is produced in the back of the vocal tract (usually with the uvula) rather than in the front portion thereof and thus as a guttural consonant. Speakers of languages w ...

, and

lateral Lateral is a geometric term of location which may refer to: Healthcare *Lateral (anatomy), an anatomical direction * Lateral cricoarytenoid muscle * Lateral release (surgery), a surgical procedure on the side of a kneecap Phonetics *Lateral co ...

realization of coda instead of

L-vocalization ''L''-vocalization, in linguistics, is a process by which a lateral approximant sound such as , or, perhaps more often, velarized , is replaced by a vowel or a semivowel. Types There are two types of ''l''-vocalization: * A labiovelar approxi ...

. This is rare among accents of Portuguese. Recent changes in Uruguayan Portuguese include the urbanization of this variety, acquiring characteristics from urban

Brazilian Portuguese Brazilian Portuguese (' ), also Portuguese of Brazil (', ) or South American Portuguese (') is the set of varieties of the Portuguese language native to Brazil and the most influential form of Portuguese worldwide. It is spoken by almost all of ...

such as a distinction between and ,

affrication An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pa ...

of and before and , and other features of Brazilian broadcast media.

History

The origin of Portuguese in Uruguay can be traced back to the time of the dominion of the kingdoms of

Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = '' Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , ...

and

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of th ...

, and the

Empire of Brazil The Empire of Brazil was a 19th-century state that broadly comprised the territories which form modern Brazil and (until 1828) Uruguay. Its government was a representative parliamentary constitutional monarchy under the rule of Emperors Dom ...

. In those times, the ownership of those lands was not very well defined, passing back and forth from the hands of one crown to the other. Before its independence after the

Cisplatine War The Cisplatine War (), also known as the Argentine-Brazilian War () or, in Argentine and Uruguayan historiography, as the Brazil War (''Guerra del Brasil''), the War against the Empire of Brazil (''Guerra contra el Imperio del Brasil'') or t ...

in 1828, Uruguay was one of the provinces of the

. Portuguese was the only language spoken throughout northern Uruguay until the end of the 19th century. To assure the homogeneity of the newly formed country, the government made an effort to impose the Spanish language into

lusophone Lusophones ( pt, Lusófonos) are peoples that speak Portuguese as a native or as common second language and nations where Portuguese features prominently in society. Comprising an estimated 270 million people spread across 10 sovereign countries ...

communities through educational policies and language planning, and

bilingualism Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all ...

became widespread and diglossic.

Phonology

Vowels

Consonants

References

Bibliography

CARVALHO, Ana Maria. ''Variation and diffusion of Uruguayan Portuguese in a bilingual border town''
by Ana Maria Carvalho, University of California at Berkeley USA. (PDF) * Douglas, Kendra. 2004. ''Uruguayan Portuguese in Artigas: Tri-dimensionality of transitional local varieties in contact with Spanish and Portuguese standards''. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Ph.D. dissertation. * (PDF) * Nicolás Brian, Claudia Brovetto, Javier Geymonat
''Portugués del Uruguay y educación bilingüe''
* ontains a section on Portuñol *

External links

Page about Uruguayan Portunhol (in Portuguese) at Unicamp - University of Campinas, São Paulo
(in Portuguese)

*
Portuñol, a new language that is gaining popularity among people who live close to the borders of Brazil and its neighboring Spanish-speaking countries
{{DEFAULTSORT:Riverense Portunol Language Portuguese dialects Portuguese language in the Americas Languages of Uruguay Languages of Brazil Rivera Department Brazil–Uruguay border