Mineiro
Encyclopedia
Mineiro redirects here; for the Brazilian footballer nicknamed Mineiro, see Mineiro (Footballer).

Mineiro (miˈnejɾu) feminine: Mineira), also called Brazilian mountain dialect, is the Brazilian Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...

 term for the inhabitants of the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais
Minas Gerais
Minas Gerais is one of the 26 states of Brazil, of which it is the second most populous, the third richest, and the fourth largest in area. Minas Gerais is the Brazilian state with the largest number of Presidents of Brazil, the current one, Dilma Rousseff, being one of them. The capital is the...

 and also the characteristic accent spoken in the heart of that state, and also in its capital, Belo Horizonte
Belo Horizonte
Belo Horizonte is the capital of and largest city in the state of Minas Gerais, located in the southeastern region of Brazil. It is the third largest metropolitan area in the country...

.

This dialect is quite complicated, due the pronunciation of the words, which is fast and curled. There are times when other Brazilians, who speak other dialects, do not understand what the mineiros speak.

History

Minas Gerais was settled during the late 17th and early 18th centuries by a mix of recent Portuguese immigrants (reinóis or "emboabas") and earlier colonists that came from São Paulo (paulistas). There was an intense rivalry between the two groups, fighting over the gold mines (from which the name of the province was taken, Minas Gerais means "General Mines"). These conflicts required the intervention of the Portuguese Crown after a serious uprisal developed into civil war (Guerra dos Emboabas) with the final defeat of the "paulistas" in 1708. See the article "Guerra dos Emboabas" in the Portuguese language Wikipedia.

In the 19th century, the state was being forgotten due the decline of gold mining. Due to this isolation, the state was influenced by the dialect of Rio de Janeiro in the southeast, while the south and the "Triangulo Mineiro
Triângulo Mineiro
The Triangle Mineiro Portuguese pronunciation: [tɾiɐɡulu minejru] is an officer in the region west of the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. The area is 93.500 km ² and is limited by the Serra da Canastra and Marcela, east, south of Sao Paulo, Goias in the north and west of the junction of the rivers...

" region, began to speak the rustic dialect of Sao Paulo (caipira
Caipira
Caipira is a Brazilian Portuguese term used to designate inhabitants of rural, remote areas of some Brazilian states—it refers to the people of lesser schooling. It can be considered pejorative when used to describe others, but it can also be used as a self-identifier without negative connotations...

). The central region of Minas Gerais, however, developed their own dialect, which is known as Mineiro or mountain dialect. This dialect is also present in cities of the center and southest of the state, which is surrounded by mountains and mines.

Recently, the influence of mineiro has been increasing and spreading, due to local pride and rejection of other accents.

Accent characteristics

  • Reduction (and often loss) of final and initial unstressed vowels, especially e, i, and u: parte ("part") becomes part (with soft affricate T). Common to most of Brazil.

  • Assimilation of consecutive vowels: o urubu ("the vulture") becomes u rubu.

  • Weakening (and usual loss) of final /r/ and /s/: cantar ("to sing", with the final /r/ sounding like the "r" in the French name Pierre) becomes cantá and os livros ("the books") becomes us livru. Common to most of Brazil.

  • Loss of the plural ending /s/ in adjectives and nouns, retained only in articles and verbs: meus filhos ("my children") becomes (sometimes; most of the time in the capital, Belo Horizonte)meus filho, (most of the time) meus fii OR meus fiu.


  • Realization of most /ʎ/ as j: alho ("garlic") becomes homophonous with aio. Probably the most characteristic feature of the Mineiro accent, though it is less present in Belo Horizonte.

  • Replacement of some diphthongs with long vowels: fio (thread) becomes fii, pouco (few) becomes poco.

  • Apocope
    Apocope
    In phonology, apocope is the loss of one or more sounds from the end of a word, and especially the loss of an unstressed vowel.-Historical sound change:...

     of final syllables. -lho becomes [ij] (filhofii' ), -inho becomes -im' (pinhopim' ).

  • Soft pronunciation of "r': rato ("mouse") is pronounced [hatu]. Very common in other parts of Brazil.

  • Diphthongization of stressed vowels: mas ("but") becomes mais and três ("three") becomes treis. Common in other parts of Brazil, particularly Rio de Janeiro.

  • Occasional affrication of "d" before "e" at the beginning of the word: deserto ("desert") is pronounced dʒiˈzɛhtu instead of [deˈzɛɾtu].

  • Loss of initial "e" in words beginning with "es": esporte becomes [spɔhtʃi].

  • Another important trait of Mineiro is the absence of remarkable features of other accents, like the retroflex R (caipira
    Caipira
    Caipira is a Brazilian Portuguese term used to designate inhabitants of rural, remote areas of some Brazilian states—it refers to the people of lesser schooling. It can be considered pejorative when used to describe others, but it can also be used as a self-identifier without negative connotations...

    ), palatalization of S (carioca
    Carioca
    Carioca is a Portuguese adjective or demonym that is used to refer to the native inhabitants of the city of Rio de Janeiro - capital of the homonym state , in Brazil...

    ), strong dental R (gaucho
    Gaucho
    Gaucho is a term commonly used to describe residents of the South American pampas, chacos, or Patagonian grasslands, found principally in parts of Argentina, Uruguay, Southern Chile, and Southern Brazil...

    ), or "singsong" nordestino
    Northeast Region, Brazil
    The Northeast Region of Brazil is composed of the following states: Maranhão, Piauí, Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Alagoas, Sergipe and Bahia, and it represents 18.26% of the Brazilian territory....

    intonation.

See also

  • Brazilian Portuguese
    Brazilian Portuguese
    Brazilian Portuguese is a group of Portuguese dialects written and spoken by most of the 190 million inhabitants of Brazil and by a few million Brazilian emigrants, mainly in the United States, United Kingdom, Portugal, Canada, Japan and Paraguay....

  • Portuguese dialects
    Portuguese dialects
    Portuguese dialects are variants of the Portuguese language that are shared by a substantial number of speakers over several generations, but are not sufficiently distinct from the official norms to be considered separate languages...

  • Portuguese phonology
    Portuguese phonology
    The phonology of Portuguese can vary considerably between dialects, in extreme cases leading to difficulties in intelligibility. This article focuses on the pronunciations that are generally regarded as standard...

  • Caipira
    Caipira
    Caipira is a Brazilian Portuguese term used to designate inhabitants of rural, remote areas of some Brazilian states—it refers to the people of lesser schooling. It can be considered pejorative when used to describe others, but it can also be used as a self-identifier without negative connotations...

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