An interesting topic that came up when Leticía and I went off topic during one of our Portuguese sessions was that the Portuguese language, particularly its spelling, has changed more than I would have predicted in the last 30 years. Leticía would talk about how she was taught certain spellings in elementary school, only for them to be eliminated in the future. This was a commonplace occurrence to her, but interesting for me to hear about. She said that a Nova Acordó Ortográfico came out when she was a child (in 1990), which established changes in the spelling of Portuguese that had been made. These changes were then given some time, around six years, for the population to adapt to them and have been permanent since they were established.

An example that Leticía gave was the trema, a u with two dots above it that used to be used in Portuguese. It was eliminated from Portugal Portuguese in 1945 and from Brazilian Portuguese in 1990. Some examples of spellings that were changed as a result of the trema being eliminated are freqüencia (frequency), aqüífero (aquifier), agüentar (to withstand), and pingüim (penguin). The new spellings are the same but the u no longer has a trema. I was not able to find whether it had any connection to the German umlaut, which is the German word for the two dot symbol above letters. The umlaut is still commonly used in German in current day.

Other examples are the loss of many hyphens in Brazilian Portuguese after certain prefixes, the elimination of c’s and p’s as silent consonants, making weekdays, months, and seasons lowercase, and making only the first word of titles uppercase.

A lot of these changes have been made to make Brazilian Portuguese more like Portugal Portuguese. Therefore, in internet searches and legal documents across borders the spellings of certain words in Portuguese would still be the same. The reforms in 1990 actually affected more words in Portugal Portuguese (1.5%) than in Brazilian Portuguese (0.5% of words). However, there were definitely difficulties in the transitions of legal documents, business transactions, and particularly school materials to the new spellings.

 Leticía also says that many Brazilians believe that another motivation behind the accents being eliminated are to make Portuguese more similar to English, but it seems as though consistency between dialects was the true reason. Tangential to the point of Portuguese potentially becoming more like English is that in Portuguese there is also the concept of estrangismo, the overuse of foreign words instead of having original Portuguese words for things.

All of these language trends are the result of globalization bringing the world’s languages in more contact with each other and countries with commercialization hubs dominating these language flows, such as English. However, this globalization also created the importance of consistency between Portuguese dialects that originally motivated these spelling reforms. The consolidation of Portuguese spellings in the long run makes it a more powerful player in an increasingly integrated world of languages. Overall, the reforms in 1990 have now created 98% consistency between Portuguese in Portugal and Brazil.

Marta Vieira da Silva, known to most Brazilians as simply Marta, is a female futebol (soccer) legend. She has her origins in pelada, pickup Brazilian soccer games that I described in a previous cultural post. These are very informal, involving a makeshift ball and anyone in the neighborhood willing to play. However, she faced a lot of difficulty growing up playing with boys who were not accepting of her playing soccer with them as a female. She initially played with a local boys team, but was discovered by a scout at age 14. This is a typical age for soccer recruitment in Brazil. In a previous article that I read, it was talking about 16 year old boys describing themselves as “too old” to be recruited and that they now played in peladas just for fun. She was recruited by the scout to play on a new women’s team for a well-known soccer club in Rio de Janeiro. She played on Brazilian women’s teams until 2004, when she joined a team in Sweden. She led them to many prestigious tournament championships and scored 111 goals in 103 league games during her time with the Swedish team. This was when she began to attract international acclaim. Afterward, she continued to play on teams in the U.S., Brazil, and Sweden. She also played on Brazil’s women’s team in the Olympics and World Cup. She has 17 World Cup goals, making her the highest goal scorer in Women’s World Cup history. She also has won the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Player of the Year award in 2006-10 and 2018 (6 times).

She is also a UN Women Goodwill ambassador as a role model and advocate for women’s equity in sports. She is also just generally seen as a role model among female Brazilians for the classist and sexist barriers that she had to break through to have her success in soccer.

She was also appointed as a Sustainable Development Goals Advocate for 2019-2020. She works specifically in the division of female empowerment. She believes that women playing sports is an important means of empowerment for women to be able to “challenge socio-cultural norms and gender stereotypes and increase their self-esteem, develop life skills and leadership; they can improve their health and ownership and understanding of their bodies; become aware of what is violence and how to prevent it, and look for available services and develop economic skills."

I’m writing about Marta as my cultural post because she truly created a cultural movement through being a woman in futebol, which is a powerful means of change and social movement in Brazil. She is a household name and one that is female, rather than many of the male soccer legends that come from Brazil. Her work on the field and off the field has no doubt inspired many women across the world, but particularly those in Brazil. While there are still a lot of improvements to be had in terms of women’s soccer in Brazil, Marta undoubtably continues to change its course for the better.

The Festa de Iemanjá is a festival whose purpose is to give blessings to the orixá (saint in Yorubá, a west African language) Iemanjá. Its origins lie in the Brazilian religion Candomblé, which combines Brazilian and African religious traditions. Iemanjá represents maternity (this festival specifically honors the importance of her representation of fertility, family, and the protection of children. The festival involves offering flowers and other gifts to Iemanjá by sending them out on a body of water that flows toward the ocean. Attendees of the festival usually dress in white, which is one of the colors that is representative of Iemanjá. After the offerings are given, the celebration continues with music, dancing, and general festivities.

The Festa de Iemanjá takes place on February 2^nd every year. The most popular place to attend the celebration is Salvador, which is the capital of the Brazilian state Bahia in the northeast of Brazil on the coast. This is an area that has some of the highest numbers of Candomblé followers due to its origins in the trade of enslaved peoples and Bahia’s location on the coast of Brazil. The festival in Salavador specifically occurs on the beaches of the Río Vermelho (Red River).  

People begin bringing flowers and offerings the day before the festival to a shrine near the beaches of the Río Vermelho. Then, a fireworks display at sunrise on the following day signals the beginning of the festival. The offerings are blessed and then brought out to sea by fishermen in their boats. The offerings can be flowers, food (particularly white foods, including sweet rice and coconut puddings, such as manjar branco a classic Brazilian dish that is said to be connected/representative of Iemanjá), and objects like perfume, lipstick, jewelry, and mirrors. Sometimes small boats that are meant to be replicas of the larger fisherman boats are sent out as well. If any of these offerings or gifts wash up on the shore, it is assumed to have been rejected by Iemanjá, while if it floats out to the ocean, it is seen as her accepting your gift and therefore, she gives you her blessing.

The popularity of the festival in Salvador has gotten to such proportions that imitation festivals have begun to occur in other cities, such as Rio de Janeiro and Recife. In Rio de Janeiro, the Festa de Iemanjá occurs on January 1^st. Everyone who attends still wears white, but the ritual that occurs can involve bringing offerings to the sea, but attendees also run into the ocean and jump over 7 waves, which is meant to represent getting closer to Iemanjá.

The celebration is now widely televised and is bringing further national recognition to the religion of Candomblé, particularly because of the tourist crowds that the festival is now attracting. Attracting similar large crowds can be seen as part of the reason why other cities are starting to hold duplicate festivals. However, it is also allowing those of Candomblé faith in those areas to express their devotion and may continue to generally make the festival more accessible and visible.

A concept that I learned about through Leticia is pelada, a word that means naked in Portuguese. In certain contexts, however, it is used to describe pick-up soccer games that occur all over Brazil. The nickname is meant to represent the stripped-down nature of these games. They can occur anywhere, on any surface (beach, stone, concrete, asphalt…), and are a central component of Brazilian culture. Formal soccer that is played on curated fields and in stadiums with spectators is called futebol in Portuguese (the term for soccer). However, pelada is considered to be very different. It sometimes involves a ball, or other times it involves a ball of socks, cardboard, or plastic bags. Anyone who can come plays and it is usually, to use the English term, shirts vs skins. The rules are simple. Someone sets a timer on their cellphone for 10 minutes and then the game begins. The game ends when either a goal is scored or the timer goes off. Players then switch off to play as many continuous rounds as possible. A lot of times these matches will begin at night after people get off work, but they can go into the early morning, depending. Instead of a crowd of spectators surrounding pelada, there are just people waiting to get into the next game. It’s pelada, the game being played for the sake of the game. It also can be an escape from long workdays and neighborhoods that have higher levels of crime and violence. Some community organizers are using it as a way of keeping kids away from engaging with illegal activity.

The article linked describes the diversity of people who will play in these games, some with shoes and some without. It describes a player who said that he dislocated his toe during a game. He just set it back so that he could keep playing. Apparently, scouts will come to peladas or organize their own games to find and recruit players that they are impressed by. Romário, Ronaldo, and Rivaldo, all Brazilian soccer legends, were discovered this way. Brazil is one of the top exporters of professional soccer players. However, some scouts have been brought to Brazilian court because of their treatment of recruits they ask to come from other regions to play in peladas in more populated regions.

Pelada has had to adapt to the changing landscapes of Brazil. For example, pelada games used to be concentrated on the shores of the rivers in São Paulo. The games would be called futebol de varzea (lowlands soccer) but as it has developed as a city, the games are now limited to quadras, small, open squares in the city surrounded by metal fences. The reporter of the article attached visited one of these games and said that it was played silently, except for infrequent inter-team dialogue.

Most games usually only involve men, but can involve female players. However, there is a lot of stigma related to women playing to this day. Brazil still does not have a national women’s soccer league.

 https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/20/sports/soccer/pickup-soccer-in-brazil-has-an-allure-all-its-own.html

Because this is my last language journal ever, it has made me reflective on what this program means to me and how much that has changed since I began it. I originally began SDLC because I wanted to be able to communicate with a research collaborator that only spoke Portuguese and Spanish. I wanted to be able to create a foundation in Portuguese similar to what I had in Spanish. I was just talking with Leticia the other day about being connected with her and having no idea what to expect or how we would work together to create a learning environment that was conducive to both us. I remember Michael talking about how when it is two students working together it can truly become an exchange of language learning that is mutually beneficial. I had no grasp of what that meant or how it would manifest, but I look back and see how much Leticia and I have unknowingly grown toward that aim of this program. My senior year would have been wildly different without her and Portuguese in it. I truly think it has helped me grow so much as a learner, a cross-cultural communicator, and someone who understands more about the world. I came into this program equipped with my practical reasoning for why I needed it and came away with so much more. My mind quite frankly being blown by the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, so many delicious brigadeiros (a Brazilian desert made from condensed milk, chocolate, and sprinkles) and an amazing dinner with good Portuguese friends (thank you Michael!!), as well as so many good memories of laughing until we cried with Leticia over things that just did not translate well from Portuguese to English.

Reflecting on SDLC is also making me look forward to my next year. I recently received a fellowship for a year-long internship in Laos. The first two months of the program are completely dedicated to language learning to make it a truly immersive program. I hadn’t thought much about it before joining the SDLC program, but if I continue to do international work, language learning is going to be a constant challenge that I will have to navigate and be able to adapt to. It is so amazing that I was able to be a part of this program not only for the Portuguese skills I have built, but also for the general language learning skills I have accumulated. They are tools that I know I will be using for the foreseeable future, which is encouraging!

I am also traveling to Kenya for a grant I was awarded before I travel to Laos. However, for Kenya, I only know very basic Swahili and likely will be relying on my minimal skills and translators. It will involve a lot of on-the-fly language learning that I think this program has prepared me for. I know how to extract necessary vocabulary to learn and how to be resourceful with just a few sentence structures I know in a new language. I am excited for all of these new experiences and my ability to bring SDLC with me through all of them!

We are currently working on a lot of grammatical rules in Portuguese, such as being able to describe objects at certain distances, and other topics like telling time and how to express your habits. We are getting more into the nuances of Portuguese, which makes the lessons more and more of a challenge for me as a learner, but also for Leticia as a teacher. These topics are where our communication in English can become more confusing. We are definitely working on ensuring that we both understand what we’re trying to communicate to each other and most importantly, I understand the concept in the way that she wants me to. It’s interesting to watch her realize that a lot of the things that are a given for her do not make sense to me as an English speaker. It makes me realize how difficult it would be to explain certain rules of English, particularly when I have no idea why they are that way. However, I think it has been a good challenge for us and I think has truly pushed us to be a better teacher and learner, respectively. We have also taken some breaks to talk about more silly topics or interesting Brazilian cultural topics.

We have gotten very comfortable at this point in recognizing how much we can get done in a lesson for the day. I think we have also done a better job at having continuity between our lessons, even though they are only twice a week. I have had a lot more homework this semester, as I mentioned previously, which has required me to critically think about the topics we discussed during a previous session and then be more prepared going in to the next when we review the assignment. Leticia has also been amazing about pulling a topic out of the woodwork that we reviewed weeks ago and saying that we should review it. It definitely helps me in thinking back on topics as well as connecting them to the ones we’re learning currently.

As with any introductory language class, what we have been continuously building toward is me being able to describe my identity as well as my current surroundings and mood. It has been fun to be able to build that figurative paragraph in my head and be able to work on it every few sessions with Leticia to show our progress through so many topics in Portuguese. I can now say my name, where I’m from, how old I am, describe my status as a student, my habits, my likes and dislikes, where I am currently, what the time is, and more. It feels rewarding to be able to pull these phrases and vocabulary out to also try and connect them to the grammatical rules we are currently reviewing. Our lessons have become increasingly interconnected as we make progress and review more and more. It has been truly amazing to see how much we are able to do in just a school year with the two of us.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jaz4vzgTkluXIp-8Um9sbyrJmDu-8Pe1/view?usp=share_link

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1g6_gKxzrYGbX4fSugP7HJ33B00e2xC4F/view?usp=sharing

While I am still learning vocabulary and grammar, Leticia and I have recently taken some time to focus on the cultural aspects of Brazil and the United States, including similarities, differences, and what makes them unique. It has also become a larger conversation of how much Brazil has changed within her lifetime (particularly in recent years) and, as she says, “has become more like America.” It also became a conversation about what some of her first cultural shock moments in the U.S. were. She said that she was shocked by the greasy and sweet food for breakfast here and that she used to think the Brazilian breakfast of bread and fruits was unhealthy. She no longer believes this to be true, at least by comparison! She was also surprised by the overwhelming amount of medication options (apparently there is usually just 1 for each type of medication on the shelves in Brazil and when she came here she had never seen so many types of Neosporin) and the way that everyone greeted her while she was just walking around campus. We also went over the metric system, red solo cups (apparently everyone brings reusable cups to parties in Brazil!), tipping, and tax not being included in prices. A passionate conversation about how much water the U.S. wastes followed the revelation that U.S. toilets are widely considered to use much more water than other countries. Leticia said that even our toilets with two options use way more water than the toilets in Brazil. Additionally, we had an interesting conversation about the U.S. being a particularly patriotic country. We specifically discussed the number of American flags that are everywhere in the U.S. and how in Brazil, flags are almost never displayed. She said that flags have recently been flown to show support for Bolsonaro, which has made the flags into more of a political message than they used to be.
We also debunked some of the common misconceptions about the U.S. and Brazil, such as the U.S. having sweet bread (we were both confused) and that only Americans threw baby showers, ate big portions, and walked around with big coffees.
I wanted to spend the majority of this learning journal discussing these conversations we’ve had because I think they are an important unplanned part of our lessons. They are what constitute all of the topics that come up when we get sidetracked and end up looking up things like the origin of the umlaut. While unplanned, I have really enjoyed this part of the SDLC program. I am learning so much in every conversation I have with Leticia in Portuguese and not in Portuguese. We don’t rush and we take the time to follow our curiosities and hunt down these small details. It is something that shows the progress of our lessons: we have been able to have these offshoots and then get back on track to continue with whatever Leticia had planned for the day.

Currently, Letícia and I are focused on giving directions and basic verbs. We have been using a mixture of online resources and our textbook. We start every session by reviewing what we discussed last session and deciding where to go from there. There have been multiple sessions where we have needed to be on Zoom which has been an obstacle to navigate in terms of not being able to share a notebook between us to spell out words as well as it being difficult to hear pronunciation over Zoom. However, a majority of our sessions have been in person. This semester one of my main goals is to be able to continue feeling comfortable with Portuguese pronunciation. I also want to gain more confidence in basic vocabulary. One way that we practiced this while over Zoom is going through a Quizlet together that someone had made online. We practiced words related to food and restaurants because we want to try to get together a group of Portuguese learners and speakers to have a meal at a Brazilian barbeque restaurant in Short Pump.
Another new development is that Leticia asks me what topics I want to focus on and then she will find various activities on websites and in the textbook for me to do. She’ll also write out her own activities for me to complete in our shared notes. It has been helpful for her to know what she wants us to get done in each session. She has also been assigning me homework, usually one activity in the textbook for me to do before our next time together. Then, we’ll go through my answers together. This can be a great way to clear up common mistakes, my endless spelling errors, and also catch some of the exceptions to the rules I have learned that she had not taught me yet. Having this structure has really alleviated some of the issues we had with not having a plan going into lessons and instead creating them as we went. Leticia has really grown into her role as a teacher and I am so glad to be working with her. She has taken on a lot more responsibility for the lessons that I really appreciate. It also makes me feel like I am learning Portuguese the way that she knows it, rather than it being catered to “the way I want to learn it.” However, the textbook has definitely been helpful in providing material so that Leticia is not coming up with examples all on her own, which involves a lot of translating in her head. Instead, the textbook holds a lot of content and she can show me the parts that are helpful to what she wants to teach me. (We can also make fun of the textbook’s overly formal examples and she can teach me the casual way to say things when you’re actually in Brazil). Nonetheless, it is definitely concerning for if I were speaking with a native Portuguese speaker because they can shorten a lot when they want to!

I have started writing mostly simple words and phrases in Portuguese. I prefer to write in free hand (we learned this on the first day when we tried to use a computer as a common medium to teach on and it failed spectacularly). I have started to see the patterns in how nouns are gendered and conjugation patterns across verbs with specific suffixes. However, I have just recently begun to notice these patterns as we have learned about the grammatical rules behind them in class like parts of speech (and sentence trees), subject-verb agreement, and the concept of government, in terms of sentence structure, generally.

For example, a simple sentence is made up of one clause and a complex sentence is made up of more than one clause (including one independent clause and however many dependent clauses).

Learning about the broad linguistic concepts that apply to languages universally has allowed me to stop comparing grammatical rules in Portuguese to English or Spanish, but instead begin to build my own knowledge of its grammar in reference to concepts of sentence structure, subject-verb order, and more that we have learned in class. For example, adjectives are modified according to the verb’s gender in Portuguese. Additionally, there are several general patterns of verb conjugation depending on verb suffix. There are also irregular verbs that do not follow any of these rules. I am better able to conceptualize these concepts in terms of verbs, subjects, and adjectives through our conversations about parts of speech and agreement.

Some examples below:

Irregular verb:

Ir = to go

Eu vou = I go

Voce vai = you go

Ele/ela vai = he/she goes

A gente vai = we go

Nós vamos = we go

Voces vao = you go

Eles/elas vao = they go

Verb suffix patterns:

Falar = to speak

Eu falo = I speak

Ele/ela fala = he/she speaks

Comer = to eat

Eu como = I eat

Ele/ela come = he/she eats

Partir = to leave

Eu parto = I leave

Ele/ela parte = he/she leaves

Conjugate cantar (to dance), decidir (to decide), beijar (to kiss).

Languages go extinct when they are not passed down by those who speak a language. Languages have to travel generationally in order to continue existing. Languages can also go extinct through extreme events that cause large groups of people to pass away. These events particularly could cause elders, who hold the language skills and cultural traditions of a group, to pass away, which can be detrimental to sustaining a language and culture. When a language dies, there are imminent consequences. An entire lifestyle, oral history, and belief system can be lost. Languages carry so much cultural infrastructure that is difficult to sustain with the loss of a language. Reflecting on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, the loss of a language can also mean the loss of a perspective on the world. There may even be a lack of understanding of cultural artifacts, which will cause the beliefs and lifestyles of a people to be misunderstood or be completely unknown.

A dead language can be brought back to life with extensive enough resources and with efforts to propagate the standardized learning of that language. It becomes more and more difficult the longer the language is dead because artifacts and resources that could be used to revive the language will become less and less accessible. Linguistic diversity is being documented by linguists through in-depth research studies of archeological findings as well as how the makeup of languages has changed over time and space. Overall, language diversity should be documented and maintained in order to prevent further language death and the negative consequences associated with it.

I realized that my learning plan was a bit ambitious after a few weeks. It would take us multiple lessons to familiarize with the phrases and words that apply to the specific topic I had listed in my learning plan. I had listed a lot of these topics and tasks. We will definitely not get through them all this semester, but I think that it was good to have all of my interests in one location. With the longer list we could prioritize what I wanted to learn, but also what my language partner felt the most confident teaching and thought was the most useful.

I have been able to notice the grammatical patterns we have discussed in class in Portuguese. I have also started to notice them across the various languages I have learned. It is helpful to notice these structural similarities to better understand how I have learned them in other languages and how Portuguese differs slightly.

Language and culture are deeply intertwined, which is why I think it is great that my language partner and I are meeting 1-on-1 to discuss both Brazilian language and culture. What I need to be better at to improve my communicative competence in Portuguese as of right now is being able to ask for clarification on specific terms. In my plan, I have focused mostly on grammatical and textual competence, simply because my Portuguese skills are not that advanced. Further along in my studies I would focus more on illocutionary and sociolinguistic competence.

Sebastião Salgado, an economist by education, began to photograph professionally in the early 1970s. His international trips as an economist in his early career inspired him to take up photography. He is famous for the directness of his photography of individuals and groups who are in dire economic circumstances. He is unwilling to present his portraits individually and instead will only display them in collections. I thought that this was an interesting principle. As I became more familiar with his work, I realized that he uses collections to powerfully connect his photos across broad overarching themes, such as conservation, migration, and Indigenous culture. His style of portrait is well-known for not isolating the subject(s) from their surrounding circumstances, but instead captures the dynamic between the subject(s) and their environment. Again, as I viewed more of his work, I began to understand how that would present not only individuals, but their livelihoods as well. It is difficult to capture people in poverty without invoking pity and/or painting yourself as a savior. However, he is known for techniques that work to avoid those reactions and instead emphasize reality and empowerment. Lastly, he photographs only in black and white. I haven’t been able to find the reason for this, but it gives both commonality and depth to his photos because textures can only be depicted in shades between black and white. He also only uses natural lighting, stating that he does not know how to use artificial lighting.

The artifact I would like to focus on is his exhibition, Amazônia, that depicts 12 different Indigenous peoples (cultures) of the Amazon, many of which are located in remote areas and some of which are in chosen isolation. Some of the photographs also highlight the unique landscapes, flora, and fauna of the region. Salgado traveled around the Amazon, immersing himself in Indigenous communities for weeks, capturing their day-to-day life and surroundings. The goal of the series was to show the inseparability of Indigenous peoples and the ecosystems around them. The photos are displayed with an Amazonia soundtrack of people talking, animal noises, natural soundscapes, and music. The series also includes videos of Indigenous leaders speaking out against the deforestation and degradation of the Amazon rainforest. Salgado was traveling while Bolsonaro was still heading the Brazilian government, so a lot of the commentary surrounds the lack of governmental support for the environments and peoples of the Amazon. The funds made from the exhibition largely go to Instituto Terra, a nature institute and reserve founded by Salgado and his wife that focuses on reforestation of the Atlantic Forest in Brazil and environmental education.

However, I think that it is always worth calling into question the ethics of traveling to Indigenous territories to showcase their lifestyles. The exhibition is great for giving Indigenous leaders a platform for their socioenvironmental advocacy. However, particularly for Indigenous peoples who have chosen to be isolated or even relatively isolated, I find that the ethics become blurry depending on the desires of the community. Salgado is bringing modern technology into areas that may be very unfamiliar with their functioning. He doesn’t know any of the Indigenous languages and used interpreters the entire time. All I hope is that the extent to which this project is displayed was known by all the subjects in Salgado’s photographs.

Sources:

https://www.npr.org/2022/11/02/1133560731/a-new-exhibition-features-photos-of-the-amazon-and-indigenous-leaders

https://californiasciencecenter.org/exhibits/amazonia

Some historians believe that the Tropicália Movement, one the most significant counterculture movements in Brazilian history, originated or took great influence from Oswald de Andrade’s Anthropophagic Manifesto. The most famous line in the work was: ‘To tupi or not to tupi: that is the question.’ Tupi are an indigenous people of Brazil that practiced cannibalism in the past. The statement then adopts a popular line from Hamlet, modeling its anthropophagic message by combining Brazilian culture and English phrases. The manifesto argued that Brazilian culture thrives through the ‘cannibalization’ (adopting it and modifying it in a Brazilian context) of other cultures, particularly as a way to improve upon and differentiate influence from colonizing cultures.

The Tropicália Movement began in Brazil the late 1960s. It was a creative movement that was fueled by oppression under the rule of a military government that took over the previous government of President João Goulart. The movement’s name was meant to be ironic, playing on the portrayal of Brazil as a tropical paradise. A rallying cry of the Tropicália movement was “Seja Marginal, Seja Herói,” which means “be a delinquent, be a hero.” It was described as “a creative explosion.”

The artifact I am focusing on today is the infamous musical album, Tropicália ou Panis et Circencis, which is misspelled Latin meaning Bread and Circuses. The album popularized the movement and cemented it in history. Collaborators on the album included Caetano Veloso, Gilerto Gil (a former Minister of Culture), Maria Bethânia, Gal Costa, Os Mutantes, Tom Zé, Nara Leão, Torquato Neto, and Rogério Duprat. The titular track, Miserere Nóbis, was a rock song satirizing the bourgeois. Gil and Veloso were the main writers on the album. As the album continued to gain popularity, they were imprisoned by the dictatorship government for their radical music. The album is known for bridging the genres of traditional Brazilian music and rock, further epitomizing anthropophagia. It is also known for revolutionizing Brazilian sound through anarchy. Psychedelia, samba, bossa nova, and traditional Brazilian styles are balanced and recombined throughout the album in a way that had never been done before.

The cover art was also very purposeful in portraying the message of the Tropicália Movement. The cover is an ode to the Beatles’ album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. A large photo of some of the collaborators takes up a majority of the cover of Tropicália ou Panis et Circencis. The bold text of the title, which are in Brazil colors embody the bold, empowered resistance of the movement. Subsequent music that was created at the time became tinged with politics, as Tropicália ou Panis et Circencis had set the trend for music being used as a vehicle for political messaging.

Letícia, my language partner, began playing the first track on the album for me because I had asked her to play one of the songs. Her eyes went slightly wide as she turned to me after just the first few bars and said that she knew this song, it was played all of the time in Brazil. She started humming along. Nothing could’ve cemented more to me the lasting legacy of this movement and the music that propelled it forward.

Source: https://artsandculture.google.com/story/what-is-the-tropicália-movement/ygUB8lo7KJ2GJQ?hl=en

Kobra is a globally recognized mural artist from São Paulo, Brazil. His name, Kobra, came from Brazilian slang. Kobra formally means snake and informally means ‘something that is quite different, someone who is quite good at something.’ Kobra began as a graffiti artist in one of the poorer neighborhoods of São Paulo. He was originally inspired to begin creating murals by the idea of creating art that highlighted and maintained the historical heritage of São Paulo, as he noticed that so much of public art in the city depicted buildings that no longer existed. He created the Wall of Memories in 2002, a series of murals that portray scenes of São Paulo from the beginning of 20^th century. He also painted a mural in 2011 to protest the demolition of a building in Lyon, France and the displacement of its residents. They asked for Kobra’s services because they believed the art would call attention to their cause and the history of their building. He has many other famous works, such as Etnias, a mural made for the Rio Olympics in 2016 or Cacao, a mural honoring the making of chocolate and is the world’s largest spray-painted mural. Many of his murals focus on issues such as discrimination, conservation, and human rights. However, one overarching theme across all of them is unity across and within religions, cultures, and countries.

The artifact I would like to focus on is Kobra’s most recent work, A mão de Deus (“The Hand of God”). It is known as his most autobiographical work. He recently lost his daughter and was also severely sick for months. He says that the mural was meant to depict God’s hand rescuing him. The mural depicts two arms grasping one another. One is underwater and the other is reaching from above the water to grip the arm underwater. The arm above water is checkered with vibrant colors, which is Kobra’s signature style. This pattern is seen on the skin of most figures in his works. The arm under water is a solid light blue.

Every Sunday, the highway that offers the best view of the mural is shut down, so that people can walk/run underneath it and admire it. People interpret it to mean that you should always offer help to those who appear to be struggling. It doesn’t matter whether it is related to COVID-19 or just some other hardship in their life, it is always best to offer help to someone in need. People also see it as a sign that you are never alone. There are always people who will pull you back to the surface. It is a depiction of generosity, but also strength. The ability to offer the help as well as be vulnerable enough to accept the help. That is the unity that shines through this mural. It embodies the idea of being stronger together. Kobra says that it doesn’t matter how you interpret God. He is a man who has faith in lending a hand when someone appears to be in need and reaching out when he needs that help as well.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mk9IgUCfRwg

Portuguese is an Indo-European language derived from Latin and belongs to the romance languages language family. Its origins are in the Western Iberian Peninsula, where Romans first introduced Latin as a language. Vulgar Latin, a nonstandard form of Latin, became the main language on the Peninsula. This language than developed into Galician-Portuguese language in the area on the Atlantic coast. These languages then divided into Galician and Portuguese branches after Galicia joined Spain. In the 14^th and 16^th centuries, Portuguese spread to Asia, Africa, and The Americas. In Asia and Africa, it was largely used as a common language for trade. The spread of Portuguese to the Americas lead to the development of the Brazilian Portuguese I am currently learning.

In terms of its history, I understand Portuguese to be a language of commerce and colonialization. It was widespread at one time, influencing the development of many other languages, but is currently mainly spoken in Brazil and Portugal. It is the 8^th most spoken language in the world.

Portuguese phonology particularly changed over time from Galician-Portuguese phonology to Modern Portuguese, and Contemporary Portuguese. Galician-Portuguese had a 7 oral vowel system and Modern and Contemporary Portuguese both have an 8 oral vowel system. However, in certain areas of Africa and Europe, a 9^th oral vowel has developed as well.

Linguists track changes in Portuguese like this through texts from each time period. With Portuguese, they are able to specifically use the development of the language in different geographic areas to see what words and rules are common amongst all of them to get a better sense of sustained aspects of Portuguese throughout its history.

Through SDLC 105, I realized that language learning is not something that you need to have a knack for or that requires overwhelmingly long-term hard work and dedication. I liked that we talked about breaking down language learning. It was nice to realize that it is similar across languages. It made me feel like I could use my previous language learning experience to advance my Portuguese learning. I also enjoyed that we talked about tips and tricks of language learning. For example, cognates mean that you already know some of the words of a language. It is these little bits of familiarity and encouragement that really buoyed me when I was struggling with beginning to learn Portuguese.

This class also confirmed that I am someone who learns best conversationally and through immersion. I like learning small concepts that I can grab onto and then being plunged into a native speaker conversation where I can pick out that concept and see how it is applied. I have realized that is one of the best ways I can remember something.

I have learned that I love the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. That is one of the most fascinating concepts that I have learned through this course and in general. It definitely has made me see culture and language in a completely different way. I also really enjoyed learning about the points of articulation for sounds and the phones of a language. However, I did struggle with other technical linguistic concepts such as lexical morphemes, lexical categories, and secondary manner.

I think that I will continue my learning through SDLC 110. I plan to take it next semester. My goal is to recognize how these concepts apply to my further language learning next semester. I have no background in Portuguese, so I am truly creating the foundation of my language learning. Through the concepts of this course, I will likely be able to detect patterns of the language and know the terminology that applies to it. This will be helpful to better remember and conceptualize these rules in my mind, accelerating my learning of Portuguese.

I found it very helpful when activities had us use our target language to explain the linguistic concepts we were learning. For example, when we had to find affixes in our target language and what they mean. It was interesting to see how these concepts are shared across languages and also definitely helped me with new words in Portuguese to see how they can be modified with certain affixes.

I also liked when we did word trees of various words. These were super fun and interesting, particularly to debate. I also enjoyed the presentations at the end of the course. These were a great way to see people’s different interests in the scope of their target language. I also thought it was fun to learn about words and cultural concepts in other people’s languages. After those presentations, I could talk about the history of Farsi, the divisions of Catalan, and the development of Korean music genres.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-SIHcDvRyfUZPh5jK5G0RiwhLBowZBNt/view?usp=sharing

Imagine that you have received a research grant to conduct a linguistic study of your target language and culture. How would you get started, and what would you investigate? How would different structural components presented in class appear in your work?

If I received a research grant to conduct a linguistic study of Portuguese, I would investigate the impacts of the gendering of nouns on Brazilians’ perceptions of random objects. My approach would be through literature review and on the ground research. Through literature review, I would be able to see what other studies have been completed about these topics. I would also be interested in what studies have been completed about the origins of Portuguese and how its roots relate to why it is a gendered language currently. The Western Iberian Latin roots of the language are largely the reason. However, I would be interested to study the ethnogenesis of Portuguese branched off from this language by researching language trees and comparing the similarity of certain key word roots using word trees. However, new words are also constantly being created. I would be interested in how genders are assigned to new words as well. I know that a majority of gender assignments are based on what a word’s suffix is, such as -o indicates a masculine noun. However, I am interested in how exceptions to these common rules are decided.

Additionally, I am also interested in how these grammatical rules related to gender play a role in people’s perception of the world, in other words, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. I would be interested in finding ways to test how gendered nouns affect people’s perceptions of those objects. One way that I’ve found this was done in a similar study is asking people to assign voices to animals, being able to classify animals as certain genders, and testing people’s perceived similarities between objects.