BRAZILIAN INDIANS

Five hundred years of exposure to disease, violence and dispossession wiped out the vast majority of this indigenous population. Today, there are around 650,000 Indians in Brazil in over 200 tribes, who live scattered across the country.

                                        

Between them they speak a huge number of languages; 110 of the tribal languages of Brazil have fewer than 400 speakers. Brazil’s tribes range in size from the Guarani and Yanomami, who number tens of thousands, to tribes such as the Akuntsu and Kanoê, who number only a few dozen.

How do they live?

Brazil’s tribal peoples live in a wide range of environments – tropical forests, grassland, scrub forest and semi-desert – and have a wide range of ways of life.

Their experience of contact with European invaders and their descendants also varies widely: some, such as the Guarani in the south, have been in contact with white people for 500 years; others encountered them far more recently; and some tribes are effectively uncontacted – the majority of the world’s uncontacted tribes, probably more than 50, live in Brazil.

Most tribes live by a mixture of hunting, gathering, and growing plants for food, medicine and to make everyday objects. Probably only the uncontacted Awá and Maku are completely nomadic, living entirely by hunting and gathering in the Amazon.

    

What problems do they face?

In the 500 years since Europeans arrived in Brazil, the tribal peoples there have experienced genocide on a huge scale, and the loss of much of their land.

Today, their land is still taken over for ranches or industrial projects, or invaded by miners and settlers – and they are still being killed, whether by diseases encountered when their lands are invaded, by starvation as they are driven from their hunting grounds, or by the hitmen who are employed by ranchers and ‘landowners’ to keep Indians away.

                                                             
    There remains an endemic racism towards Indians in Brazil that makes all this possible – in law they are still considered minors. The most important thing for tribal peoples in Brazil is control over their lands – Brazil is one of only two South American countries that does not recognise tribal land ownership.

If Brazil’s tribes were recognised as the owners of their land, it would give them some real protection against the individuals and businesses that take over their land, destroying their livelihood and often destroying them.

                                                       

                                               

VERBS - SECOND CONJUGATION

The second conjugation regular verb:  er and ir  comer (to eat).
eu como	nós comemos
você come	vocês comem
ele/ela come	eles/elas comem

escrever (to write).
eu escrevo	nós escrevemos
você escreve	vocês escrevem
ele/ela escreve	eles/elas escrevem

The second  conjugation regular verb:  ir assistir (to attend; to watch)
eu assisto	nós assistimos
você assiste	vocês assistem
ele/ela assiste	eles/elas assistem

VERBS - FIRST CONJUGATION

Verbs are often described as 'doing words', in that they signify some form of action. Although this is true, there are some verbs that do not relate to obvious actions.


First Conjugation Verbs
To help you consolidate this, here is another conjugation of a verb – given in both English and Portuguese.  The Portuguese verb ‘pensar’ means ‘to think’, and because it ends with ‘ar’, it is a first conjugation verb.
English:  To think-pensar                      to work-trabalhar
I think                                           I work              
you  think                                      you work              
he, she, it  thinks                            he, she, it works            
we think                                        we work                                    
you think                                       you work
they think                                      they  work


eu penso                                        eu trabalho
você pensa                                     você trabalha
ele/ela pensa                                            ele/ela trabalha
nós pensamos                                          nós trabalhamos
vocês pensam                                          vocês trabalham
eles/elas pensam                                    eles/elas trabalham                           


Note that the endings of the conjugations are the same as the previous example.  The Portuguese verbs trabalhar and pensar are both regular verbs of the first conjugation (ie. they are regular, and end in ‘ar’), so the endings attached to the stem (in the case of pensar, the stem is ‘pens’) are the same.  All regular verbs that end in ‘ar’ will follow exactly the same pattern.  The stem is always the infinitive minus the last 2 letters (well, nearly always – I’ll explain the exceptions in a minute), and the endings will always be as above.

Even though in Portuguese the verb form changes for each 'person', and in English it changes for the third person singular, there are some letters which are always there – for example, in Portuguese, all of the forms of 'trabalhar ' start with the letters 'trabalh'.  This portion of the word is known as the 'stem' – and for regular verbs, it remains the same regardless of the conjugation or tense.  Irregular verbs however, can change radically (in which case they are referred to as ‘radical-changing’ or ‘stem-changing’ verbs) – the different forms might not bear any resemblance to each other!


Almost all infinitives in Portuguese end with either 'ar', 'er', or 'ir' – even for irregular verbs.  The most common ending is 'ar', and the least common is 'ir'.  These different types of verb are categorised:  'ar' verbs are referred to as 'the first conjugation', 'er' verbs are 'the second conjugation', and 'ir' verbs are the 'third conjugation'. 

A handful of verbs have an infinitive ending with ‘or’ (eg. pôr, compor), but these are so rare that they do not qualify for a category of their own.  They have evolved from 2^nd conjugation verbs (‘pôr’) so they are still classed as belonging to the 2^nd conjugation.

GRAMMAR

Nouns and Articles

A noun is an identifier, so just check if  the word identifies what something or someone is.  The thing identified by a noun can be tangible – like ‘chair’, ‘door’, ‘car’, ‘book’; or it can be abstract – like ‘thought’, ‘desire’, ‘mystery’, ‘effort’. 

Sometimes, an identifier can consist of more than one word (eg. ‘beer bottle’, ‘car door’), in which case the group of words that make up the identifier is known as a ‘noun phrase’.

Nouns can always be preceded by the definite or indefinite article (ie. the word ‘the’ or ‘a(n)’ or 'some'), so if it does not make sense to use ‘the’ or ‘a’ before the word, it is likely not a noun.  For example, take the word ‘went’ – it does not make sense to say ‘the went’, so ‘went’ is not a noun.  Whereas, ‘the concept’ does make sense, so ‘concept’ is a noun.

Proper nouns are similar in that they act as identifiers, it’s just that they define a particular instance of a noun – ie. names (eg. Fred, Panasonic, Tuesday, London).  Proper nouns always start with a capital letter in English (and are not allowed in Scrabble!), so they are usually easy to identify.

In Portuguese, nouns are either masculine or feminine.  Unless you have studied another language before, this may seem a little odd because in English we only apply gender to people or animals unless speaking rhetorically. 

The distinction as to which nouns are masculine and which are feminine is fairly arbitrary, but as a general rule, if the word ends with ‘a’ or ‘ção’ (equivalent to the English ending 'tion') or ‘ade’ or ‘gem’, it is usually feminine, and if it ends with an ‘o’, or ‘l’, or ‘r’ or ‘á’, it is usually masculine.  Other endings can be masculine or feminine, and you just have to learn them as you come across them.

So what?  Well, definite and indefinite articles, as well as adjectives have to ‘agree’ with the noun to which they relate – both in terms of gender, and plurality.  What does this mean in practise?  There are 4 (count ‘em!) Portuguese words for ‘the’.  The one you use depends on whether the noun is masculine or feminine, and whether you are referring to one or more than one item.

The Portuguese definite article:
o	‘the’ – masculine singular
os	‘the’ – masculine plural
a	‘the’ – feminine singular
as	‘the’ – feminine plural

A similar rule applies to the indefinite article:

The Portuguese indefinite article:
um	‘a’ or ‘an’ – masculine singular
uns	‘some’ – masculine plural
uma	‘a’ or ‘an’ – feminine singular
umas	‘some’ – feminine plural

Take for example, the word ‘livro’ which means ‘book’.  This is a masculine noun, so when referring to one particular book (‘the book’), you would say ‘o livro’, whereas to refer to a few books (‘some books’), you would say ‘uns livros’.  To say ‘the houses’, which is feminine, would be ‘as casas’. 

The best way to learn which nouns are masculine and which are feminine is to learn the word along with the definite or indefinite article.  So any nouns defined from now on will include the definite article so that the gender of the noun is clear.  There’s no time like the present, so here are some nouns for you to learn:

o livro	book
a mesa	table
a casa	house
o livro	book
o carro	car
o país	country
a bebida	drink
a comida	food
o computador	computer
o cachorro	dog
o menino	boy