Italian is also being learned as a foreign language in Brazil by tens of thousands of students a year, partly due to the descendants of immigrants gradually recovering their origins.
[12] After World War II, on the other hand, the migratory flow was marked by a higher level of education, to which corresponded with a greater mastery of Italian.
[14] Italian emigration to Brazil was favored by the welcoming policies adopted by the South American country, which was willing to advance the ticket for the journey in order to receive labor for the colonization of its immense territory, still largely unexplored.
[15] It was therefore the most impoverished social strata that undertook the journey, thus becoming settlers who gradually replaced slaves in the fazendas (dating to 1888 the abolition of slavery through the Lei Áurea).
[17] Contributing to the preservation of the languages of origin was the isolation in enclaves, often characterized by endogamy and poor schooling, and also the establishment of much larger family groups than in the motherland, which reached as many as 170 members.
[33] In the period of Getúlio Vargas's dictatorship (1930-1945), a campaign of forced nationalization began, hitting hard at ethnically based schools (Italian, German, etc.
), kept alive only by the support of the respective European governments and religious bodies; with World War II, the study of Italian was banned (along with that of German and Japanese).
[35] Italian immigrant communities gave rise to a large number of periodical publications; between 1875 and 1960 more than 500 newspapers (daily, weekly, fortnightly, monthly, and single issues) were surveyed, of which about 360 were concentrated in São Paulo State.
"[39] It was on the very columns of the "Staffetta Riograndense" that the successful Vita e stória de Nanetto Pipetta nassuo in Itália e vegnudo in Mérica per catare la cucagna by the Capuchin friar Aquiles Bernardi saw the light between January 23, 1924 and February 18, 1925; the text is written in Talian, a Venetian koiné with influences from the Lombard and Portuguese languages.
[42] In the first period of its history, the government of independent (1822) and later republican (1889) Brazil showed little interest in the linguistic integration of the different components of the country's population; therefore, assimilationist policies were not promoted, unlike what was happening in Argentina; this circumstance favored the preservation of the language of origin by immigrants.
[47] The 1940 census is particularly significant because the data were collected before Brazil intervened in World War II on the side of the Allies (1942), thus initiating a campaign of forced assimilation of minorities (called Campanha de Nacionalização).
[48] Things would be different in 1950, when minorities of Italian, German and Japanese descent, following the defeat of their respective countries of origin and the nationalization campaign, generally preferred to deny knowledge of languages other than Portuguese.
[50] Concentration camps, known as "confinement areas," were created in the state of Santa Catarina, where descendants of immigrants who continued to speak their native language, among others, were imprisoned.
[37] The Italian language, in its dialectal varieties, survived mainly in rural communities,[52] while in the big cities, as already noted, it only came back into use with the new wave of immigration after World War II.
An Italian language that conforms to the standard, even if affected by consistent phenomena of linguistic erosion, characterizes the descendants of post-World War II immigrants and is concentrated particularly in the state of São Paulo.
[58] In addition, numerous dialect-speaking communities survive in Brazil; of particular relevance are the Venetian speakers concentrated in a linguistic island between Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina, collectively designated by the term Talian.
Respondents were chosen from among people who had good beginning proficiency in Italian, assured by having lived in Italy until adulthood and by holding a secondary school diploma (and often a college degree as well).
")[69] The main phenomena of linguistic erosion surveyed are as follows:[70] From these investigations, it is understood that the effects of the exposure of native Italian speakers to contact with Brazilian Portuguese are not limited to the lexical and morphosyntactic domains, but also reach the area of syntax and pragmatics; in other words, they "affect a deeper level of the language, [...] that connected with information structure.
[81] Franceschi also noted the presence in Caxias of numerous people able to speak Italian fluently, "which, moreover, was here the language of culture - in which books and periodicals were printed - before 'Lusitanian' imposed itself in the same capacity.
[84] This strong prevalence of speakers from a narrow area of the Veneto, corresponding to the region of Mount Grappa (which lies on the border between the three provinces) favored the creation of the dialectal koiné known as Talian.
[87] In the rural areas of the state of Rio Grande do Sul there are also some Friulian-speaking communities; Friulian (furlan) is, however, perceived by speakers as clearly distinct from the dominant Venetian koiné (talian).
The emergence of a dialectal koiné on a Venetian basis among Italian-Brazilians took place within the so-called "Italian Colonial Region" in the Northeast Rio Grande do Sul.
[95] The Brazilian Venetian was subjected to persecutory measures under the Estado Novo regime, which greatly reduced its use, now essentially limited to the domestic sphere and to older speakers.
[98] The character of the Italian-Brazilian, well present in literature and theater,[99] later arrived in cinema and then on television; thus it is common that in the popular novelas das oito, the telenovelas broadcast in prime time by Rede Globo, space is given to dialogues in Italian.
[100] There have been numerous stories about family conflicts in late 19th-century or early 20th-century Italy, often resolved in the emigration of one or more characters to the mirage of happiness represented by São Paulo, or about the bloody feuds among Italian immigrants in the fazendas.
The need to follow the tastes of the audience, however, often results in a certain stereotyping in linguistic representation, most evident in the predilection for immigrants of Neapolitan origin portrayed in a caricatured manner.
[134] There are seven committees of the Dante Alighieri Society in Brazil, based in the cities of Curitiba, Nova Friburgo, João Pessoa, Maceió, Recife, Rio de Janeiro and Salvador.