Linguistic Continuity along the Uruguayan-Brazilian Border: Monolingual Perceptions of a Bilingual Reality

Abstract

Uruguayan Portuguese, spoken in Spanish-Portuguese bilingual communi- ties in northern Uruguay, is perceived as a hybrid, popularly called portunol. Speakers believe they use a random mix of Portuguese and Spanish, speak- ing neither language well. This feeling, common in situations of societal bilingualism, arises from constant comparison of their native Portuguese with the surrounding Brazilian monolingual model, lack of schooling in Portuguese, Spanish interference, and Portuguese’s lack of official status in Uruguay. Nonetheless, ethnographically based variation studies have shown that speakers in these communities have access to a socially and stylistically stratified bilingual and multidialectal repertoire that includes both local and national varieties of Portuguese. Countering the assumption that clear dialectal boundaries exist along the Brazilian-Uruguayan border, Carvalho (2003a, b, 2004, 2007, 2010, in preparation) and Pacheco (forth- coming) find variation patterns in Uruguayan Portuguese that are very similar to those in Brazilian Portuguese, while Garrido Meirelles (2009) finds no major differences in the phonological systems of speakers on opposite sides of the border. Although Uruguayan Portuguese is perceiveda is fairly homogeneous; this disconnect between perception and reality is common in border communities, and as Martinez puts it, is “an intriguing aspect of border sociolinguistics” (2003: 39).