CARIOCA

'Carioca' () is an adjective in Portuguese that refers to people or things from (i.e., a demonym for) the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The word comes from the indigenous dialect of Tupi-Guarani, from "kara'i oca", roughly translating to "house of whites".
It is said that the first Europeans' (white men) dwellings in that area were placed along a limpid brook, which soon got the name ''Carioca (River)'' as well. Later, its waters would be praised as bearing healing properties, in such an exaggerated way that it caused locals to be ironically nicknamed cariocas by people in other regions.
According to a survey published in ''American Scientist Magazine'', the Cariocas of Rio de Janeiro exhibited great friendliness and offered to help in various situations. A quote from the article mentioned pointed to the following ^[1]:
In contrast, the demonym for the ''state'' of Rio de Janeiro is fluminense, from Latin flumen, "river".

Contents

Dialect

References

See also

Dialect

The variety of Brazilian Portuguese spoken either in the city or state of Rio de Janeiro is also called ''Carioca'' or ''Fluminense''. It has no great differences between the carioca dialect and the standard Brazilian Portuguese. The most distinctive characteristics is the pronunciation of "s" and "r" before a consonant: "s" is pronounced like "sh" and "r" is aspirate, like "h" in English, and also the strong palatization of the syllabes "ti" and "di". In the grammar, an important difference is the use of the second person pronoun "você" and the obliquous pronoun "te" in the same speech, while standard portuguese requires "lhe" as obliquous for "você", and "te" as obliquous for "tu".

References

1. Can't Find A Good Samaritan, Don't Blame It On Rio

See also

★ Caipira

★ Gaucho