Languages!

Almagest wrote:

icare4u wrote:

I know there is a dialect of German spoken in Brazil...due to immigrants from Germany living in Brazil...they brought their language with them..but changed it apparently. "Real" German is different though from that dialect.

You probably mean Riograndenser Hunsrückisch. As the article explains, it's not like the immigrants "changed" the dialect so much than rather several dialects that various immigrant groups brought along with them gradually became mixed, and of course Brazilian Portuguese exerted an influence especially in the form of borrowed words. I'm sure that if Paulo knew his grandparents' language better, it wouldn't be difficult for him to learn Standard German.

Paulo: I know about Santa Catarina, I found it quite amusing when as a child I found out that there is a city called Florianópolis

It's a pity that you don't even understand any of your grandparents' German.

Pomeranian is Low German, but Low German is actually more similar to Dutch. It should be easy to understand for Dutch people, less so for Germans who don't come from Northern Germany (where Low German is still widely known - at least understood -, especially at the coast). Low German, like Dutch, is relatively similar to English or Scandinavian languages, too, also thanks to long-standing contacts across the seas, while German is more peculiar with its sounds like "pf" and other effects of the High German sound shift that have made the common Germanic foundation less easy to recognise.

I'd have to check where those people come from, those who told me about that accent, but it could be...
BTW, I am currently reading a book...Brazil 1826, Rio Grande do Sul..about people coming to Brazil from Hunsrück...