Portuguese Teachers’ Training in Brazil in Monolingual Urban and Rural Areas: A Historical and Geographical Approach

Stella Maris Bortoni-Ricardo

Abstract

This text draws a picture of the Brazilian society from both a historical and geographical point of view. Brazil is the 5th largest country in the world and from the 16th Century onwards was inhabited by the Portuguese and the Africans, which joined the aboriginal Indians whose population is estimated in less than one million. The demographic facts concerning our country have to account for the geographic mobility of the population, domestic and external immigration, as well as the urbanization and peculiar historical events that explain Brazil’s monarchy and the Independence in 1882. This paper also hinges at income distribution, social networks, functional literacy, demographic density and, finally, at the standardization processes of Brazilian Portuguese.