O que é um Capixaba... Whats a Capixaba?

Well, I wouldnt know If I hadn't been told, so dont worry. But turns out a good friend of mine is a Capixaba. Ok enough wondering what it means...what is a capixaba? a capixaba my friends is an Espiritu Santo native. Yes, Capixaba. Now, don't say capixabanes or anything like that... thats wrong and they'll shoot you for it. Ok so maybe not shoot but they'll look at you like the tourist you are.

Ok so a little bit about Espiritu Santo. First of all its abreviated ES and its the stated that touches the Atlantic ocean right south of Bahía, north of Rio de Janeiro and and east of Minas Gerais. ES was originally part of Minas Gerais and was later annexed to Bahía, however, ES has always pursued being independent, I would in fact, attribute that every capixaba you meet will always think that ES is the best place in Brasil to this self definition of the imaginary state.  When ES was first inhabited, the colonizers created the city that would later come to be known as Vila Velha (old town), however, this city was so attacked by french and dutch merchants and natives that they decided to seek a more defendable area, so they moved to cidade nova or Vitoria, which is now the capital of the state.

Espiritu Santo, has always been like the forgotten family memeber, other than it being important for emerald export when it was first inhabited, the only other valuable crops that have been cultivated in ES has been coffee. However, as of recently petroleum deposits have given new life to the state. A crop that has also been gaining importance and growth in ES is papaya, or mamão. However, now there are a lot of other crops in ES thanks to its somewhat state induced industrialization.

The population of ES is mostly italian and german, however most of what can be traced are the italian roots since aroudn WWII, the state forced the desintegration of german areas and they mixed with the larger italian population. However, there are other considerable backgrounds, like portuguese (obviously), spanish, belgian, dutch and even Lebanese.

Futbol, however big in Brazil, is not the best sport for capixabas. The only known soccer player from the state could be considered to have been Keiza, but dont worry, you wont even find him on wikipedia.

The truth is that ES has always been pushed back by the three other states that surround it, Bahía, RJ and Minas have always had large importance, this in turn dim the importance of ES in the country wide panorama. Nevertheless, ES is famous for its beaches speacially guaraparí, which is visited mostly by people from Minas, since minas has no oceanfront. No matter what Capixabas are very proud of their state and finding one outside of Espiritu Santo is a rare task.

If you ever have the luck of visiting ES, it is worth it to try some of the native delicacies. The Muqueca Capixaba, for example, is known for having no dendé oil (palm oil), like its bahian counterpart. It looks really delicious and I left a link to a couple very simple demonstrations on how to make it, below. Other plates to try are Polenta, Pamonha, and the Torta Capixaba.

Some quicky aspects I found as I researched this, show that ES is not foreign to the americanization of its culture. The perfect example is the (for some shameful or shameless) Madoniha Capixaba. A girl that translates and sings all of madonnas songs in portuguese. Well, I posted a video below, hope you enjoy it.

And one last video I leave you with, has some promotions from the state government of Espiritu Santo showing some of the beaches and places you can visit in the beautiful state of the Capixabas.


Videos

#1 Version 1 of the Moqueca Capixaba (I think this one should be a bit better)



#2 Version 2 of the Moqueca Capixaba... probably more tomatoe flavor, but I think he doesnt have a lot of the other ingrediets from the previous plate;



#3 Torta Capixaba



#4 Comercial about Espiritu Santo



#5 Comercial by the State Government



#6 Madoninha Capixaba... lol

Better your portuguese pronunciation

Ok so I realized that one of my biggest problems with pronunciation with portuguese was not know how to actually pronunciate each sound, so I tried bettering this while I was in Bahía. Now I say these sounds with a Bahía accent, or rather a Bahian inclination more than an accent. This is actually great for me because I love it, but the "correct" phonemes are not my primary go to, so for all of you who are still wondering how to make each specific sounds heres a little video (vid#1). I'll also add another video that helps a lot too, this is a fater and more complex video on more complex sounds, it examples more sounds and mixtures of vowel fonemes with their respective nasalities and it also does the consonant sounds. Again this is Brazilian portuguese, you'll find that these sounds are more fricative, softer and less vocalized than European portugese, according to Wikipidia, european languages are usually more vocalized than their non-european transformations and the softening of the language is supossed to be because of the influence of from other languages, these being both native american languages and african. Hope it helps you all, i'll add more on accents; specifically bahian - baiano.


Accent = Sotaque
Slang = Gíria (can be street or professional slang)

Enjoy... :)

Need help conjugating? Verbix is the answer :)

I know I have problems with the verb Pôr, and sometimes I have trouble with the Future Subjunctive, or wondering for some reason what the first person singular present tense of ter (tenho) is... so there you are, its really easy to use, and as Im sure you can tell you can also use verbix for spanish, or other languages by going to the initial home page :)

Slang Diccionary

So the other dictionary you're going to find on my quicklinks bar, is the Slang Dictionary or Dicionário Informal.

It basically includes slang, coarse words, misspelled words and even phonetical variations. Not all will be here, but even some obscure ones are. And be warned, as this is more of a User Generated Contect page (UGC) you have to be careful about where you use certain words, I would recommend talking to native portuguese speakers to clear any doubts.

Anyways, enjoy because most of the common slang words that sometimes as a language learner we are afraid to ask about, are in there. :)

Dictionary

So after my long absence, I'm back posting once again. And going back to the reasons why I wanted to start this blog, here you go. The best online portuguese dictionary for you all. :)

So, for all of you looking for a good Portuguese dictionary, I'm leaving you this link.
I know I promised it long time ago, but here it is. Its definitely one of the most trustable and dependent online dicctionaries from my experience. Hope it helps all of you as well.

By the way, the word for dictionary is Dicionário, so there you are, your Dicionário em Português.