Why is Portuguese spoken in Brazil?

Question

Did Portugal invade Brazil and kill the natives?

Answer 1

Portugal colonized Brasil in the XVI century
By the way, to setodo decabeca, your words are REALLY UNPLEASANT. GO BACK to where you came from and don't come back until you learn some good manners

Answer 2

wolfmankav is right. The contract in question is the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494. The demarcation line runs through the South American continent and makes the eastern section thereby a Portuguese sphere of influence. Officially, Brasil was only discovered by Pedro Alvarez Cabral in 1500, six years after the contract gave Portugal huge areas in what should have been considered the atlantic Ocean before 1500. That Portugal, with her stron interest in the East Indies, should have forfeited land in the East in order to gain "ocean floor" in the western hemisphere, appears a mystery until today. It has been speculated that the Portuguese had known of the eastern extension of the South Anmerican continnent before 1494, but since all archival documents about the discoveries in the west were destroyed when the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 destroyed the Royal archives in the Torre do Tombo, no-one will ever know.

Answer 3

By the same reason they speak Spanish in other countries of Latin America...

Why Portugal got Brazil was explained before. Portugal didn't kill all natives, most of them were massacred, but not all, there are today about 300.000 Native Americans in Brazil.

To Vov2007
Brazil is NOT isolated from the rest of the continent.

Answer 4

To prevent conflict between settlements, Spain and Portugal went before the Pope. He drew a line saying everything to the East was Portugal's territory and everything to the west belonged to Spain. They didn't know how far west the continent extended. As it turned out Portugal colonized Brazil and Spain got Mexico, Central America, and the rest of South America.

Answer 5

Yes, the Line of Demarcation divided Spanish South America from Portuguese South America. The feature film "The Mission" (with Jeremy Irons and Robert DeNiro) shows what happened along the border as the Spanish and Portuguese divided up the region.

Answer 6

Absolutely ! And later they chopped down all the trees for firewood.
To setudu de cabeca:
Thank you for letting us know what you think about Spanish. Now I can tell you that Portuguese sounds like a Spanish poorly learnt

Answer 7

Yes, Brazil was a Portuguese colony.

Answer 8

Yes, and Brazil turned out to be the only country in So. America that doesn't speak Spanish, which I think makes it so isolated from the rest of the continent, culture-wise.

Answer 9

Wolfmanka... is absolutely correct. I think that the line drawn by the Pope was called the Line of Demarcation.

Answer 10

They probably just colonized/conquered them.