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Uruguayan Portuguese (português uruguaio, [poɾtuˈɣes uɾuˈɣwajo]), also known as fronteiriço^[2] ([fɾõteˈɾiso]) and riverense, and referred to by its speakers as portunhol^[3] (local pronunciation: [poɾtuˈɲɔl]), is a variety of Portuguese in South America with heavy influence from Rioplatense Spanish. It is spoken in north-eastern Uruguay, near the Brazilian border, mainly in the region of the twin cities of Rivera (Uruguay) and Santana do Livramento (Brazil). This section of the frontier is called "Peace Border" (Portuguese: Fronteira da Paz; Spanish: Frontera de la Paz), because there is no legal obstacle to crossing the border between the two countries.

The varieties of Uruguayan Portuguese share many similarities with the countryside dialects of the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, such as the denasalization of final unstressed nasal vowels, replacement of lateral palatal /ʎ/ with semivowel /j/, no raising of final unstressed /e/, alveolar trill /r/ instead of the guttural R, and lateral realization of coda /l/ instead of L-vocalization. The first two features are rare among accents of Portuguese, whereas L-vocalization is the norm in Brazil but not in other countries.^[4]

Recent changes in Uruguayan Portuguese include the urbanization of this variety, acquiring characteristics from urban Brazilian Portuguese such as a distinction between /ʎ/ and /j/, affrication of /t/ and /d/ before /i/ and /ĩ/, and other features of Brazilian broadcast media.^[5] Uruguayan Portuguese now exists on a spectrum, ranging from working-class rural varieties to middle class urban ones. Middle class Uruguayan Portuguese has undergone heavy convergence to the monolingual Brazilian Portuguese standard, and is perceived by middle class Brazilians to be similar to their own speech.^[6]

The origin of Portuguese in Uruguay can be traced back to the time of the dominion of the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal, and the Empire of Brazil. In those times, the ownership of those lands was not very well defined, passing back and forth from the hands of one crown to the other. Before its independence after the Cisplatine War in 1828, Uruguay was one of the provinces of the Empire of Brazil as Cisplatina.

Portuguese was the only language spoken throughout northern Uruguay until the end of the 19th century. To assure the homogeneity of the newly formed country, the government made an effort to impose the Spanish language into lusophone communities through educational policies and language planning, and bilingualism became widespread and diglossic.^[7]

The variant described above is known as "Tacuaremboense" and is spoken in the interior of Rivera. Stops and tense fricatives can be voiced or voiceless, while the lax fricatives are always voiced. The implosive allophone of /s/ is sibilant, not aspirated.^[8]

• Differences between Spanish and Portuguese

• Hensey, Frederick (1972). The Sociolinguistics of the Brazilian-Uruguayan Border. Netherlands: Mouton. pp. 44–45. ISBN 9789027923264.
• Carvalho, Ana Maria (2003). "Variation and diffusion of Uruguayan Portuguese in a bilingual border town" (PDF). Actas do 1 Simposio Internacional sobre o Bilingüismo. Vigo: 642–651. Archived (PDF) from the original on 16 January 2024.
• Carvalho, Ana Maria (2014). "Linguistic Continuity along the Uruguayan-Brazilian Border: Monolingual Perceptions of a Bilingual Reality". In Callahan, Laura (ed.). Spanish and Portuguese across Time, Place, and Borders. Palgrave Macmillan London. pp. 183–199. doi:10.1057/9781137340450. ISBN 978-1-349-46484-5.
• Douglas, Kendra (2004). Uruguayan Portuguese in Artigas: Tri-dimensionality of transitional local varieties in contact with Spanish and Portuguese standards (Ph.D. dissertation). Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin.
• Lipski, John M. (2006). Face, Timothy L.; Klee, Carol A. (eds.). "Too close for comfort? The genesis of 'portuñol/portunhol'" (PDF). Selected Proceedings of the 8th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project: 1–22. Archived (PDF) from the original on 17 January 2024.
• Brian, Nicolás; Brovetto, Claudia; Geymonat, Javier (2007). Portugués del Uruguay y educación bilingüe (in Spanish).
• Penny, Ralph (2000). "New dialects: fronterizo". Variation and Change in Spanish. Cambridge University Press. pp. 163–166. ISBN 9780521780452.
• Carvalho, Ana Maria (2004). "I speak like the guys on TV: Palatalization and the urbanization of Uruguayan Portuguese". Language Variation and Change. 16 (2): 127–151. doi:10.1017/S0954394504162030 (inactive 1 November 2024). S2CID 144351313.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of November 2024 (link)

• Page about Uruguayan Portunhol (in Portuguese) at Unicamp - University of Campinas, São Paulo (in Portuguese)
• Adolfo Elizaincín website
• (in Interlingua, English, Portuguese, and Spanish) Portuñol, a new language that is gaining popularity among people who live close to the borders of Brazil and its neighboring Spanish-speaking countries