Polish has joined the ranks of official languages in the Municipality of Aurea in the State of Rio Grande do Sul, alongside Portuguese, the official language of the Federative Republic of Brazil, reports the Polish Community Association. According to the Association, the Brazilian-Polish community has thus accomplished “an unprecedented thing in its history.”
The municipality of Aurea in the state of Rio Grande do Sul – is a unique place on the map of Brazil. As many as 90 per cent of its inhabitants are of Polish origin. Hence the idea to make Polish the second official language here alongside Portuguese.
This is an unprecedented decision – Polish is joining the official languages in the Brazilian municipality of Aurea.
The initiative was initiated by Polish activist Fabricio Vicroski, a representative of the Polish ethnic group at the Collegiate for Linguistic Diversity in the Rio Grande do Sul. Support was provided by the BRASPOL Central Representation of Brazil’s Polish community, the Polish Community Association and the Polish Language Institute (IJP – ed.). There are plans to include the Polish language in Brazil in the list of national cultural heritage.
“At present, the project based on which the Polish language was recognised as one of the official languages will be passed on to other Brazilian municipalities where, as in Aurea, a significant percentage of the inhabitants are descendants of Polish emigrants. It is to be hoped that it will meet with similar recognition and that the scope of its formal use will soon expand on a significant scale,” we read in the information. The Polish Community Association stresses that “the Polish language co-officialization project is part of a larger initiative”.
“The plan is to inventory and elaborate the functioning of the Polish language as an intangible cultural heritage of Brazil and, consequently, to include it in the national list of intangible cultural heritage. This will result, in addition to formal recognition, in a legal commitment by the Republic of Brazil to preserve the Polish language as a living testimony to the social and cultural development of the country,” it was written.
Brazil’s Polish community numbers more than 1.5 million compatriots.