In Brasil, where the official language is Portuguese, the Spanish language is becoming more and more important as a study subject. This is due to various factors; first of all because in the last years Brasil has redirected its commercial relations mainly to its neighbours, that is to say especially to those countries part of the Mercosur (Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Brasil itself) rather than to previous European and American partners. To this economic reason, we have to add a cultural one: in fact relationships with Castilian officialy speaking countries are growing in the sense that there are more and more cultural exchanges favored by phonetic and structural similarities the mentioned languages shared, which make it easier for Brazilians to learn Spanish.In 2005, then the Brazilian National Congress has voted a law that obliges all primary schools (both private nd public) to offer Spanish as second language.

In Brazil still exists however a small number of Spanish speaking people: they are Sephardic Jews (they speak both Ladin and Castilian. For further information see the section Spanish in Asia) who recognize Spanish as mother tongue counted together with the community created by all immigrants coming from other Latin American countries.

Finally in many places especially next to the Uruguayan border, people speak a mixture of Portuguese and Spanish well known as portuñol.

What is moreover interesting is the fact that in the Amazonic area of Brazil and Peru people speak a kind of Spanih dialect which is called español amazonico (Amazonic Spanish). This dialect has been obviously influenced by the amazonic languages.

The main characteristics of this dialect differ from Castilian basically for what concerns phonetics (for example they pronounce f when there’s a j especially together with a u : e.g. Juan /fan/ ) and morphosintax. Actually, all proper names have a definite article before them (Juana --> Lä Fuäna) and moreover, in Amazonic Spanish they change the order of elements in the sentence (e.g. las amigas de Antonio --> de Antonio sus amïgas).

However it is defined as a dialect and not properly a language because there isn’t any fixed codification neither in the spoken nor in the written language.