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{{short description|Demonym for anything related to the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil}}
{{other uses|Carioca (disambiguation)}}
{{distinguish|Karaoke}}
{{Multiple issues| 
{{more footnotes needed|date=June 2017}}
{{incomprehensible|date=June 2017}}
}}

'''Carioca''' ({{IPA|pt|kaɾiˈɔkɐ|-|Br-Carioca.ogg}} <small>or</small> {{IPA|pt|kɐɾiˈɔkɐ|}}) is a [[demonym]] used to refer to residents of the [[Rio de Janeiro|city of Rio de Janeiro]], in [[Brazil]] and their culture. 

Like other Brazilians, ''Cariocas'' speak [[Portuguese language|Portuguese]]. The ''carioca'' accent and [[sociolect]] (also simply called "''carioca''", see below) are one of the most widely recognized in Brazil, in part because [[TV Globo]], the most popular TV network in Brazil, is headquartered in Rio de Janeiro. Thus, many Brazilian TV programs, from news and documentary to entertainment (such as the [[telenovela]]s), feature ''carioca''-acting and -speaking talent.

==Etymology==
The original meaning of the term is controversial, maybe from [[Tupi language]] "''kari' oka''", meaning "white house" as the whitewashed stone houses of European settlers or even the colonists themselves, by merging "''kara'iwa''" (white man) and "''oka''" (house). Others propose the "beloved eyes" or "black eyes" meanings, derived from "kara" (beloved or black) and "oka" (eye). Currently, the more accepted origin in academia is the meaning derived from "''[[:Wiktionary:Kariîooka|kariîó oka]]''", which comes from Tupi "house of [[carijó]]", which was [[Guaraní people|Guaraní]], a native [[tribe]] of Rio de Janeiro who lived in the vicinity of the [[Carioca River]], between the neighborhoods of ''Glória'' and ''Flamengo''.

==History==
[[File:Cariocas.jpg|thumb|Cariocas]]
The archaic demonym for the state of Rio de Janeiro is ''Fluminense'', taken from the Latin word ''flūmen'', meaning "river". Despite the fact that ''Carioca'' is a more ancient demonym of Rio de Janeiro's inhabitants (known since 1502), it was replaced by ''fluminense'' in 1783, when the latter was sanctioned as the official demonym of the Royal Captainship of Rio de Janeiro (later the Province of Rio de Janeiro). 

In 1763, the colonial capital of Brazil was transferred from [[Salvador, Bahia|Salvador]] to Rio de Janeiro. From 1783 and during the rest of the colonial period and then the [[Empire of Brazil|independent empire]], ''Carioca'' remained only as a nickname by which other Brazilians called the inhabitants of Rio (city and province). During the first years of the Brazilian Republic, ''Carioca'' was the name given to those who lived in the slums or a pejorative way to refer to the bureaucratic elite of the [[Federal District of Brazil (1891–1960)|Federal District]]. 

In 1960, when Brazil’s capital and the [[Federal District (Brazil)|Federal District]] were transferred from Rio de Janeiro to newly built [[Brasília]], the city of Rio de Janeiro was reorganized as the state of [[Guanabara (state)|Guanabara]]. During this transition, ''Carioca'' was recognized as a co-official demonym alongside ''Guanabarino'', both referring to residents of the former capital. 

In 1975, during the presidency of [[Ernesto Geisel]] under Brazil’s military dictatorship, the State of Guanabara was merged with the neighboring State of Rio de Janeiro. Following the merger, the city of Rio de Janeiro replaced [[Niterói]] as the capital of the unified state, and ''Carioca'' became the official demonym for inhabitants of the city.

Nowadays, Carioca is used to exclusively refer to those born in the city of Rio de Janeiro, while everyone born in the state of Rio de Janeiro is referred to as a Fluminense.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Rio de Janeiro {{!}} Cidades e Estados {{!}} IBGE |url=https://www.ibge.gov.br/cidades-e-estados/rj.html |access-date=2023-11-21 |website=www.ibge.gov.br |language=pt}}</ref>

==Accomplishments and influence==
{{See also|List of people from Rio de Janeiro}}
''Carioca'' people have invented a few sports; the most famous is [[footvolley]].

''Cariocas'' are credited with creating the [[bossa nova]] style of music.

Famous ''Cariocas'' in film include "Brazilian bombshell" [[Carmen Miranda]], a Portuguese-born Brazilian woman who grew up in Rio de Janeiro. The eponymous song "[[Carioca (1933 song)|Carioca]]", from the 1933 film ''[[Flying Down to Rio]]'', has become a [[jazz standard]].
 
''Carnaval Carioca'' is the Portuguese name for the largest [[Brazilian Carnival]], the [[Rio Carnival]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/rio-entertainment/samba-school-salgueiro-ready-for-carnival-2016/|website=Rio Times Online|access-date=28 June 2017|title=Salgueiro Samba School Ready for Rio 2016 Carnival {{pipe}} the Rio Times|date=20 January 2016}}</ref>

''Samba Carioca'' is a localized style of [[Samba (Brazilian dance)|Brazilian Samba]].
 
''How to be a Carioca'' by [[Priscilla Ann Goslin]] provides advice to visitors to the city on how to fit in with the local culture and lifestyle. It has sold over 350,000 copies since being first published in 1992 and provided the inspiration for a Portuguese television series of the same name that was released in 2023.<ref name="Graded">{{cite web |title=Alumni Spotlight: Priscilla Goslin ’67, Author of How to Be a Carioca |url=https://www.graded.br/about/school-media/the-graded-gazette/news-piece-page/~board/all-school-news/post/alumni-spotlight-priscilla-goslin-67-author-of-how-to-be-a-carioca |website=The Graded Gazette |publisher=Graded School |access-date=12 May 2025}}</ref><ref name=Amazon>{{cite book |last1=Goslin |first1=Priscilla Ann |title=How to Be a Carioca: The Alternative Guide for the Tourist in Rio |date=24 April 2022 |publisher=Livros Twocan |location=Rio de Janeiro |isbn=978-8585556044 |url=https://www.amazon.com/How-to-Be-a-Carioca/dp/8585556048/ref=sr_1_1?crid=15U3HC9ZLDYV5&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9._V0vL-Q9qpyvoC9gbcBPQlu_TTebNNcOGRoRPBEM2cLGjHj071QN20LucGBJIEps.LS1oUfO9qCePAElMcvDSmYzWoAImJEohdSoXXUbD6Rk&dib_tag=se&keywords=How+to+be+a+Carioca&qid=1747035742&sprefix=how+to+be+a+carioca%2Caps%2C189&sr=8-1 |access-date=12 May 2025}}</ref>

There is an exercise drill used for dynamic stretching called ''Carioca''. It consists of a repeating Samba dance step.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.bodybuilding.com/exercises/detail/view/name/carioca-quick-step|website=Body Building|access-date=28 June 2017|title=Carioca Quick Step {{pipe}} Exercise Videos & Guides}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=Healthy Living - Carioca Exercises|url=http://healthyliving.azcentral.com/carioca-exercises-15355.html|website=AZ Central|access-date=28 June 2017}}</ref>

== Sociolect == <!--(linked from [[Template:Portuguese dialects and creoles by continent]]-->
{{Infobox language
| name             = Carioca
| familycolor      = indo-european
| altname          = 
| nativename       = {{lang|pt-BR|Carioca}}, {{lang|pt-BR|sotaque}}
| pronunciation    = {{IPA|pt|kaɾiˈɔkɐ|-|Br-Carioca.ogg}} <small>or</small> {{IPA|pt|kɐɾiˈɔkɐ|}}
| region           = [[Rio de Janeiro]]
| speakers         = 
| date             = 
| fam2             = [[Italic languages|Italic]]
| fam3             = [[Romance languages|Romance]]
| fam4             = [[Western Romance languages|Western Romance]]
| fam5             = [[Ibero-Romance languages|Ibero-Romance]]
| fam6             = [[West Iberian languages|West-Iberian]]
| fam7             = [[Galician-Portuguese]]
| fam8             = [[Portuguese language|Portuguese]]
| fam9             = [[Brazilian Portuguese language|Brazilian Portuguese]]
| fam10            = Fluminense-Capixaba dialect
| script           = [[Portuguese alphabet]]
| isoexception     = dialect
| linglist         = 
| lingua           = 
| guthrie          = 
| ietf             = pt-u-sd-brrj
| image            = 
| imagealt         = 
| imagecaption     = 
| map              = 
| mapcaption       = 
| coordinates      = 
}}

The Portuguese spoken across the states of Rio de Janeiro and [[Espírito Santo]] and neighboring towns in [[Minas Gerais]] (and to a certain extent the city of [[Florianópolis]]), has similar features, hardly different from one another so cities such as [[Paraty]], [[Resende, Rio de Janeiro|Resende]], [[Campos dos Goytacazes]], [[Cachoeiro de Itapemirim]], [[Vila Velha]] and [[Linhares]] may be said to have the same dialect as Rio de Janeiro, as they are hardly perceived as strong regional variants by people from other parts of Brazil.

The [[Brazilian Portuguese]] variant spoken in the city of Rio de Janeiro (and metropolitan area) is called {{lang|pt-BR|Carioca}}, and it is called {{lang|pt-BR|Sotaque}} locally, literally translated as "accent". It can be said that Rio de Janeiro presents a [[sociolect]] inside the major [[Brazilian Portuguese#Deictics|Fluminense-Capixaba]] dialect, as speakers inside the city may be easily recognizable more by their slang than the way the phonology of their speech, which is closer to the standard Brazilian Portuguese in the media than other variants. It is known especially for several distinctive traits new to either variant (European or Brazilian) of the [[Portuguese language]]:

# (for Brazilians) [[Syllable coda|Coda]] {{IPA|/s/}} and {{IPA|/z/}} can be pronounced as [[palato-alveolar consonant|palato-alveolar]] {{IPAblink|ʃ}} and {{IPAblink|ʒ}} of [[English phonology|English]] or the [[alveolo-palatal consonant|alveolo-palatal]] {{IPAblink|ɕ}} and {{IPAblink|ʑ}} of [[Catalan phonology|Catalan]]. That is inherited from European Portuguese, and ''Carioca'' shares it only with [[Florianopolitan dialect|Florianopolitano]] and some other ''Fluminense'' accents. In the northern tones of Brazilian Portuguese, not all coda {{IPA|/s/}} and {{IPA|/z/}} become postalveolar.
# (for Europeans) {{IPA|/ʁ/}}, as well what would be coda {{IPA|/ɾ/}} (when it is not pre-vocalic) in European Portuguese, may be realized as various voiceless and voiced [[Guttural R#Portuguese|guttural-like sounds]], most often the latter (unlike in other parts of Brazil), and many or most of them can be part of the phonetic repertory of a single speaker. Among them the velar and uvular fricative pairs, as well both glottal transitions ([[Voiced glottal fricative|voiced]] & [[unvoiced glottal fricative|unvoiced]]), the [[voiceless pharyngeal fricative]] and the [[uvular trill]]: {{IPAblink|x}}, {{IPAblink|ɣ}} (between vowels), {{IPAblink|χ}}, {{IPAblink|ʁ}}, {{IPAblink|h}}, {{IPAblink|ɦ}}, {{IPAblink|ħ}} and {{IPAblink|ʀ}}.<ref>Barbosa, Plínio A. (2004), "Brazilian Portuguese", ''[[Journal of the International Phonetic Association]]'' 34 (2): 227–232</ref><ref>{{cite web | url=https://phonetic-blog.blogspot.com/2010/02/prioritizing-irrelevant.html | title=John Wells's phonetic blog: Prioritizing the unimportant| date=2010-02-15}}</ref> That diversity of [[allophones]] of a single [[rhotic consonant|rhotic]] phoneme is rare not just in Brazilian Portuguese but among world languages.
# (for both) The consonants {{IPA|/t/}} and {{IPA|/d/}} before {{IPA|/i/}} or final unstressed {{IPA|/ɛ ~ e/}} ({{IPAblink|e̞}}, that in this position may be raised to {{IPA|[i]}} or deleted) become affricates [{{IPA link|tʃ}} ~ {{IPA link|tɕ}}] and [{{IPA link|dʒ}} ~ {{IPA link|dʑ}}] (again, as those of English or Catalan, depending on the speaker), respectively. Originally probably from Tupi influence,<ref>{{in lang|pt}} [http://www.coracoralina.ueg.br/visao_academica/revista/2010_novembro/rev10_2010_dialetos.pdf Dialects of Brazil: the palatalization of the phonemes /t/ and /d/] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131203010719/http://www.coracoralina.ueg.br/visao_academica/revista/2010_novembro/rev10_2010_dialetos.pdf |date=2013-12-03 }}.</ref> through the Portuguese post-creole that appeared in southeastern Brazil after the ban of [[Língua Geral of São Paulo|Língua Geral Paulista]] as a marker of Jesuit activity by the Marquis of Pombal, this is now common place in Brazilian Portuguese, as it spread with the {{lang|pt-BR|[[Bandeirantes|Bandeiras Paulistas]]}}, expansion of ''Mineiros'' to the Center-West and mass media. It is not as universal in São Paulo, Espírito Santo and southern Brazil even though they were populated mostly by the original ''bandeirantes'' ([[caboclo]]s, formerly [[Língua Geral]] speakers) because the European immigrants learning Portuguese and their descendants preferred more conservative registers of the language, perhaps as a mark of a separate social identity. The Northeast had Nheengatu, another Língua Geral, too, but it had a greater native Portuguese-speaker presence, had a greater contact with the colonial metropolis and was more densely populated.
# (for both) Historical {{IPAblink|ɫ}} ({{IPAslink|l}} in syllable coda), which merged with coda {{IPAslink|ɾ}} ({{IPAblink|ɻ}}) in ''[[Caipira dialect|Caipira]]'', has undergone labialization to {{IPA|[lʷ]}}, and then [[L-vocalization|vocalized]] to [{{IPA link|u|u̯}}];<ref name="bisol(2005)p211">{{ref|bisol(2005)|Bisol (2005), p. 211}}</ref> Nevertheless, with the exception of [{{IPA link|ʊ|ʊ̯}}] being used in [[South Region, Brazil|Southern Brazil]] and [[São Paulo (state)|São Paulo]] instead of {{IPA|[u̯]}}, both commonly transcribed as {{IPAblink|w}}, the process is now nearly ubiquitous in Brazilian Portuguese so only some areas retain velarized lateral alveolar approximant (rural areas close to the frontier with Uruguay) or the [[retroflex approximant]] (a very few ''caipira'' areas) as coda {{IPA|/l/}}.

The traits (particularly the ''chiado'', a [[Palatalization (sound change)|palatalization]] process that creates a postalveolar pronunciation of coda ''s'' and ''z'' and affricate pronunciation of {{IPA|[ti]}} and {{IPA|[di]}} and ''te'' and ''de'' [[Syllable#Rime|rhymes]]), as a whole and consistent among the vast majority of speakers, were once specifically characteristic of Rio de Janeiro speech and distinguished particularly from the pronunciation of São Paulo and areas further south, which formerly had adapted none of the characteristics. The ''chiado'' of the coda sibilant is thought to date from the early 1800s occupation of the city by the Portuguese royal family, as European Portuguese had a similar characteristic for the postalveolar codas.

More recently, however, all of the traits have spread throughout much of the country by the cultural influence of the city that diminished the [[social marker]] character the lack of palatalization once had (a part of assimilation of the caboclo minorities in most of South and Southeast Brazil). Affrication is today widespread, if not nearly omnipresent among young Brazilians, and coda guttural r is also found nationwide (their presence in Brazil is a general heritage of Tupi speech too) but less among speakers in the 5 southernmost states other than Rio de Janeiro, and if accent is a good social indicator,  95-105 million Brazilians consistently palatalize coda sibilant in some instances (but as in Rio de Janeiro, it is only a marker of adoption of foreign phonology at large in Florianópolis and Belém: palatalization, as in any other Romance language, is a very old process in Portuguese and its lacking in some dialect rather than reflecting a specific set of Galician, Spanish and indigenous influences on their formation).

Another common characteristic of ''Carioca'' speech is, in a stressed final syllable, the addition of /j/ before coda /s/ (''mas'', ''dez'' may become {{IPA|[majʃ], [dɛjʃ]}}, which can also be noted ambiguously as {{IPA|[mɐ̞ⁱʃ], [dɛⁱʃ]}}). The change may have originated in the Northeast, where pronunciations such as ''Jesus'' {{IPA|[ʒeˈzujs]}} have long been heard. Also immigration from Northeastern Brazil and Spanish immigration causes debuccalization of the coda sibilant: ''mesmo'' {{IPA|[meɦmu]}}. Many Brazilians assume that is specific to Rio, but in the Northeast, debuccalization has long been a strong and advanced phonological process that may also affect onset sibilants {{IPA|/s/}} and {{IPA|/z/}} as well as other consonants, primarily {{IPA|[v]}}.

There are some grammatical characteristics of this sociolect as well, an important one is the mixing of second person pronouns ''você'' and ''tu'', even in the same speech. For instance, while [[normative]] Portuguese requires ''lhe'' as the oblique for ''você'' and ''te'' as oblique for ''tu'', in ''Carioca'' slang, the once formal ''você'' (now widespread as an informal pronoun in many Brazilian Portuguese varieties) is used for all cases. In informal speech, the pronoun ''tu'' is retained, but with the verb forms belonging to the form você: ''Tu foi na festa?'' ("Did you go to the party?"). So the verbal forms are the same for both ''você'' and ''tu''.

Many ''Cariocas'' and many ''Paulistas'' (from the coast, capital city or hinterland) shorten ''você'' and use ''cê'' instead: ''Cê vai pra casa agora?'' ("Are you going home now?"). That, however, is common only on the spoken language and is rarely written.

Slang words among youngsters from Rio de Janeiro include ''caraca!'' (gosh!) [now spread throughout Brazil], ''e aê?'' and ''qualé/quaé/coé?'' (literally "which is [it]", carrying a meaning similar to "What's up?"), ''maneiro'' ("cool", "fine", "interesting", "amusing"), ''mermão'' ("bro", contraction of ''meu irmão''), ''caô'' (a lie), and ''sinistro'' (in standard Portuguese, "sinister"; in slang, "awesome," "terrific," but also "terrible," "troublesome," "frightening," "weird"). Many of these slang words can be found in practically all of Brazil by to cultural influence from the city. Much slang from Rio de Janeiro spreads across Brazil and may be not known as originally from there, and those less culturally accepted elsewhere are sometimes used to shun not only the speech of a certain subculture, age group or social class but also the whole accent.

==References==
{{reflist}}

== Bibliography ==
*{{citation |last=Bisol |first=Leda |year=2005 |title=Introdução a estudos de fonologia do português brasileiro |journal=Editora EDIPUCRS |place=Porto Alegre - Rio Grande do Sul |isbn=978-85-7430-529-5 |author-link=Leda Bisol |edition=4th |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TFzWAq-S7I0C}}
{{Commons category|Dialeto carioca}}
{{Portuguese dialects and creoles by continent}}

[[Category:Rio de Janeiro (city)]]
[[Category:Brazilian Portuguese]]
[[Category:Demonyms]]
[[Category:16th-century neologisms]]