Nheengatu in the context of Açaí

Portuguese is the official and national language of Brazil, being widely spoken by nearly all of its population. Brazil is the most populous Portuguese-speaking country in the world, with its lands comprising the majority of Portugal's former colonial holdings in the Americas.

Aside from Portuguese, the country also has numerous minority languages, including over 200 different indigenous languages, such as Nheengatu (a descendant of Tupi), and languages of more recent European and Asian immigrants, such as Italian, German and Japanese. In some municipalities, those minor languages have official status: Nheengatu, for example, is an official language in São Gabriel da Cachoeira, while a number of German dialects are official in nine southern municipalities.

Old Tupi, Ancient Tupi or Classical Tupi (Portuguese pronunciation: [tuˈpi]) is a classical Tupian language which was spoken by the indigenous Tupi people of Brazil, mostly those who inhabited coastal regions in South and Southeast Brazil. In the words of Brazilian tupinologist Eduardo Navarro, "it is the classical indigenous language of Brazil, and the one which had the utmost importance to the cultural and spiritual formation of the country".

Old Tupi belongs to the Tupi–Guarani language family, and has a written history spanning the 16th, 17th, and early 18th centuries. In the early colonial period, Tupi was used as a lingua franca throughout Brazil by Europeans and Amerindians, and had literary usage, but it was later suppressed almost to extinction. Today, its sole living descendant is the Nheengatu language.

Eduardo de Almeida Navarro (born 20 February 1962) is a Brazilian philologist and lexicographer, specialist in Old Tupi and Nheengatu. He is a full professor at the University of São Paulo, where he has been teaching Old Tupi since 1993, and Nheengatu since 2009. Eduardo Navarro is also the author of the books Método moderno de tupi antigo (Modern Method of Old Tupi), 1998, and Dicionário de tupi antigo (Dictionary of Old Tupi), 2013, important works on the Tupi language.