| Tupi | |
| Also Known As: | Old Tupi, Ancient Tupi, Classical Tupi, Tupinambá |
| Familycolor: | American |
| Lc1: | tpn |
| Ld1: | Tupinambá |
| Lc2: | tpk |
| Ld2: | Tupiniquim |
| Lc3: | tpw |
| Ld3: | Old Tupi (this code has been merged into since 2022) |
| Glotto: | tupi1287 |
| Notice: | IPA |
Old Tupi, Ancient Tupi or Classical Tupi (pronounced as /pt/) 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".[1]
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.
As the most important native language of Brazil, it is the origin of most city names of indigenous origin (Pindamonhangaba, Ubatuba, Botucatu, Jacareí). It also names several plants and animals, and many proper names are tupi names, such as Moacir, Iara, Iracema and Jandaia. It has a rich literature, which includes cathechisms, poems and plays.
The names Old Tupi or Classical Tupi are used for the language in English and by modern scholars (it is referred to as Portuguese: tupi antigo in Portuguese). It has previously been known, in Portuguese, as Portuguese: língua brasílica "Brazilian language".
The following is a summary of the main characteristics of Classical Tupi, its typology and other distinguishing features.[2]
See main article: History of Tupi.
Old Tupi was first spoken by the Tupinambá people, who lived under cultural and social conditions very unlike those found in Europe. It is quite different from Indo-European languages in phonology, morphology, and grammar, but it was adopted by many Luso-Brazilians born in Brazil as a lingua franca.
It belonged to the Tupi–Guarani language family, which stood out among other South American languages for the vast territory it covered. Until the 16th century, these languages were found throughout nearly the entirety of the Brazilian coast, from Pará to Santa Catarina, and the Río de la Plata basin. Today, Tupi languages are still heard in Brazil (states of Maranhão, Pará, Amapá, Amazonas, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Goiás, São Paulo, Paraná, Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul, Rio de Janeiro, and Espírito Santo), as well as in French Guiana, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Argentina.
It is a common mistake to speak of the "Tupi–Guarani language": Tupi, Guarani and a number of other minor or major languages all belong to the Tupian language family, in the same sense that English, Romanian, and Sanskrit belong to the Indo-European language family. One of the main differences between the two languages was the replacement of Tupi pronounced as //s// by the glottal fricative pronounced as //h// in Guarani.
The first accounts of the Old Tupi language date back from the early 16th century, but the first written documents containing actual information about it were produced from 1575 onwards – when Jesuits André Thévet and José de Anchieta began to translate Catholic prayers and biblical stories into the language. Another foreigner, Jean de Lery, wrote the first (and possibly only) Tupi "phrasebook", in which he transcribed entire dialogues. Lery's work is the best available record of how Tupi was actually spoken.
In the first two or three centuries of Brazilian history, nearly all colonists coming to Brazil would learn the tupinambá variant of Tupi, as a means of communication with both the Indigenous people and with other early colonists who had adopted the language.
The Jesuits, however, not only learned to speak tupinambá, but also encouraged the natives to keep it. As a part of their missionary work, they translated some literature into it and also produced some original work written directly in Tupi. José de Anchieta reportedly wrote more than 4,000 lines of poetry in tupinambá (which he called lingua Brasilica) and the first Tupi grammar. Luís Figueira was another important figure of this time, who wrote the second Tupi grammar, published circa 1628. In the second half of the 18th century, the works of Anchieta and Figueira were republished and Father João Filipe Bettendorff wrote a new and more complete catechism. By that time, the language had made its way into the clergy and was the de facto national language of Brazil – though it was probably seldom written, as the Roman Catholic Church held a near monopoly of literacy.
When the Portuguese Prime Minister Marquis of Pombal expelled the Jesuits from Brazil in 1759, the language started to wane quickly, as few Brazilians were literate in it. A new rush of Portuguese immigration had been taking place since the early 18th century, due to the discovery of gold, diamonds, and gems in the interior of Brazil, and these new colonists spoke only their mother tongue. Old Tupi survived as a spoken language (used by Europeans and Indian populations alike) only in isolated inland areas, far from the major urban centres. Its use by a few non-Indian speakers in those isolated areas would last for over a century still.
When the Portuguese first arrived on the shores of modern-day Brazil, most of the tribes they encountered spoke very closely related dialects. The Portuguese (and particularly the Jesuit priests who accompanied them) set out to proselytise the natives. To do so most effectively, doing so in the natives' own languages was convenient, so the first Europeans to study Tupi were those priests.
The priests modeled their analysis of the new language after the one with which they had already experienced: Latin, which they had studied in the seminary. In fact, the first grammar of Tupi—written by the Jesuit priest José de Anchieta and published in 1595—is structured much like a contemporary Latin grammar. While this structure is not optimal, it certainly served its purpose of allowing its intended readership (Catholic priests familiar with Latin grammars) to get enough of a basic grasp of the language to be able to communicate with and evangelise the natives. Also, the grammar sometimes regularised or glossed over some regional differences in the expectation that the student, once "in the field", would learn these finer points of the particular dialect through use with his flock.
Significant works were a Jesuit catechism of 1618, with a second edition of 1686; another grammar written in 1687 by another Jesuit priest, Luís Figueira; an anonymous dictionary of 1795 (again published by the Jesuits); a dictionary published by Antônio Gonçalves Dias, a well-known 19th century Brazilian poet and scholar, in 1858; and a chrestomathy published by Dr Ernesto Ferreira França in 1859. The most recent dictionary is the Old Tupi Dictionary (2013), by the Brazilian scholar Eduardo de Almeida Navarro.
In Brazil, tupinology is the study of tupi language and literature. It began in 1901, with the work of Theodoro Sampaio.[3] An individual who dedicates themselves to the field of tupinology is a tupinologist.
The phonology of tupinambá has some interesting and unusual features. For instance, it does not have the lateral approximant pronounced as //l// or the multiple vibrant rhotic consonant pronounced as //r//. It also has a rather small inventory of consonants and a large number of pure vowels (12).
This led to a Brazilian pun about this language, that native Brazilians não têm fé, nem lei, nem rei (have neither faith, nor law, nor king) as the words fé (faith), lei (law) and rei (king) could not be pronounced by a native Tupi speaker (they would say pé, re'i and re'i). It is also a double pun because Brazil has not had a king for more than two centuries.
| Front | Central | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Close | pronounced as //i//, pronounced as //ĩ// | pronounced as //ɨ//, pronounced as //ɨ̃// | pronounced as //u//, pronounced as //ũ// | |
| Mid | pronounced as //ɛ//, pronounced as //ɛ̃// | pronounced as //ɔ//, pronounced as //ɔ̃// | ||
| Open | pronounced as //a//, pronounced as //ã// |
The nasal vowels are fully vocalic, without any trace of a trailing pronounced as /[m]/ or pronounced as /[n]/. They are pronounced with the mouth open and the palate relaxed, not blocking the air from resounding through the nostrils. These approximations, however, must be taken with caution, as no actual recording exists, and Tupi had at least seven known dialects.
| Labial | Coronal | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasals | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||
| Plosive | prenasalized | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||
| voiceless | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | (pronounced as /link/) | |||
| Fricative | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||
| Semivowel | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||
| Flap | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||
According to Nataniel Santos Gomes, however, the phonetic inventory of Tupi was simpler:
This scheme does not regard Ŷ as a separate semivowel, does not consider the existence of G (pronounced as //ɣ//), and does not differentiate between the two types of NG (pronounced as //ŋ// and pronounced as //ⁿɡ//), probably because it does not regard MB (pronounced as //ⁿb//), ND (pronounced as //ⁿd//) and NG (pronounced as //ⁿɡ//) as independent phonemes, but mere combinations of P, T, and K with nasalization.
Santos Gomes also remarks that the stop consonants shifted easily to nasal stops, which is attested by the fitful spelling of words like umbu (umu, ubu, umbu, upu, umpu) in the works of the early missionaries and by the surviving dialects.
According to most sources, Tupi semivowels were more consonantal than their IPA counterparts. The Î, for instance, was rather fricative, thus resembling a very slight pronounced as /[ʑ]/, and Û had a distinct similarity with the voiced stop pronounced as /[ɡʷ]/ (possibly via pronounced as /[ɣʷ]/, which would likewise be a fricative counterpart of the labiovelar semivowel), thus being sometimes written gu. As a consequence of that character, Tupi loanwords in Brazilian Portuguese often have j for Î and gu for Û.
It would have been almost impossible to reconstruct the phonology of Tupi if it did not have a wide geographic distribution. The surviving Amazonian Nhengatu and the close Guarani correlates (Mbyá, Nhandéva, Kaiowá and Paraguayan Guarani) provide material that linguistic research can still use for an approximate reconstruction of the language.
Scientific reconstruction of Tupi suggests that Anchieta either simplified or overlooked the phonetics of the actual language when he was devising his grammar and his dictionary.
The writing system employed by Anchieta is still the basis for most modern scholars. It is easily typed with regular Portuguese or French typewriters and computer keyboards (but not with character sets such as ISO-8859-1, which cannot produce ẽ, ĩ, ũ, ŷ and ỹ).
Its key features are:
Tupi features clusivity, i.e., a distiction between inclusive (including the adressee) and exclusive (excluding the adressee) first-person pronouns. Personal pronouns in Tupi come in two series, each with its own uses.
| 1st series | 2nd series | Translation | |
|---|---|---|---|
| ixé | xe | I | |
| endé | nde | You (sg.) | |
| a'e* | i | He/she | |
| oré | oré | We (exclusive) | |
| îandé | îandé | We (inclusive) | |
| peẽ | pe | You (pl.) | |
| a'e* | i | They |
* a'e means this/these or that/those, but it can also be used as a third-person personal pronoun, both singular and plural.
First series pronouns are generally used alone or along with verbs of the first class (those that are conjugated). For example: ixé a-karukatu: I ate well. Abápe morubixaba? – Ixé: who's the cacique? - I (am).
Second series pronouns are used in many different cases:
Old Tupi verbs are divided in two classes. First class are conjugated, with person markers coming at the beginning of the word. In addition, verbs can represent a present, past, or future action because, unlike Portuguese, they do not express time. (The future, in particular, is done by adding the particle -ne to the end of the sentence, but this does not change the fact that the verb itself does not express time.)[4]
| Ixé (I) | akaru | agûatá | aker | apererek | anhan | I eat/ate, walk/walked... | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Endé (you) | erekaru | eregûatá | ereker | erepererek | erenhan | You eat/ate, walk/walked... | |
| A'e (he*) | okaru | ogûatá | oker | opererek | onhan | He eats/ate, walks/walked... | |
| Oré (we) | orokaru | orogûatá | oroker | oropererek | oronhan | We (exclusive) eat/ate, walk/walked... | |
| Îandé (we) | îakaru | îagûatá | îaker | îapererek | îanhan | We (inclusive) eat/ate, walk/walked... | |
| Peẽ (you) | pekaru | pegûatá | peker | pepererek | penhan | You (plural) eat/ate, walk/walked... | |
| A'e (they*) | okaru | ogûatá | oker | opererek | onhan | They eat/ate, walk/walked... |
Verbs from the second class are not conjugated and are used only with pronouns of the second series. This is because they are actually adjectives generally indicating a state or characteristic.
Objects of transitive verbs in Old Tupi may come in many positions relative to the verb: either before, after or incorporated into it. In the las case, it comes after the person markers (a-, ere-, o-, etc.) in first class verbs, but before the root. For an example of incorporation:
a- is the first-person marker, pirá means fish and kutuk to poke.
When the object is not incorporated, then in it is replaced by a pleonastic third-person pronoun-i-, even if the object is present elsewhere in the phrase. Monosyllabic verbs use -îo- (or also -nho- close to nasals) instead of -i-, and a few others use -s- instead. Some examples:
The pronoun -i- is incorporated and becomes a diphthong.
The monosyllabic verb sub (to visit) has -îo- incorporated.
The monosyllabic nasal verb mim (to hide) has -îo- or -nho- incorporated.
The verb ekyî (to pull) requires -s- instead of -i-. From Anchieta, Catecismo na Língua Brasílica.
For îuká (to kill), the incorporated object is absorbed by the verb since it already begins with î.
To express something happening in the future, the clitic -ne is always added to the last word in the sentence, independent of its grammatical class. This clitic has other meanings and may then be used as a particle in different positions.
Tupi verbs are divided into its verbal and its nominal forms. Each division contains its respective verb moods.
| Nominal forms | ||||
| INDICATIVE MOOD | WITH STRESSED OBJECT PRONOUNS | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ixé a-gûatá | I walk | (kori) xe gûatá / nhaní | (today) I walk/run | |
| endé ere-gûatá | You (sg.) walk | (kori) i gûatá / nhaní | (today) you (sg.) walk/run | |
| a'e o-gûatá | He/she walks | (kori) o gûatá / nhaní | (today) he/she walks/runs | |
| oré oro-gûatá | We walk (excl.) | (kori) oré gûatá / nhaní | (today) we (excl.) walk/run | |
| îandé îa-guatá | We walk (incl.) | (kori) îandé gûatá / nhaní | (today) we (incl.) walk/run | |
| peẽ pe-guatá | You (pl.) walk | (kori) peẽ gûatá / nhaní | (today) you (pl.) walk/run | |
| a'e o-guatá | They walk | (kori) îandé gûatá / nhaní | (today) we they walk/run | |
| PERMISSIVE MOOD | WITH STRESSED OBJECT PRONOUNS | |||
| ixé t'a-gûatá | may I walk | ixé oro-îuká | I kill you | |
| endé t'ere-gûatá | may you (sg.) walk | xe îuká îepé | You kill me (subject: îepé) | |
| a'e t'o-gûatá | may he/she walk | xe îûká a'e | he/she kills me | |
| oré t'oro-gûatá | may we (excl.) walk | oré opo-îuká | we (excl.) kill you (pl.) | |
| îandé t'îa-gûatá | may we (incl.) walk | îandé opo-îuká | we (incl.) kill you (pl.) | |
| peẽ t'e pe-gûatá | may you (pl.) walk | xe îuká peîepé | You (pl.) kill me (subject: peîepé) | |
| a'e t'o-gûatá | may they walk | xe oro-îuká a'e | They kill us | |
| IMPERATIVE MOOD | INFINITIVE (OR NOUN FORM) | |||
| (endé) e-gûatá! | walk (you (sg.))! | gûatá (the walk) | nhana (the run) | |
| (peẽ) pe-gûatá! | walk (you (pl.))! | îuká (the killing) | tyma (the burial) | |
| GERUND (INTRANSITIVE VERBS) | GERUND (TRANSITIVE VERBS) | |||
| (ixé) gûi-gûatábo / gûi-nhana | (I) walking | (ixé) Pedro îukábo/tyma | (I) killing/burying Pedro | |
| (endé) gûi-guatábo / e-nhana | (you (sg.)) walking/running | (endé) Pedro îukábo / tyma | (you (sg.)) killing/burying Pedro | |
| (a'e) o-gûatábo / o-nhana | (he/she) walking/running | (a'e) Pedro îukábo / tyma | (he/she) killing/burying Pedro | |
| oro-gûatábo / oro-nhana | (we (excl.)) walking/running | (oré) Pedro îukábo / tyma | (we (excl.)) killing/burying Pedro | |
| îa-gûatábo / îa-nhana | (we (incl.)) walking/running | (îandé) Pedro îukábo / tyma | (we (incl.)) killing/burying Pedro | |
| pe-gûatábo / pe-nhana | (you (pl.)) walking/running | (peẽ) Pedro îukábo / tyma | (you (pl.)) killing/burying Pedro | |
| o-gûatábo / o-nhana | (they) walking/running | (a'e) Pedro îukábo / tyma | (they) killing/burying Pedro | |
All nouns in old Tupi end in a vowel. In the case of a verb or adjective substantivized, the suffix -a is added, if it does not already end in a vowel.
The same occurs when a noun and an adjective are in composition. In this way:[4]
Unlike the Portuguese language, the tense of an action, in old Tupi, is expressed by the noun, not the verb. Such tenses are future, past and a time called "unreal", which is similar to the future perfect, of Portuguese. They are indicated, respectively, by the adjectives -ram, -pûer and -rambûer. These, when in composition with the noun, receive the suffix -a, as explained above.
The degrees of the noun (augmentative and diminutive) are made by the suffixes "-'ĩ' or '-'i'", for the diminutive, and "-ûasu' or '-usu'" for the augmentative (these suffixes may suffer several phonetic transformations. Here are some examples with their explanations:
| Augmentative | ||||
| -'ĩ or -'i | -ûasu or -usu | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gûyra'ĩ | Little bird | Ygûasu | Big river (y means river; the g was added later by the colonizers) | |
| Ita'ĩ | Pebbles (ita means stone) | Kunumĩgûasu | Young man | |
| Pitangĩ | Little child, baby(Child is pitanga) | Ybytyrusu | Mountain range(from ybytyra, mountain) | |
In Old Tupi, there are only numerals from one to four, both cardinal and ordinal, as the need for mathematical precision was small in a primitive economy. Cardinal numerals can either come after or before the noun they refer to, while ordinals only come after. For example, in the case of cardinal numbers, "mokõî pykasu" and "pykasu mokõî" are equivalent terms, meaning "two pigeons". In the case of ordinals, "ta'yr-ypy" means "first son (of a man)" and "'ara mosapyra" means "third day".
| Ordinal numbers | ||||
| 1 | oîepé | 1st | ypy | |
| 2 | mokõî | 2nd | mokõîa | |
| 3 | mosapyr | 3rd | mosapyra | |
| 4 | (oîo)irundyk (little used)[6] | 4th | (oîo)irundyka (little used) |
They are the same as prepositions, but they come after the term they refer to. They are divided into unstressed postpositions, which are appended to the previous word, and stressed postpositions, which are written separately.
| suí | from (origin) | Morubixaba osem taba suí The leader left the village | ||
| supé | to (a person) | Abá onhe'eng Maria supé The indian speaks to Maria. | ||
| -pe | in, to (place) | Ixé asó Nhoesembé-pe I went to Nhoesembé | Unstressed postposition | |
| pupé | inside, with (instrumental) | Kunumĩ oîkó ygara pupé The boy is in the boat | ||
| resé | for, in favor of | Tuba oma'ẽ o ta'yra resé The father looks at his son | Postposition with several meanings |
Just like in Portuguese or English, some verbs require certain postpositions:
There are many ways to negate a sentence in Old Tupi.
Used to negate verbs in the indicative mood. Before a vowel, na just becomes n.
The same rule applies for adjectives:
Negates verbs in the infinitive or gerund form.
Used to negate a noun, pronoun or an adverb.
Negates sentences in the future. The clitic -ne is still used.
Negates verbs in the imperative and permissive moods.
Tupi was an agglutinative language with moderate degree of fusional features (nasal mutation of stop consonants in compounding, the use of some prefixes and suffixes), although Tupi is not a polysynthetic language.
Tupi parts of speech did not follow the same conventions of Indo-European languages:
Tupi had a split-intransitive grammatical alignment. Verbs were preceded by pronouns, which could be subject or object forms. Subject pronouns like a- "I" expressed the person was in control, while object pronouns like xe- "me" signified the person was not. The two types could be used alone or combined in transitive clauses, and they then functioned like subject and object in English:
Although Tupi verbs were not inflected, a number of pronominal variations existed to form a rather complex set of aspects regarding who did what to whom. That, together with the temporal inflection of the noun and the presence of tense markers like koára "today," made up a fully functional verbal system.
Word order played a key role in the formation of meaning:
Tupi had no means to inflect words for gender, so used adjectives instead. Some of these were:
The notion of gender was expressed, once again, together with the notion of age and that of "humanity" or "animality".
The notion of plural was also expressed by adjectives or numerals:
Unlike Indo-European languages, nouns were not implicitly masculine except for those provided with natural gender: abá "man" and kuñã[''tã''] "woman/girl"; for instance.
Without proper verbal inflection, all Tupi sentences were in the present or in the past. When needed, tense is indicated by adverbs like ko ara, "this day".
Adjectives and nouns, however, had temporal inflection:
That was often used as a semantic derivation process:
With respect to syntax, Tupi was mostly SOV, but word order tended to be free, as the presence of pronouns made it easy to tell the subject from the object. Nevertheless, native Tupi sentences tended to be quite short, as the Indians were not used to complex rhetorical or literary uses.
Most of the available data about Old Tupi are based on the tupinambá dialect, spoken in what is now the Brazilian state of São Paulo, but there were other dialects as well.
According to Edward Sapir's categories, Old Tupi could be characterized as follows:
Here are some basic phrases in Old Tupi, some of which were attested by europeans like Jean de Léry and Yves d'Évreux during the XVI century.
This is the Lord's Prayer in Tupi, according to Anchieta in his Catecismo na língua brasílica.
| Old tupi | Literal Portuguese translation by Eduardo Navarro | Literal English translation | English (NIV) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oré rub, ybakype tekoar, | Nosso pai, o que está no céu, | Our father, the one in heaven, | Our Father in heaven, | |
| i moetepyramo nde rera t'oîkó. | como o que é louvado teu nome esteja. | as the one hallowed your name may be. | hallowed be your name, | |
| T'our nde "Reino"! | Que venha teu Reino! | May your kingdom come! | your kingdom come, | |
| T'onhemonhang nde remimotara | Que se faça tua vontade | May your will be done, | your will be done, | |
| ybype, | na terra, | on earth, | on earth | |
| ybakype i nhemonhanga îabé! | como o fazer-se dela no céu! | as the doing of it in heaven! | as it is in heaven. | |
| Oré remi'u, 'ara îabi'õndûara, eîme'eng kori orébe. | Nossa comida, a que é de cada dia, dá hoje para nós, | Our food, which is every day, give us today, | Give us today our daily bread. | |
| Nde nhyrõ oré angaîpaba resé orébe, | Perdoa tu nossos pecados a nós, | Forgive you our sins for us, | And forgive us our debts, | |
| oré rerekomemûãsara supé | como aos que nos tratam mal | as for those who mistreat us | as we also have forgiven our debtors. | |
| oré nhyrõ îabé. | nós perdoamos. | we forgive. | ||
| Oré mo'arukar umẽ îepé "tentação" pupé, | Não nos deixes tu fazer cair em tentação, | Don't let us you fall into temptation, | And lead us not into temptation, | |
| oré pysyrõte îepé mba'eaíba suí. | mas livra-nos tu das coisas más. | but free us you from bad things. | but deliver us from evil. |
Notice that two Portuguese words, Portuguese: Reino (Kingdom) and Portuguese: tentação (temptation) have been borrowed, as such concepts would be rather difficult to express with pure Tupi words.
As the basis for the língua geral, spoken throughout the country by white and Indian settlers alike until the early 18th century, and still heard in isolated pockets until the early 20th century, Tupi left a strong mark on the Portuguese language of Brazil.
Tupi has given the Portuguese language:
Some municipalities which have Tupi names:
Among the many Tupi loanwords in Portuguese, the following are noteworthy for their widespread use:
It is interesting, however, that two of the most distinctive Brazilian animals, the jaguar and the tapir, are best known in Portuguese by non-Tupi names, onça and anta, despite being named in English with Tupi loanwords.
A significant number of Brazilians have Tupi names as well:
Some names of distinct Indian ancestry have obscure etymology because the tupinambá, like the Europeans, cherished traditional names which sometimes had become archaic. Some of such names are Moacir (reportedly meaning "son of pain") and Moema.
Old Tupi literature was composed mainly of religious and grammatical texts developed by Jesuit missionaries working among the colonial Brazilian people. The greatest poet to express in written Tupi language, and its first grammarian was José de Anchieta, who wrote over eighty poems and plays, compiled at his Lírica Portuguesa e Tupi. Later Brazilian authors, writing in Portuguese, employed Tupi in the speech of some of their characters.
Tupi is also remembered as distinctive trait of nationalism in Brazil. In the 1930s, Brazilian Integralism used it as the source of most of its catchphrases (like Anaûé meaning "you are my brother", the old Tupi salutation which was adopted as the Brazilian version of the German Sieg Heil, or the Roman "Ave") and terminology.