It is one of the world's economic giants and is revered for its football prowess, coffee production and lively music such as samba and bossa nova.

It includes much of the world's biggest rain forest around the Amazon, whose exploitation has become a major environmental worry.

The high rate of destruction of the Amazon by loggers and cattle ranchers remains controversial, but government-sponsored migration programmes have been halted.

Brazilians often say they live in a continent rather than a country, and that's an excusable exaggeration. The landmass is bigger than the United States if you exclude Alaska; the journey from Recife in the east to the western border with Peru is longer than that from London to Moscow, and the distance between the norther and southern borders is about the same as that between New York and Los Angeles. Brazil has no mountains to comp

The national language of Brazil is Portuguese. Due to the influence of the many other languages already existing or brought over by immigrant groups, Brazilian Portuguese differs from that spoken in Portugal in the same way that Australian and American English differ from that of England. Until the mid 18th century a version of Tupi-Guarani (the main Indian language of the time), which had been simplified and written down by the Jesuits, was widely spoken. Today, however, this language is only remembered in words that have become part of the Brazilian vocabulary. These words are generally names of places (Guanabara, Ipanema, Niterói), plants (abacaxi, guaraná) or animals (piranha, capivara, urubu). African languages, especially from Nigeria and Angola, have survived in religious rituals, cooking and some general words, the most well-known example being samba. Accents and slang vary widely within Brazil but are, in general, mutually comprehensible. English is often spoken in la!

are with its Andean neighbours, but in every other respect it has all the scenic - and cultural - variety you would expect from so vast a country.

Some topics in this essay:
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