Vocabulary
One of the ideals of the modernists of the 1922 Modern Art Week was to bridge the gap between written and spoken language. In a country with until then about 65% of illiterate population, approaching popular speech, capturing everyday communication and perceiving its colloquial expressions were ways found by artists and literati to transform the elitist character of literature and the arts in general. But where to find these sources of orality? In which spaces could the “language of the people” be observed?Authors of modernism, such as Antônio de Alcântara Machado, found in the soccer stadiums of the city of São Paulo in the 1920s one of the propitious places for this. The São Paulo metropolis grew rapidly in that decade, and such growth can be seen in the noisy crowds that mingled in the sports venues, whether in the Parque Antártica, by Palestra Itália –now Palmeiras –, or in Jardim América, by Paulistano. The raw material of this polyphonic atmosphere was manifested especially in the interjections of thecrowd, with their screams towards the field, with the buzz of the cheaper places in the stands, popularly called “gerais” in Brazilian Portuguese and even with the collective exclamations coming from the stands: “ahhhh”, “ohhhh”, “uhhhh”.With mastery, Alcântara Machado recorded in a short story this sound and communicative environment of everything that a soccer match raises as a narrative and linguistic phenomenon. The language of soccer, imported from England with its original vocabulary in English and the consequent anglicisms, has gone through a progressive process of Brazilianization since the popularization of this sport. This happened either through the translation of terms originating in the English language, or through the contribution of a myriadof oral terms, incorporated in the voice of fans in the stadiums, in the chats in bars, in the texts of the sports chronicle, in the work of soccer radio broadcasters.