• Born in the village Umutina in Mato Grosso (Brazil), graduating in portuguese, 22, talks about the bilingual textbook he is preparing to ensure the survival of their native language.
  • (Guilherme Dearo) Veja: How many people speak Umutina idiom?
  • Luciano Ariabo Quezo: The village has 600 people, but only older people speak .The younger ones learning Portuguese only. I only know because an old man taught me.
  • Veja: In addition to translating words, will you encode the language structure?
  • Ariabo: Yes, it is essential to teach children. For example, to the plural, we don't use the letter s at the end. What we do is putting a word that indicates "large amount" by the noun. Thus: fish is "haré"; fishes, "haré makeawá".
  • Veja: What about the verbs?
  • Ariabo: We have often no need to use them. To say " The Paraguay River has many fishes," for example, we just add " Olaripó " which is the name of the river, at the preceding sentence " Olaripó haré makeawá "
  • Veja: Gender distinction?
  • Ariabo: To nouns and adjectives, no. The distinction is only for some names.
  • Veja: How are words that describe new things, like "Facebook"?
  • Ariabo: We do as in Portuguese: We adopted the foreignness. There is no problem with that. In the village, we talk "Facebook" too.
  • Veja: The Umutina indians use Facebook?
  • Ariabo: 15 km (almost 10 miles) away from the village there is a connection to the internet. All my friends use it.
  • Ariabo: I zapá a Facebook (I liked you on Facebook)