🇧🇷What does Brazil require?

Everyday topic

Article 13 of Brazil's constitution: the Portuguese language is the official idiom of the Federative Republic of Brazil. One sentence, as blunt as Indonesia's — but the two paragraphs that follow reveal a different emphasis. The first lists the symbols of the republic: the flag, the anthem, the arms and the national seal. The language is written ahead of the symbols, in its own sentence, rather than sitting among flag, emblem and anthem as it does in Indonesia. The second paragraph says the states, the Federal District and the municipalities may have symbols of their own. So the same article does two things at once: it unifies language at the federal level and devolves symbolism to local government. That is the opposite direction from the United States, where the federal level stayed blank and the states designated for themselves — one unifies the language from above while distributing symbols from below; the other left even the language to the states. A great many indigenous and immigrant-community languages are still spoken in Brazil, and some municipalities have their own legislation making one of them co-official; that happens outside Article 13, at the local level.