What do you know about Brazil?

[skrump]

I know men who are attracted to women with xtra large asses love Brazil.
Never bothered to find out the less important details.

[Garnier Fructis]

Ignorance is not stupidity. To suggest such a thing says more about you than the people in the video.

[skyburn1]

It's a vast land with lots of different kind of areas, their football team is good, theres a city with a statue on top of a hill and brazilians are all horrible wow players that no one wants to play with.

...
Owch, this wounds me greatly.
To be honest, even I steer clear from the "BR? BR!" crowd.
Anyways, from a brazilian's perspective:
On people thinking either São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro is the capitol, no worries, those are the most important cities in Brazil from an economic point of view, with Rio de Janeiro actually being the previous capitol.
Brasília was planned to help spread people toward the center and western parts of the country and, some would say, lessen the threat of a nautical attack on the capitol.

On soccer/football: Yes, we used to have great teams, but they aren't so good anymore.

Corruption: As it's been reported in a few international newspapers, a few weeks ago there was another scandal. Guess I've said enough about that.

Brazil x Brasil: English spelling because putting an "s" would be kind of weird considering the sound it makes, while in Portuguese it sounds like a "z" in this case.

"Huehuehuehue": No, we don't really laugh like that, just the rotten part use that on the internet.

Poverty: While there are many areas with severe poverty, there are also, sometimes right by those areas (See Rio de Janeiro), filthy rich people. Some call Brazil the "land of contrasts" because of this.

Carnaval/Carnival: A very big celebration, but you know all about that, I'm sure.

Crime rates in the Favelas: In preparation for the World Cup, there have been some pacifying efforts by the police, met with largely good results.

Cannibals in the Amazon:... I have never heard of it, but I guess there is a slim chance of having it, most likely isolated and infrequent.

Diversity: Brazil was and is a refuge for people in need of assistance. While it sometimes creates political conflicts, Brazil has always welcomed foreigners to it's lands, resulting in immigrants from all over the world, be it a handful, be it hundreds, although I might be referring to past immigrations (like in the XIX Century).

Police people gunning people down: That is hard to happen, especially since not many people trust the police (with unfounded doubts), and every error in their part makes people demand for harsh penalties.

Planes falling in the ocean: Accidents happen, and, while it did happen here a while ago, so could it have happened in any other country.

People being abducted and harvested: I think that it would happen in other countries too. Still illegal, though.

Jungles everywhere!: No, not true. We have more biomes than just forests, having others ranging from savannah-like to swamps.

Speaking other languages: As many of the WoW players here mention, brazilians can't really communicate with the others because they don't speak english well enough or even a little bit. While many and more brazilians haven't learned english at a basic level, some of them do so well enough to mingle with americans in online games without ever being suspected of living in Brazil.

Religion: While many still say they are catholic, great interest is being shown for a "new religion" called "Spiritsm", which I have yet to learn more.

I'm gonna sleep now, tomorrow I'll write some more.

[Vizardlorde]

I live in Brazil. It's not dumb at all its ignorance. We're most know as the fighters, soccer and volleyball.

Dam that game with Russia you almost had them!

[Anakso]

I don't know much about Brazil either.

For fun I'm going to type what I know, just to see how much I'm wrong on.

It's a huge country, has rain forests, exports cotton, speaks Portuguese (Or a variant of it, only know that thanks to Majad ), has a huge carnival thing every year, quite a lot of poverty I believe.
They have GIANT flying cockroaches as well as giant versions of a lot of things, I mean we have flying cock roaches but ours are regular size.

That's all I can remember for now.

I wouldn't call people stupid for not knowing anything about Brazil though, there's a lot of countries in the world and even more information. Everyone's lacking in some area and most likely people who gave accurate answers were not shown in that video.

[Chirri]

Uuh, I'm familiar with imagery of the Amazon, pink dolphins in freshwater, Rio, Canivale.

I've heard that Brazil is a nation obsessed with appearance - tanning, plastic surgery, working out (? I assume), cosmetics are widespread across both sexes.

I know it's big. I know that, listening to my east coast friend and my west coast friend, both from Brazil, the name of the country sounds to my very US ears like, "Bra-seew." I know they love football. I know that I love the sound of Portuguese (Brazilian, I guess, though I've no idea how different it sounds from the original).

I know little to nothing about them, politically speaking, or in terms of religion. The next few decades should prove interesting, if Brazil is moving forward as has been implied earlier in this thread. I suppose I've had a great deal more interest in Brazil than any of the other South American countries because of the association I've had with people who've moved to the US from Brazil. I imagine their politics and location could do a lot to change how things work, down there.

[Deleted]

huge asses and styled pubic hair

[OneSent]

They have some of the most awesomely, disgusting pr0n you will find anywhere.

[PizzaSHARK]

I know that Morde es numero uno!

Rebind Q and W to H and U, respectively. Your gameplay is now HUEHUEHUEHUEHUEHUE!

I know a fair amount about Brazil. Good food, relatively pretty country, they speak Portuguese owing to their history. And it seems like a lot of their gamers are drunken jackasses.

[v2prwsmb45yhuq3wj23vpjk]

I don't see what's so spectacular about people not knowing much about Brazil. Why would they need to know? There are two forms of ignorance the way I see it: passive ignorance, and active ignorance. Passive ignorance is when you either don't know the information because you don't care to remember it as it isn't important to you or when you haven't had the opportunity to learn it at all. Active ignorance is when you don't know something and refuse to learn about it even when it is relevant to you. Also know as willful ignorance, but people may mix it up with passive ignorance a little when somebody just doesn't care to remember something.

The first kind isn't really bad. You can't really expect people to remember stuff that they aren't interested in unless it affects them in a pretty direct manner. The second kind is just silly. The second is basically when people refuse to see what is presented to them at all and keep believing in something false because it feels better. At least, that's the only thing I can think of.

I would guess that most people do both, though with differing degrees.

[gutnbrg]

the women have fat asses

[Deleted]

I only know about the slum raids and gang infrastructure to rival Mexico.

[Liara]

This is like complaining that the residents of Tel Aviv spell their city "תל האביב" while everyone else spells it in English. We're just transliterating their language into ours! The only difference is that Portuguese and English share an alphabet. If you really want to make an issue of it, the rest of the world spelling it with a 'z' is wrong. It's their country, they should probably decide the correct spelling, not majority rules.

I really don't think anyone is going to be confused by an 's' instead of a 'z' anyway.

Wait, someone actually spells it "תל האביב"? I've never seen that spelling used in my entire life :P

On topic - best fruit on the planet (or at least those parts of it to which I've been), hot as balls weather, and the biggest range of ethnic backgrounds in a single nation I've seen to date.

[Lassira]

huehuehuehuehuehue brbrbrbr

[Holtzmann]

I just realised that I know almost nothing about Brasil. I know they speak portugese, football is the national sport, they have an awesome carnaval with sexy ladies, they have a giant statue of Jesus, they are cutting the wood of almost 1/3 of amazonia, they have crime problems in the flavelas (grammar?), they're on the rise of becomming a superpower. But I know nothing about the people or the government. Can you compare your governement with an European? Are you conservative or liberal? Do you have an army? Do you have a strong middle class? Do you have environmental policies? Do you have an easy access to higher education?

As other Brazilians have mentioned, our ethnic background is rather varied here. We were colonized by the Portuguese, who did not have a lot of qualms about mixing with the natives or the African slaves they brought in. And they brought in a lot of slaves. Then we go invaded by a few European countries, France and the Netherlands are the ones that stuck around our northeastern region the longest. We received a massive influx of Italian immigrants by the end of the 19th century and once World War I broke out, we got even more European immigrants (and quite a few Japanese as well!). Same thing with World War II. So nowadays the vast majority of the population is of mixed race, with proportions statistically changing depending on where you look and what the individual's social class is. Yes, black people do make up the majority of the poor population here, but thankfully that situation is starting to ease up.

Brazilians have this cultural quirk called "jeitinho brasileiro". It means to bend rules and do whatever you can to make some profit or to finish a task you don't enjoy doing more quickly. The jeitinho is pretty deeply embedded in our culture, and it's something we are both proud and ashamed of (some are proud, some are ashamed, never at the same time). To generalize, it makes us very good at improvisation and creative thinking but it fosters corruption like you wouldn't believe it.

Can't really compare the government with anything besides the American government (the only foreign government I'm familiar with). After the end of the military dictatorship, Brazilian government has usually been fairly liberal on the economic front. Free enterprise is important (with the most successful state-owned companies being run like private companies) and we keep a perennially high interest rate to attract international investment. Sadly, our tax load on products and services is pretty damn huge, on top of a fairly sizable (20%-30%) income tax. Corruption happens on an almost industrial scale (which was finally revealed to the public during the Mensalão scandal) and only now there are initiatives being set up to try and curb it. The public is mostly apathetic towards it, given most of the people have either profited from or escaped punishment due to corruption at some point.

Socially speaking, our government is centrist but leaning towards a populist left in the past ten years with the last three administrations being from the Workers' Party (Lula for two terms, and now Dilma Rousseff). Those administrations have started lots highly popular of social assistance programs for food and shelter, many of them linked to providing parents with assistance as long as their kids stay in school. There's also lots of affirmative action, generally aimed towards helping people of strong African descent (statistically more likely to be poor) into college, which tends to attract some criticism. We're progressive when it comes to gay rights even if culturally there's still quite a lot of homophobia in places. Abortion is illegal except in cases of rape or danger to the mother's life.

We do have an army. It's fairly sizable but in a dilapidated state. We were ruled by a military dictatorship for 21 years, so there is a natural distrust of the armed forces that persists until today but has been slowly getting better. The Brazilian army is renowned for its jungle-fighting expertise and the air force has pilots that consistently score higher than pilots from other countries they train with, assuming equal equipment. Curiously, the Brazilian army has access to a very advanced tank design, made to compete with the Leopard 2 and the original M1 Abrams... but the company that built those things filed for bankruptcy and so only two of them were made. Also, there is a good chance American troops in Iraq came under fire from Brazilian-built ASTROS II MLRS. Whoops.

The middle class has been growing very quickly in Brazil. A small part of it is due to redefining what the cutoff point before you reach middle class is, but there is no denying poor people are moving up over here. It's still nowhere as strong as the middle class in more developed countries, but purchasing power is on the rise and Brazil has weathered the current crisis very well.

Brazil has quite a few environmental initiatives and laws, but since its territory is so large and the interior so underdeveloped they are very hard to enforce. The regulating agencies also need more funds and manpower, although they seem to work fairly well when endemic corruption is not the issue. Most of the electricity in the country is produced via hydroelectric power plants, which helps bring down the country's overall carbon emissions, though, and we have been trying to encourage more high technology companies to move over. Currently, a conservation law has been attracting popular criticism due to political maneuvering aimed at ultimately passing the law but rewriting it so it is almost completely ineffective.

Higher education is an interesting beast over here. Public universities are widely considered to be some of the best (if very dilapidated) higher learning institutions in the country, but basic public education... to put it bluntly, it sucks. So there is this strange situation in which public universities see mostly people who went to private schools... while people who were publicly educated either don't go to college or have to work extra hard to enroll in a private college. Thankfully, there are higher education options for nearly all financial brackets. Your mileage may and likely will vary in terms of quality, of course.

That was fun! Any more questions?

PS.: "huehuehuehue" is the Brazilian equivalent of "HERPDERPHURRRR". Yes, it's just as annoying to us than it is to you.

[Bolson13]

Dont go with your GF to a club in fortaleza. The whole place was full of prostitutes .

No seriously, Brazilians were really nice and never felt unsafe there, even in pretty run down parts of the city which the hotel shuttle bus warned us about. Just dont act like a dumb tourist I guess.

[pimpeddakota]

Brazil has some great looking chicks..that I know

[Liara]

Dont go with your GF to a club in fortaleza. The whole place was full of prostitutes .

No seriously, Brazilians were really nice and never felt unsafe there, even in pretty run down parts of the city which the hotel shuttle bus warned us about. Just dont act like a dumb tourist I guess.

Aye, before arriving in Brazil I heard all sorts of warnings regarding the crime there. Best thing to do? Like Bolson said, don't act like a dumb tourist, i.e. don't walk with bling all over yourself etc. etc.
Swimming trunks, flip flops and possibly a shirt is all you really need

And hey, I felt far safer in Rio (even in the favellas) than I did in, say, Quito.

And... now I'm jonesing for a freshly opened coconut. Damnation!

[ecthrund]

I know they have some of the most talented football players. When I play Football Manager, Brazil is always one of the focus areas for me. Other than that, the next Olympics are going to in Brazil. Its capital is Brasilia. It is the 5th or 6th largest country in the world. Along with China and India, it is one of the most promising developing countries economically. Most spoken language is Portuguese. Brazil has people of many races. And a lot of forested area.

There is more, but this isn't a GK test

[Lochton]

Well, dunno about the US, but geography ain't a demand in many schools.

what do I know... Uhm.. It's a country in Southern America.. they have a statue somewhere.. it looks pretty some places, but not all (due to always someone messing up). And B.A... And the Hulk lived there once.. *smirks*