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UFF/2003
Inglês > Adjectives > Agreement
Insights on Brazil
Cultures of the World
With National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Wade Davis
Local knowledge provides a foundation for global understanding. Wade Davis has lived among some of the most remote peoples on the planet, studying their cultures and the many different ways we humans have of communicating and expressing ourselves. Here he celebrates the diversity of Brazil.
"I've spent a lot of my life in cultures other than my own, and I've come to see that every language is a reflection of its culture. When you learn a new language, you become part of its culture. It actually changes who you are, how you move and speak and see the world. You start to take on the cadence and rhythm of the language, the body language as well as the verbal language. I think it's physically impossible to speak Brazilian Portuguese, for example, without having your body melt into a different rhythm. Of alI the languages I've heard, it's the most sensual and melodious. When you speak it, you start to use your hands more, to move with the language, to reach out to the person you're talking to. I've watched travelers in Brazil who can speak Portuguese but don't let their bodies move with it. If they carry themselves stiffly, the way they do in their home culture, the Brazilians simply don't understand them. It's like trying to waltz to salsa music. If the body language is wrong, it doesn't matter whether you have the grammar and vocabulary right. You won't be understood."
"I call Brazil the 'land of the 10,000 senses' because of the lushness and diversity of it alI. Just the Amazon rain forest alone fills the senses with its sounds, smells, colors, even its silences. The vastness of that forest in the north of the country hovers in the Brazilian psyche, as does the country's rich mix of races and mythologies. They infuse the Brazilian world and make it somehow magical."
In "...because of the lushness and diversity of it all", what does the word it refer to?
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