Carmen Souza few times, once on a family trip when she was ten and again as an adult in 2010, she grew up speaking Creole and eating Cape Verdean cuisine. While still a child, she began singing gospel music in the church choir. Her parents maintained close ties with the diaspora, and Souza's childhood was filled with the music and culture of Cape Verde, along with that of the former Portuguese colonies of Angola, Brazil, Mozambique and São Tomé. Souza's father, Antonio, a merchant sailor, insisted she should learn English and German. After spending just one year at college, she left to
Portuguese language Portuguese-speaking countries (Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, etc.) in the world. , a pronoun meaning "you", is used for educated, formal, and colloquial respectful speech in most Portuguese-speaking regions. In the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, is virtually absent from the spoken language. Riograndense and European Portuguese normally distinguishes formal from informal speech by verbal conjugation. Informal speech employs "tu" followed by second person verbs, formal language retains the formal , followed by the third person conjugation. Conjugation of has three different forms in Brazil (verb "to see": , in the traditional second person, , in the third person, and