Brazilian Portuguese the last decades of the 20th century, due to the popularity of Brazilian music and Brazilian soap operas. Since Brazil joined Mercosul, the South American free trade zone, Portuguese has been increasingly studied as a foreign language in Spanish-speaking partner countries. Many words of Brazilian origin (also used in other Portuguese-speaking countries) have also entered into English: samba, bossa nova, cruzeiro, milreis and capoeira. While originally Angolan, the word "samba" only became famous worldwide because of its popularity in Brazil. After independence in 1822, Brazilian idioms with African and Amerindian influences were brought to Portugal by returning Portuguese Brazilians ("luso-brasileiros"
Brazilian Portuguese in BP, but in European Portuguese. The main difference among the dialects of Brazilian Portuguese is the frequent presence or absence of open vowels in unstressed syllables. In dialects of the South and Southeast, unstressed ⟨e⟩ and ⟨o⟩ (when they are not reduced to and ) are pronounced as the close-mid vowels and . Thus, "operação" (operation) and "rebolar" (to shake one's body) may be pronounced and . Open-mid vowels can occur only in the stressed syllable. Meanwhile, in accents of the Northeast and North, in patterns that have not yet been much studied, the open-mid vowels and can occur