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 the South and Southeast. Some authors claim that the loss of initial "es-" in the forms of the verb "estar" (e.g. "Tá bom") —now widespread in Brazil —reflects an influence from the speech of African slaves. The same feature, however, can be found in European Portuguese and several other Romance languages. It is also claimed that some common grammatical features of Brazilian Portuguese —such as the near-complete disappearance of certain verb inflections and a marked preference for the periphrastic future (e.g. "vou falar") over the synthetic future ("falarei") —recall the grammatical simplification typical of pidgins and creoles. Other scholars, however—notably