The article deals with the evolution of the language of Brazilian regionalism in the second half of the 19th and the first decades of the 20th century. Beginning with O gaúcho and O sertanejo, “sertanist” novels by José de Alencar, it briefly comments on the “bilingualism” of the regionalist short-stories of the turn of the century and their switching between the story-tellersʼ flowery language and the uncouth language of the rustic characters. Having examined the narrative shift to the first person narrative, capable of relating the personal experience of the villagers, it brings the example of short-stories penned by Simões Lopes Neto as a case of a successful transposition of the dialect of Rio Grande do Sul into a full literary language. This language conveys not only the peculiarity of the “gaúcho” narrator Blau Nunes but also a whole world-view of a character wedded to the archaic understanding of life.