With profound sorrow the Department of Spanish and Portuguese announces that Professor Milton Azevedo passed away Friday, March 6, 2026, after a long illness.
Professor Azevedo (born in Ouro Fino, Minas Gerais, Brazil, April 7, 1942), received his M.A. and Ph.D. from Cornell. He taught there and at the University of Illinois, Champagne-Urbana before coming to Berkeley in 1976 as Assistant Professor of Linguistics and Director of Language Instruction.
His research interests focused on the Ibero-Romance languages, applied, synchronic and literary linguistics, second-language learning, and translation theory. He wrote or edited thirteen books, including scientific studies like Portuguese: A Linguistic Introduction (2005) as well as pedagogical materials like A Practical Guide to the Teaching of Spanish (1976, 1988). These books were accompanied by more than 75 articles and reviews.
He taught both upper-division and graduate courses, from Spanish 100, Introduction to Linguistics. to undergraduate and graduate seminars on Multilingualism, Language and Style, Language and Society (sociolinguistics), Literary translation, and Literary dialect.
Professor Azevedo directed seven dissertations on topics as varied as Spanish/English code switching, translation theory, and the sociolinguistics of Uruguayan Portuguese. His students have gone on to distinguished careers in the U.S., Mexico, Brazil, and Italy. They remember his friendship, intellectual rigor—and wicked sense of humor in all four of the languages he spoke fluently, his native Portuguese, English, Spanish, and Catalan
Milton is survived by his wife, Dr. Carol Hess, Professor of Music, UC Davis.
Que en paz descanse.