Portuguese ( or, in full, ) is a western
Romance language
The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European languages, I ...
of the
Indo-European language family
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch ...
, originating in the
Iberian Peninsula
The Iberian Peninsula (),
**
* Aragonese and Occitan: ''Peninsula Iberica''
**
**
* french: Péninsule Ibérique
* mwl, Península Eibérica
* eu, Iberiar penintsula also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in southwestern Europe, defi ...
of
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
. It is an official language of
Portugal
Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...
,
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
,
Cape Verde
, national_anthem = ()
, official_languages = Portuguese
, national_languages = Cape Verdean Creole
, capital = Praia
, coordinates =
, largest_city = capital
, demonym ...
,
Angola
, national_anthem = " Angola Avante"()
, image_map =
, map_caption =
, capital = Luanda
, religion =
, religion_year = 2020
, religion_ref =
, coordina ...
,
Mozambique
Mozambique (), officially the Republic of Mozambique ( pt, Moçambique or , ; ny, Mozambiki; sw, Msumbiji; ts, Muzambhiki), is a country located in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi ...
,
Guinea-Bissau
Guinea-Bissau ( ; pt, Guiné-Bissau; ff, italic=no, 𞤘𞤭𞤲𞤫 𞤄𞤭𞤧𞤢𞥄𞤱𞤮, Gine-Bisaawo, script=Adlm; Mandinka: ''Gine-Bisawo''), officially the Republic of Guinea-Bissau ( pt, República da Guiné-Bissau, links=no ) ...
and
São Tomé and Príncipe
São Tomé and Príncipe (; pt, São Tomé e Príncipe (); English: " Saint Thomas and Prince"), officially the Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe ( pt, República Democrática de São Tomé e Príncipe), is a Portuguese-speaking i ...
,
while having co-official language status in
East Timor
East Timor (), also known as Timor-Leste (), officially the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, is an island country in Southeast Asia. It comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor, the exclave of Oecusse on the island's north-weste ...
,
Equatorial Guinea
Equatorial Guinea ( es, Guinea Ecuatorial; french: Guinée équatoriale; pt, Guiné Equatorial), officially the Republic of Equatorial Guinea ( es, link=no, República de Guinea Ecuatorial, french: link=no, République de Guinée équatoria ...
, and
Macau
Macau or Macao (; ; ; ), officially the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (MSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China in the western Pearl River Delta by the South China Sea. With a pop ...
. A Portuguese-speaking person or nation is referred to as "
Lusophone
Lusophones ( pt, Lusófonos) are ethnic group, peoples that speak Portuguese language, Portuguese as a native language, native or as common second language and nations where Portuguese features prominently in society. Comprising an estimated 270 m ...
" (). As the result of expansion during colonial times, a cultural presence of Portuguese speakers is also found around the world. Portuguese is part of the
Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several dialects of
Vulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin, also known as Popular or Colloquial Latin, is the range of non-formal Register (sociolinguistics), registers of Latin spoken from the Crisis of the Roman Republic, Late Roman Republic onward. Through time, Vulgar Latin would evolve ...
in the medieval
Kingdom of Galicia
The Kingdom of Galicia ( gl, Reino de Galicia, or ''Galiza''; es, Reino de Galicia; pt, Reino da Galiza; la, Galliciense Regnum) was a political entity located in southwestern Europe, which at its territorial zenith occupied the entire north ...
and the
County of Portugal
The County of Portugal ( pt, Condado de Portugal, Condado Portucalense, Condado de Portucale; in documents of the period the name used was Portugalia) refers to two successive medieval counties in the region around Braga and Porto, today corresp ...
, and has kept some
Celtic
Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to:
Language and ethnicity
*pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia
**Celts (modern)
*Celtic languages
**Proto-Celtic language
* Celtic music
*Celtic nations
Sports Fo ...
phonology in its lexicon.
With approximately 250 million native speakers and 24 million L2 (second language) speakers, Portuguese has approximately 274 million total speakers. It is usually listed as the
sixth-most spoken language, the third-most spoken European language in the world in terms of native speakers and the second most spoken
Romance language
The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European languages, I ...
in the world, surpassed only by
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...
. Being the most widely spoken language in
South America
South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe ...
and all of the
Southern Hemisphere, it is also the second-most spoken language, after
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...
, in
Latin America
Latin America or
* french: Amérique Latine, link=no
* ht, Amerik Latin, link=no
* pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived f ...
, one of the 10 most spoken languages in
Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
, and an official language of the
European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...
,
Mercosur
The Southern Common Market, commonly known by Spanish abbreviation Mercosur, and Portuguese Mercosul, is a South American trade bloc established by the Treaty of Asunción in 1991 and Protocol of Ouro Preto in 1994. Its full members are Argentina ...
, the
Organization of American States
The Organization of American States (OAS; es, Organización de los Estados Americanos, pt, Organização dos Estados Americanos, french: Organisation des États américains; ''OEA'') is an international organization that was founded on 30 April ...
, the
Economic Community of West African States
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS; also known as in French and Portuguese) is a regional political union, political and economic union of fifteen countries located in West Africa. Collectively, these countries comprise an ...
, the
African Union
The African Union (AU) is a continental union consisting of 55 member states located on the continent of Africa. The AU was announced in the Sirte Declaration in Sirte, Libya, on 9 September 1999, calling for the establishment of the Africa ...
, and the
Community of Portuguese Language Countries
The Community of Portuguese Language Countries (Portuguese: ''Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa''; abbreviated as the CPLP), also known as the Lusophone Commonwealth (''Comunidade Lusófona''), is an international organization and poli ...
, an international organization made up of all of the world's officially Lusophone nations. In 1997, a comprehensive academic study ranked Portuguese as one of the 10 most influential languages in the world.
History
When the
Romans
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
* Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...
arrived in the
Iberian Peninsula
The Iberian Peninsula (),
**
* Aragonese and Occitan: ''Peninsula Iberica''
**
**
* french: Péninsule Ibérique
* mwl, Península Eibérica
* eu, Iberiar penintsula also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in southwestern Europe, defi ...
in 216 BC, they brought with them the
Latin language
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...
, from which all Romance languages are descended. The language was spread by Roman soldiers, settlers, and merchants, who built Roman cities mostly near the settlements of previous
Celtic
Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to:
Language and ethnicity
*pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia
**Celts (modern)
*Celtic languages
**Proto-Celtic language
* Celtic music
*Celtic nations
Sports Fo ...
civilizations established long before the Roman arrivals. For that reason, the language has kept a relevant substratum of much older,
Atlantic Europe
Atlantic Europe is a geographical term for the western portion of Europe which borders the Atlantic Ocean. The term may refer to the idea of Atlantic Europe as a cultural unit and/or as a biogeographical region.
It comprises the Atlantic Isles ...
an
Megalithic Culture
A megalith is a large stone that has been used to construct a prehistoric structure or monument, either alone or together with other stones. There are over 35,000 in Europe alone, located widely from Sweden to the Mediterranean sea.
The ...
and
Celtic culture Celtic culture may refer to:
*the culture of Celts
*the culture of Celts (modern)
*the culture of Celtic nations:
**Culture of Ireland
**Culture of Scotland
**Culture of the Isle of Man
**Culture of Wales
**Culture of Cornwall
** Culture of Brittan ...
,
part of the
Hispano-Celtic group of ancient languages.
["In the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula, and more specifically between the west and north Atlantic coasts and an imaginary line running north-south and linking Oviedo and Merida, there is a corpus of Latin inscriptions with particular characteristics of its own. This corpus contains some linguistic features that are clearly Celtic and others that in our opinion are not Celtic. The former we shall group, for the moment, under the label northwestern Hispano-Celtic. The latter are the same features found in well-documented contemporary inscriptions in the region occupied by the Lusitanians, and therefore belonging to the variety known as LUSITANIAN, or more broadly as GALLO-LUSITANIAN. As we have already said, we do not consider this variety to belong to the Celtic language family." Jordán Colera 2007: p.750] In Latin, the Portuguese language is known as ''lusitana'' or ''(latina) lusitanica'', after the
Lusitanians
The Lusitanians ( la, Lusitani) were an Indo-European languages, Indo-European speaking people living in the west of the Iberian Peninsula prior to its conquest by the Roman Republic and the subsequent incorporation of the territory into the Roma ...
, a Celtic tribe that lived in the territory of present-day Portugal and Spain that adopted the Latin language as Roman settlers moved in. This is also the origin of the ''luso-'' prefix, seen in terms like "
Lusophone
Lusophones ( pt, Lusófonos) are ethnic group, peoples that speak Portuguese language, Portuguese as a native language, native or as common second language and nations where Portuguese features prominently in society. Comprising an estimated 270 m ...
."
Between AD 409 and AD 711, as the
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post-Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings around the Mediterr ...
collapsed in
Western Europe
Western Europe is the western region of Europe. The region's countries and territories vary depending on context.
The concept of "the West" appeared in Europe in juxtaposition to "the East" and originally applied to the ancient Mediterranean ...
, the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by
Germanic peoples
The Germanic peoples were historical groups of people that once occupied Central Europe and Scandinavia during antiquity and into the early Middle Ages. Since the 19th century, they have traditionally been defined by the use of ancient and ear ...
of the
Migration Period
The Migration Period was a period in European history marked by large-scale migrations that saw the fall of the Western Roman Empire and subsequent settlement of its former territories by various tribes, and the establishment of the post-Roman ...
. The occupiers, mainly
Suebi
The Suebi (or Suebians, also spelled Suevi, Suavi) were a large group of Germanic peoples originally from the Elbe river region in what is now Germany and the Czech Republic. In the early Roman era they included many peoples with their own names ...
,
Visigoths
The Visigoths (; la, Visigothi, Wisigothi, Vesi, Visi, Wesi, Wisi) were an early Germanic people who, along with the Ostrogoths, constituted the two major political entities of the Goths within the Roman Empire in late antiquity, or what is ...
and
Buri who originally spoke
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, Engli ...
, quickly adopted late Roman culture and the
Vulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin, also known as Popular or Colloquial Latin, is the range of non-formal Register (sociolinguistics), registers of Latin spoken from the Crisis of the Roman Republic, Late Roman Republic onward. Through time, Vulgar Latin would evolve ...
dialects of the peninsula and over the next 300 years totally integrated into the local populations. Some Germanic words from that period are part of the Portuguese lexicon. After the
Moorish
The term Moor, derived from the ancient Mauri, is an exonym first used by Christian Europeans to designate the Muslim inhabitants of the Maghreb, the Iberian Peninsula, Sicily and Malta during the Middle Ages.
Moors are not a distinct or se ...
invasion beginning in 711,
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
became the administrative and common language in the conquered regions, but most of the
remaining Christian population continued to speak a form of
Romance
Romance (from Vulgar Latin , "in the Roman language", i.e., "Latin") may refer to:
Common meanings
* Romance (love), emotional attraction towards another person and the courtship behaviors undertaken to express the feelings
* Romance languages, ...
commonly known as
Mozarabic
Mozarabic, also called Andalusi Romance, refers to the medieval Romance varieties spoken in the Iberian Peninsula in territories controlled by the Islamic Emirate of Córdoba and its successors. They were the common tongue for the majority of ...
, which lasted three centuries longer in
Spain
, image_flag = Bandera de España.svg
, image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg
, national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond")
, national_anthem = (English: "Royal March")
, i ...
. Like other Neo-Latin and European languages, Portuguese has adopted a significant number of
loanword
A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because th ...
s from
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
, mainly in technical and scientific terminology. These borrowings occurred via Latin, and later during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
Portuguese evolved from the medieval language, known today by linguists as
Galician-Portuguese
Galician-Portuguese ( gl, galego-portugués or ', pt, galego-português or ), also known as Old Portuguese or as Medieval Galician when referring to the history of each modern language, was a West Iberian languages, West Iberian Romance languag ...
, Old Portuguese or Old Galician, of the northwestern medieval
Kingdom of Galicia
The Kingdom of Galicia ( gl, Reino de Galicia, or ''Galiza''; es, Reino de Galicia; pt, Reino da Galiza; la, Galliciense Regnum) was a political entity located in southwestern Europe, which at its territorial zenith occupied the entire north ...
of which the
County of Portugal
The County of Portugal ( pt, Condado de Portugal, Condado Portucalense, Condado de Portucale; in documents of the period the name used was Portugalia) refers to two successive medieval counties in the region around Braga and Porto, today corresp ...
was part.
![Idioma galaicoportugués](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Idioma_galaicoportugu%C3%A9s.png)
It is in Latin administrative documents of the 9th century that written Galician-Portuguese words and phrases are first recorded. This phase is known as Proto-Portuguese, which lasted from the 9th century until the 12th-century independence of the
County of Portugal
The County of Portugal ( pt, Condado de Portugal, Condado Portucalense, Condado de Portucale; in documents of the period the name used was Portugalia) refers to two successive medieval counties in the region around Braga and Porto, today corresp ...
from the
Kingdom of León
The Kingdom of León; es, Reino de León; gl, Reino de León; pt, Reino de Leão; la, Regnum Legionense; mwl, Reino de Lhion was an independent kingdom situated in the northwest region of the Iberian Peninsula. It was founded in 910 when t ...
, which had by then assumed reign over
Galicia.
In the first part of the
Galician-Portuguese
Galician-Portuguese ( gl, galego-portugués or ', pt, galego-português or ), also known as Old Portuguese or as Medieval Galician when referring to the history of each modern language, was a West Iberian languages, West Iberian Romance languag ...
period (from the 12th to the 14th century), the language was increasingly used for documents and other written forms. For some time, it was the language of preference for
lyric poetry
Modern lyric poetry is a formal type of poetry which expresses personal emotions or feelings, typically spoken in the first person.
It is not equivalent to song lyrics, though song lyrics are often in the lyric mode, and it is also ''not'' equi ...
in Christian
Hispania
Hispania ( la, Hispānia , ; nearly identically pronounced in Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, and Italian) was the Roman name for the Iberian Peninsula and its provinces. Under the Roman Republic, Hispania was divided into two provinces: Hispania ...
, much as
Occitan Occitan may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Occitania territory in parts of France, Italy, Monaco and Spain.
* Something of, from, or related to the Occitania administrative region of France.
* Occitan language
Occitan (; o ...
was the language of the
poetry of the troubadours in France. The Occitan digraphs ''lh'' and ''nh'', used in its classical orthography, were adopted by the
orthography of Portuguese, presumably by
Gerald of Braga
Gerald of Braga, born in Cahors, Gascony, was a Benedictine monk at Moissac, France.
The ''Vita Sancti Geraldi'' was written by one Bernard, a companion and fellow Cluniac monk from France.Moissac
Moissac () is a commune in the Tarn-et-Garonne department in the Occitanie region in southern France. The town is situated at the confluence of the rivers Garonne and Tarn at the Canal de Garonne. Route nationale N113 was constructed through the ...
, who became bishop of
Braga
Braga ( , ; cel-x-proto, Bracara) is a city and a municipality, capital of the northwestern Portuguese district of Braga and of the historical and cultural Minho Province. Braga Municipality has a resident population of 193,333 inhabitants (in ...
in Portugal in 1047, playing a major role in modernizing written Portuguese using classical
Occitan Occitan may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Occitania territory in parts of France, Italy, Monaco and Spain.
* Something of, from, or related to the Occitania administrative region of France.
* Occitan language
Occitan (; o ...
norms. Portugal became an independent kingdom in 1139, under King
Afonso I of Portugal
Afonso I of PortugalOr also ''Affonso'' (Archaic Portuguese-Galician) or ''Alphonso'' (Portuguese-Galician) or ''Alphonsus'' (Latin version), sometimes rendered in English as ''Alphonzo'' or ''Alphonse'', depending on the Spanish or French inf ...
. In 1290, King
Denis of Portugal
Denis (, ; 9 October 1261 – 7 January 1325 in Santarém), called the Farmer King (''Rei Lavrador'') and the Poet King (''Rei Poeta''), was King of Portugal. The eldest son of Afonso III of Portugal by his second wife, Beatrice of Castile, and ...
created the first Portuguese university in Lisbon (the ''Estudos Gerais'', which later moved to
Coimbra
Coimbra (, also , , or ) is a city and a municipality in Portugal. The population of the municipality at the 2011 census was 143,397, in an area of .
The fourth-largest urban area in Portugal after Lisbon, Porto Metropolitan Area, Porto, and Bra ...
) and decreed for Portuguese, then simply called the "common language," to be known as the Portuguese language and used officially.
In the second period of Old Portuguese, in the 15th and 16th centuries, with the
Portuguese discoveries
Portuguese maritime exploration resulted in the numerous territories and maritime routes recorded by the Portuguese as a result of their intensive maritime journeys during the 15th and 16th centuries. Portuguese sailors were at the vanguard of Eu ...
, the language was taken to many regions of Africa, Asia, and the
Americas
The Americas, which are sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North and South America. The Americas make up most of the land in Earth's Western Hemisphere and comprise the New World.
Along with th ...
. By the mid-16th century, Portuguese had become a ''
lingua franca
A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...
'' in Asia and Africa, used not only for colonial administration and trade but also for communication between local officials and Europeans of all nationalities. The Portuguese expanded across South America, across Africa to the Pacific Ocean, taking their language with them.
Its spread was helped by mixed marriages between Portuguese and local people and by its association with
Roman Catholic
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...
missionary
A missionary is a member of a Religious denomination, religious group which is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Tho ...
efforts, which led to the formation of
creole language
A creole language, or simply creole, is a stable natural language that develops from the simplifying and mixing of different languages into a new one within a fairly brief period of time: often, a pidgin evolved into a full-fledged language. ...
s such as that called
Kristang in many parts of Asia (from the word ''cristão'', "Christian"). The language continued to be popular in parts of Asia until the 19th century. Some Portuguese-speaking Christian communities in
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
,
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...
,
Malaysia
Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...
, and
Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...
preserved their language even after they were isolated from Portugal.
The end of the Old Portuguese period was marked by the publication of the ''Cancioneiro Geral'' by
Garcia de Resende
Garcia de Resende (14703 February 1536) was a Portuguese poet and editor. He served John II as a page and private secretary. After John's death, he continued to enjoy the same favour with Manuel I, whom he accompanied to Castile in 1498, and fr ...
, in 1516. The early times of Modern Portuguese, which spans the period from the 16th century to the present day, were characterized by an increase in the number of learned words borrowed from
Classical Latin
Classical Latin is the form of Literary Latin recognized as a literary standard by writers of the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire. It was used from 75 BC to the 3rd century AD, when it developed into Late Latin. In some later periods ...
and
Classical Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...
because of the
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...
(learned words borrowed from Latin also came from
Renaissance Latin
Renaissance Latin is a name given to the distinctive form of Literary Latin style developed during the European Renaissance of the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries, particularly by the Renaissance humanism movement.
Ad fontes
''Ad fontes' ...
, the form of Latin during that time), which greatly enriched the lexicon. Most literate Portuguese speakers were also literate in Latin; and thus they easily adopted Latin words into their writing, and eventually speech, in Portuguese.
Spanish author
Miguel de Cervantes
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (; 29 September 1547 (assumed) – 22 April 1616 Old Style and New Style dates, NS) was an Early Modern Spanish writer widely regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language and one of the world's pre-emin ...
once called Portuguese "the sweet and gracious language", while the Brazilian poet
Olavo Bilac
Olavo Brás Martins dos Guimarães Bilac (16 December 1865 – 28 December 1918), known simply as Olavo Bilac (), was a Brazilian Parnassianism, Parnassian poet, journalist and translator. Alongside Alberto de Oliveira and Raimundo Correia, he w ...
described it as ("the last flower of
Latium
Latium ( , ; ) is the region of central western Italy in which the city of Rome was founded and grew to be the capital city of the Roman Empire.
Definition
Latium was originally a small triangle of fertile, volcanic soil (Old Latium) on whi ...
, naïve and beautiful"). Portuguese is also termed "the language of Camões," after
Luís Vaz de Camões
Luis is a given name. It is the Spanish language, Spanish form of the originally Germanic language, Germanic name or . Other Iberian Romance languages have comparable forms: (with an accent mark on the i) in Portuguese language, Portuguese and ...
, one of the greatest literary figures in the Portuguese language and author of the Portuguese
epic poem
An epic poem, or simply an epic, is a lengthy narrative poem typically about the extraordinary deeds of extraordinary characters who, in dealings with gods or other superhuman forces, gave shape to the mortal universe for their descendants.
...
''
The Lusiads
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the ...
''.
In March 2006, the
Museum of the Portuguese Language
The Museum of the Portuguese Language ( pt, Museu da Língua Portuguesa, , ) is an interactive Portuguese language—and Linguistics/Language Development in general—museum in São Paulo, Brazil. It is housed in the Luz Station, Estação da Luz ...
, an interactive museum about the Portuguese language, was founded in
São Paulo
São Paulo (, ; Portuguese for 'Saint Paul') is the most populous city in Brazil, and is the capital of the state of São Paulo, the most populous and wealthiest Brazilian state, located in the country's Southeast Region. Listed by the GaWC a ...
, Brazil, the city with the greatest number of Portuguese language speakers in the world.
The museum is the first of its kind in the world.
In 2015 the museum was partially destroyed in a fire, but restored and reopened in 2020.
Geographic distribution
![Multilingual Emergency Assembly Area Sign in Oizumi](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Multilingual_Emergency_Assembly_Area_Sign_in_Oizumi.JPG)
Portuguese is the native language of the vast majority of the people in Portugal,
Brazil and São Tomé and Príncipe (95%). Perhaps 75% of the population of urban Angola speaks Portuguese natively, with approximately 85% fluent; these rates are lower in the countryside. Just over 50% (and rapidly increasing) of the population of Mozambique are native speakers of Portuguese, and 70% are fluent, according to the 2007 census. Portuguese is also spoken natively by 30% of the population in Guinea-Bissau, and a Portuguese-based creole is understood by all. No data is available for Cape Verde, but almost all the population is bilingual, and the monolingual population speaks the Portuguese-based
Cape Verdean Creole
Cape Verdean Creole is a Portuguese-based creole languages, Portuguese-based creole language spoken on the islands of Cape Verde. It is also called or by its native speakers. It is the native creole language of virtually all Cape Verdeans and ...
. Portuguese is mentioned in the
Constitution of South Africa
The Constitution of South Africa is the supreme law of the Republic of South Africa. It provides the legal foundation for the existence of the republic, it sets out the rights and duties of its citizens, and defines the structure of the Govern ...
as one of the languages spoken by communities within the country for which the
Pan South African Language Board
The Pan South African Language Board ( af, Pan-Suid-Afrikaanse Taalraad , abbreviated PanSALB) is an organisation in South Africa established to promote multilingualism, to develop the 11 official languages, and to protect language rights in Sou ...
was charged with promoting and ensuring respect.
There are also significant Portuguese-speaking immigrant communities in many countries including
Andorra
, image_flag = Flag of Andorra.svg
, image_coat = Coat of arms of Andorra.svg
, symbol_type = Coat of arms
, national_motto = la, Virtus Unita Fortior, label=none (Latin)"United virtue is stro ...
(17.1%),
Bermuda
)
, anthem = "God Save the King"
, song_type = National song
, song = " Hail to Bermuda"
, image_map =
, map_caption =
, image_map2 =
, mapsize2 =
, map_caption2 =
, subdivision_type = Sovereign state
, subdivision_name =
, e ...
,
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
(400,275 people in the 2006 census),
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
(1,625,000 people),
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
(400,000 people),
Jersey
Jersey ( , ; nrf, Jèrri, label=Jèrriais ), officially the Bailiwick of Jersey (french: Bailliage de Jersey, links=no; Jèrriais: ), is an island country and self-governing Crown Dependencies, Crown Dependency near the coast of north-west F ...
,
Luxembourg
Luxembourg ( ; lb, Lëtzebuerg ; french: link=no, Luxembourg; german: link=no, Luxemburg), officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, ; french: link=no, Grand-Duché de Luxembourg ; german: link=no, Großherzogtum Luxemburg is a small lan ...
(about 25% of the population as of 2021),
Namibia
Namibia (, ), officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in Southern Africa. Its western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Zambia and Angola to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and ea ...
(about 4–5% of the population, mainly refugees from Angola in the north of the country),
Paraguay
Paraguay (; ), officially the Republic of Paraguay ( es, República del Paraguay, links=no; gn, Tavakuairetã Paraguái, links=si), is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to th ...
(10.7% or 636,000 people),
Macau
Macau or Macao (; ; ; ), officially the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (MSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China in the western Pearl River Delta by the South China Sea. With a pop ...
(2.3% speak fluent Portuguese or 15,000 people),
Switzerland
). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...
(550,000 in 2019, learning + mother tongue),
Venezuela
Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...
(554,000). and the United States (0.35% of the population or 1,228,126 speakers according to the 2007
American Community Survey
The American Community Survey (ACS) is a demographics survey program conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. It regularly gathers information previously contained only in the long form of the decennial census, such as ancestry, citizenship, educati ...
).
In some parts of former
Portuguese India
The State of India ( pt, Estado da Índia), also referred as the Portuguese State of India (''Estado Português da Índia'', EPI) or simply Portuguese India (), was a state of the Portuguese Empire founded six years after the discovery of a se ...
, namely
Goa
Goa () is a state on the southwestern coast of India within the Konkan region, geographically separated from the Deccan highlands by the Western Ghats. It is located between the Indian states of Maharashtra to the north and Karnataka to the ...
and
Daman and Diu
Daman and Diu (; ) was a former union territory in northwestern India. With an area of , it was the smallest administrative subdivision of India on the mainland. The territory comprised two districts, Damaon and Dio island, geographically sep ...
, the language is still spoken by about 10,000 people. In 2014, an estimated 1,500 students were learning Portuguese in Goa.
Official status
![Detailed SVG map of the Lusophone world](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Detailed_SVG_map_of_the_Lusophone_world.svg)
The
Community of Portuguese Language Countries
The Community of Portuguese Language Countries (Portuguese: ''Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa''; abbreviated as the CPLP), also known as the Lusophone Commonwealth (''Comunidade Lusófona''), is an international organization and poli ...
(in Portuguese ''Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa'', with the Portuguese acronym CPLP) consists of the nine independent countries that have Portuguese as an
official language
An official language is a language given supreme status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically the term "official language" does not refer to the language used by a people or country, but by its government (e.g. judiciary, ...
:
Angola
, national_anthem = " Angola Avante"()
, image_map =
, map_caption =
, capital = Luanda
, religion =
, religion_year = 2020
, religion_ref =
, coordina ...
,
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
,
Cape Verde
, national_anthem = ()
, official_languages = Portuguese
, national_languages = Cape Verdean Creole
, capital = Praia
, coordinates =
, largest_city = capital
, demonym ...
,
East Timor
East Timor (), also known as Timor-Leste (), officially the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, is an island country in Southeast Asia. It comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor, the exclave of Oecusse on the island's north-weste ...
,
Equatorial Guinea
Equatorial Guinea ( es, Guinea Ecuatorial; french: Guinée équatoriale; pt, Guiné Equatorial), officially the Republic of Equatorial Guinea ( es, link=no, República de Guinea Ecuatorial, french: link=no, République de Guinée équatoria ...
,
Guinea-Bissau
Guinea-Bissau ( ; pt, Guiné-Bissau; ff, italic=no, 𞤘𞤭𞤲𞤫 𞤄𞤭𞤧𞤢𞥄𞤱𞤮, Gine-Bisaawo, script=Adlm; Mandinka: ''Gine-Bisawo''), officially the Republic of Guinea-Bissau ( pt, República da Guiné-Bissau, links=no ) ...
,
Mozambique
Mozambique (), officially the Republic of Mozambique ( pt, Moçambique or , ; ny, Mozambiki; sw, Msumbiji; ts, Muzambhiki), is a country located in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi ...
,
Portugal
Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...
and
São Tomé and Príncipe
São Tomé and Príncipe (; pt, São Tomé e Príncipe (); English: " Saint Thomas and Prince"), officially the Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe ( pt, República Democrática de São Tomé e Príncipe), is a Portuguese-speaking i ...
.
Equatorial Guinea
Equatorial Guinea ( es, Guinea Ecuatorial; french: Guinée équatoriale; pt, Guiné Equatorial), officially the Republic of Equatorial Guinea ( es, link=no, República de Guinea Ecuatorial, french: link=no, République de Guinée équatoria ...
made a formal application for full membership to the CPLP in June 2010, a status given only to states with Portuguese as an official language. In 2011, Portuguese became its third official language (besides
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...
and
French) and, in July 2014, the country was accepted as a member of the CPLP.
Portuguese is also one of the official languages of the Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China of Macau (alongside
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...
) and of several international organizations, including
Mercosur
The Southern Common Market, commonly known by Spanish abbreviation Mercosur, and Portuguese Mercosul, is a South American trade bloc established by the Treaty of Asunción in 1991 and Protocol of Ouro Preto in 1994. Its full members are Argentina ...
, the
Organization of Ibero-American States
The Organization of Ibero-American States ( es, Organización de Estados Iberoamericanos, pt, Organização de Estados Iberoamericanos, ca, Organització d'Estats Iberoamericans; abbreviated as OEI), formally the Organization of Ibero-American ...
, the Union of South American Nations, the Organization of American States, the
African Union
The African Union (AU) is a continental union consisting of 55 member states located on the continent of Africa. The AU was announced in the Sirte Declaration in Sirte, Libya, on 9 September 1999, calling for the establishment of the Africa ...
,
[Article 11, Protocol on Amendments to the Constitutive Act of the African Union ] the
Economic Community of West African States
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS; also known as in French and Portuguese) is a regional political union, political and economic union of fifteen countries located in West Africa. Collectively, these countries comprise an ...
,
the Southern African Development Community
and the
European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...
.
Lusophone countries
According to ''The World Factbook''s country population estimates for 2018, the population of each of the ten jurisdictions is as follows (by descending order):
The combined population of the entire
Lusophone
Lusophones ( pt, Lusófonos) are ethnic group, peoples that speak Portuguese language, Portuguese as a native language, native or as common second language and nations where Portuguese features prominently in society. Comprising an estimated 270 m ...
area was estimated at 300 million in January 2022.
This number does not include the Lusophone diaspora, estimated at 10 million people (including 4.5 million Portuguese, 3 million Brazilians, although it is hard to obtain official accurate numbers of diasporic Portuguese speakers because a significant portion of these citizens are naturalized citizens born outside of Lusophone territory or are children of immigrants, and may have only a basic command of the language. Additionally, a large part of the diaspora is a part of the already-counted population of the Portuguese-speaking countries and territories, such as the high number of Brazilian and Portuguese-speaking African countries, PALOP emigrant citizens in Portugal or the high number of Portuguese emigrant citizens in the PALOP and Brazil.
The Portuguese language therefore serves more than 250 million people daily, who have direct or indirect legal, juridical and social contact with it, varying from the only language used in any contact, to only education, contact with local or international administration, commerce and services or the simple sight of road signs, public information and advertising in Portuguese.
Portuguese as a foreign language
Portuguese is a mandatory subject in the school curriculum in Uruguay. Other countries where Portuguese is commonly taught in schools or where it has been introduced as an option include
Venezuela
Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...
, Zambia, the Republic of the Congo,
Senegal,
Namibia
Namibia (, ), officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in Southern Africa. Its western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Zambia and Angola to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and ea ...
,
Eswatini, Eswatini (Swaziland),
South Africa,
Ivory Coast, and Mauritius. In 2017, a project was launched to introduce Portuguese as a school subject in Zimbabwe. Also, according to Portugal's Minister of Foreign Affairs, the language will be part of the school curriculum of a total of 32 countries by 2020. In the countries listed below, Portuguese is spoken either as a native language by vast majorities due to the Portuguese colonial past or as a ''
lingua franca
A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...
'' in bordering and multilingual regions, such as on the border between Brazil and Uruguay & Paraguay, as well as Angola and Namibia. In many other countries, Portuguese is spoken by majorities as a second language. And there are still communities of thousands of Portuguese (or Creole language, Creole) first language speakers in
Goa
Goa () is a state on the southwestern coast of India within the Konkan region, geographically separated from the Deccan highlands by the Western Ghats. It is located between the Indian states of Maharashtra to the north and Karnataka to the ...
,
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...
, Kuala Lumpur,
Daman and Diu
Daman and Diu (; ) was a former union territory in northwestern India. With an area of , it was the smallest administrative subdivision of India on the mainland. The territory comprised two districts, Damaon and Dio island, geographically sep ...
, etc. due to Portuguese Empire, Portuguese colonization. In East Timor, the number of Portuguese speakers is quickly increasing as Portuguese and Brazilian teachers are making great strides in teaching Portuguese in the schools all over the island. Additionally, there are many large Portuguese immigrant communities all over the world.
Future
According to estimates by UNESCO, Portuguese is the fastest-growing European language after English language, English and the language has, according to the newspaper ''The Portugal News'' publishing data given from UNESCO, the highest potential for growth as an international language in southern Africa and
South America
South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe ...
.
Portuguese is a globalized language spoken officially on four continents, and as a second language by millions worldwide.
Since 1991, when Brazil signed into the economic community of Mercosul with other South American nations, namely Argentina, Uruguay and
Paraguay
Paraguay (; ), officially the Republic of Paraguay ( es, República del Paraguay, links=no; gn, Tavakuairetã Paraguái, links=si), is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to th ...
, Portuguese is either mandatory, or taught, in the schools of those South American countries.
Although early in the 21st century, after
Macau
Macau or Macao (; ; ; ), officially the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (MSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China in the western Pearl River Delta by the South China Sea. With a pop ...
was returned to China and immigration of Brazilians of Japanese Brazilian, Japanese descent to
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
slowed down, the use of Portuguese was in decline in Asia, it is once again becoming a language of opportunity there, mostly because of increased diplomatic and financial ties with economically powerful Portuguese-speaking countries in the world.
Current status and importance
Portuguese, being a language spread on all continents, is official in several international organizations; one of twenty official of the
European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...
, an official language of NATO, Organization of American States (alongside Spanish, French and English), one of eighteen official languages of the European Space Agency.
It is also a working language in nonprofit organisations such as the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, Red Cross (alongside English, German, Spanish, French, Arabic and Russian), Amnesty International (alongside 32 other languages of which English is the most used, followed by Spanish, French, German, and Italian), and Médecins sans Frontières (used alongside English, Spanish, French and Arabic), in addition to being the official legal language in the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights, also in
Community of Portuguese Language Countries
The Community of Portuguese Language Countries (Portuguese: ''Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa''; abbreviated as the CPLP), also known as the Lusophone Commonwealth (''Comunidade Lusófona''), is an international organization and poli ...
, an international organization formed essentially by Lusophone, lusophone countries.
Dialects, accents and varieties
![Sprachen_Osttimors-en](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/Sprachen_Osttimors-en.png)
, a pronoun meaning "you", is used for educated, formal, and colloquial respectful speech in most Portuguese-speaking regions. In a few Brazilian states such as Rio Grande do Sul, Pará, among others, is virtually absent from the spoken language. Riograndense and European Portuguese normally distinguishes formal from informal speech by verbal conjugation. Informal speech employs followed by second person verbs, formal language retains the formal , followed by the third person conjugation.
Conjugation of verbs in has three different forms in Brazil (verb "to see": , in the traditional second person, , in the third person, and , in the innovative second person), the conjugation used in the Brazilian states of Pará, Santa Catarina and Maranhão being generally traditional second person, the kind that is used in other Portuguese-speaking countries and learned in Brazilian schools.
The predominance of Southeastern-based media products has established as the pronoun of choice for the second person singular in both writing and multimedia communications. However, in the city of Rio de Janeiro, the country's main cultural center, the usage of has been expanding ever since the end of the 20th century, being most frequent among youngsters, and a number of studies have also shown an increase in its use in a number of other Brazilian dialects.
![Uso dos pronomes de segunda pessoa no Brasil](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Uso_dos_pronomes_de_segunda_pessoa_no_Brasil.svg)
Modern Standard European Portuguese ( or ) is based on the Portuguese spoken in the area including and surrounding the cities of Coimbra and Lisbon, in central Portugal. Standard European Portuguese is also the preferred standard by the Portuguese-speaking African countries. As such, and despite the fact that its speakers are dispersed around the world, Portuguese has only two dialects used for learning: the European and the Brazilian. Some aspects and sounds found in many dialects of Brazil are exclusive to South America, and cannot be found in Europe. The same occur with the Santomean, Mozambican, Bissau-Guinean, Angolan and Cape Verdean dialects, being exclusive to Africa. See Portuguese in Africa.
Audio samples of some dialects and accents of Portuguese are available below. There are some differences between the areas but these are the best approximations possible. IPA transcriptions refer to the names in local pronunciation.
Brazil
# ''Caipira dialect, Caipira'' – Spoken in the states of São Paulo (state), São Paulo (most markedly on the countryside and rural areas); southern Minas Gerais, northern Paraná (state), Paraná and southeastern Mato Grosso do Sul. Depending on the vision of what constitutes ''caipira'', Triângulo Mineiro, border areas of Goiás and the remaining parts of Mato Grosso do Sul are included, and the frontier of ''caipira'' in Minas Gerais is expanded further northerly, though not reaching metropolitan Belo Horizonte. It is often said that ''caipira'' appeared by decreolization of the Old Tupi, língua brasílica and the related língua geral paulista, then spoken in almost all of what is now São Paulo, a former
lingua franca
A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...
in most of the contemporary Centro-Sul of Brazil before the 18th century, brought by the ''bandeirantes'', interior pioneers of Colonial Brazil, closely related to its northern counterpart Nheengatu language, Nheengatu, and that is why the dialect shows many general differences from other variants of the language. It has striking remarkable differences in comparison to other Brazilian dialects in phonology, prosody and grammar, often Social stigma, stigmatized as being strongly associated with a Prestige (sociolinguistics), substandard variant, now mostly rural.
# North coast Portuguese, ''Cearense'' or ''Costa norte'' – is a dialect spoken more sharply in the states of Ceará and Piauí. The variant of Ceará includes fairly distinctive traits it shares with the one spoken in Piauí, though, such as distinctive regional phonology and vocabulary (for example, a debuccalization process stronger than that of Portuguese, a different system of the vowel harmony that spans Brazil from ''fluminense'' and ''mineiro'' to ''amazofonia'' but is especially prevalent in ''nordestino'', a very coherent coda sibilant palatalization as those of Portugal and Rio de Janeiro but allowed in fewer environments than in other accents of ''nordestino'', a greater presence of dental stop palatalization to palato-alveolar in comparison to other accents of ''nordestino'', among others, as well as a great number of archaic Portuguese words).
# ''Baiano'' – Found in Bahia and border regions with Goiás and Tocantins. Similar to ''nordestino'', it has a very characteristic Stress timing, syllable-timed rhythm and the greatest tendency to pronounce unstressed vowels as open-mid and .
![Portugueselanguagedialects-Brazil (colored)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/Portugueselanguagedialects-Brazil_%28colored%29.svg)
#
''Fluminense''nbsp;– A broad dialect with many variants spoken in the states of Rio de Janeiro (state), Rio de Janeiro, Espírito Santo and neighboring eastern regions of Minas Gerais. ''Fluminense'' formed in these previously ''caipira''-speaking areas due to the gradual influence of European migrants, causing many people to distance their speech from their original dialect and incorporate new terms. ''Fluminense'' is sometimes referred to as ''carioca'', however ''carioca'' is a more specific term referring to the accent of the Greater Rio de Janeiro area by speakers with a ''fluminense'' dialect.
# ''Gaúcho dialect, Gaúcho'' – in Rio Grande do Sul, similar to ''sulista''. There are many distinct accents in Rio Grande do Sul, mainly due to the heavy influx of European immigrants of diverse origins who have settled in colonies throughout the state, and to the proximity to Hispanosphere, Spanish-speaking nations. The ''gaúcho'' word in itself is a Spanish
loanword
A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because th ...
into Portuguese of obscure Indigenous languages of the Americas, Indigenous Amerindian origins.
#
![Isoglossas no estado de Minas Gerais](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/Isoglossas_no_estado_de_Minas_Gerais._EALMG%2C_UFJF%2C_1977.png)
''Mineiro'' – Minas Gerais (not prevalent in the Triângulo Mineiro). As the ''fluminense'' area, its associated region was formerly a sparsely populated land where ''caipira'' was spoken, but Minas Gerais#History, the discovery of gold and gems made it the most prosperous Brazilian region, what attracted Portuguese colonists, commoners from other parts of Brazil and their African slaves. South-southwestern, Zona da Mata (Minas Gerais), southeastern and northern areas of the state have fairly distinctive speech, actually approximating to ''caipira'', ''fluminense'' (popularly called, often pejoratively, ''carioca do brejo'', "marsh carioca") and ''baiano'' respectively. Areas including and surrounding Belo Horizonte have a distinctive accent.
#
''Nordestino''ref name="ReferenceB">Note: the speaker of this sound file is from Rio de Janeiro, and he is talking about his experience with ''nordestino'' and ''nortista'' accents. – more marked in the Sertão (7), where, in the 19th and 20th centuries and especially in the area including and surrounding the ''sertão'' (the dry land after Agreste) of Pernambuco and southern Ceará, it could sound less comprehensible to speakers of other Portuguese dialects than Galician or Rioplatense Spanish, and nowadays less distinctive from other variants in the metropolitan cities Zona da Mata, along the coasts. It can be divided in two regional variants, one that includes the northern Maranhão and southern of Piauí, and other that goes from Ceará to Alagoas.
# ''Nortista'' or ''amazofonia'' – Most of Amazon Basin states, i.e. North Region, Brazil, Northern Brazil. Before the 20th century, most people from the ''nordestino'' area fleeing the droughts and their associated poverty settled here, so it has some similarities with the Portuguese dialect there spoken. The speech in and around the cities of Belém and Manaus has a more European flavor in phonology, prosody and grammar.
# ''Paulistano dialect, Paulistano'' – Variants spoken around Greater São Paulo in its maximum definition and more easterly areas of São Paulo state, as well as perhaps "educated speech" from anywhere in São Paulo (state), the state of São Paulo (where it coexists with ''caipira''). ''Caipira'' is the hinterland sociolect of much of the Centro-Sul, Central-Southern half of Brazil, nowadays conservative only in the rural areas and associated with them, that has a historically prestige (sociolinguistics), low prestige in cities as Rio de Janeiro, Curitiba, Belo Horizonte, and until some years ago, in São Paulo itself. Sociolinguistics, or what by times is described as "linguistic discrimination, linguistic prejudice", often correlated with Class discrimination, classism, is a polemic topic in the entirety of the country since the times of Adoniran Barbosa#Musical production, Adoniran Barbosa. Also, the "Paulistano" accent was heavily influenced by the presence of immigrants in the city of São Paulo, especially the Italians.
# ''Sertanejo'' – Center-West Region, Brazil, Center-Western states, and also much of Tocantins and Rondônia. It is closer to ''mineiro'', ''caipira'', ''nordestino'' or ''nortista'' depending on the location.
# ''Sulista'' – The variants spoken in the areas between the northern regions of Rio Grande do Sul and southern regions of São Paulo state, encompassing most of South Region, Brazil, southern Brazil. The city of Curitiba does have a fairly distinct accent as well, and a relative majority of speakers around and in Florianópolis also speak this variant (many speak ''florianopolitano'' or ''manezinho da ilha'' instead, related to the European Portuguese dialects spoken in Azores and Madeira). Speech of northern Paraná is closer to that of inland São Paulo.
# ''Florianopolitan dialect, Florianopolitano'' – Variants heavily influenced by European Portuguese spoken in Florianópolis city (due to a heavy immigration movement from Portugal, mainly its Autonomous regions of Portugal, insular regions) and much of its metropolitan area, Grande Florianópolis, said to be a continuum between those whose speech most resemble ''sulista'' dialects and those whose speech most resemble ''fluminense'' and European ones, called, often pejoratively, ''manezinho da ilha''.
# ''Carioca'' – Not a dialect, but sociolects of the ''fluminense'' variant spoken in an area roughly corresponding to Greater Rio de Janeiro. It appeared after locals came in contact with the Portuguese aristocracy amidst the Transfer of the Portuguese Court to Brazil, Portuguese royal family fled in the early 19th century. There is actually a continuum between Vernacular countryside accents and the ''carioca'' sociolect, and the educated speech (in Portuguese ''norma culta'', which most closely resembles other Brazilian Portuguese standards but with marked recent Portuguese influences, the nearest ones among the country's dialects along ''florianopolitano''), so that not all people native to the state of Rio de Janeiro speak the said sociolect, but most ''carioca'' speakers will use the standard variant not influenced by it that is rather uniform around Brazil depending on context (emphasis or formality, for example).
# ''Brasiliense'' – used in Brasília and its metropolitan area. It is not considered a dialect, but more of a regional variant – often deemed to be closer to ''fluminense'' than the dialect commonly spoken in most of Goiás, ''sertanejo''.
# ''Arco do desflorestamento'' or '':pt:Dialeto da serra amazônica, serra amazônica'' – Known in its region as the "accent of the migrants," it has similarities with ''caipira'', ''sertanejo'' and often ''sulista'' that make it differing from ''amazofonia'' (in the opposite group of Brazilian dialects, in which it is placed along ''nordestino'', ''baiano'', ''mineiro'' and ''fluminense''). It is the most recent dialect, which appeared by the settlement of families from various other Brazilian regions attracted by the cheap land offer in recently Deforestation, deforested areas.
# ''Recifense'' – used in Recife and its metropolitan area.
Portugal
![Falantes no mundo](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/Falantes_no_mundo.jpg)
#
''Micaelense (Açores)''(São Miguel) – Azores.
#
''Alentejano''– Alentejo (Alentejan Portuguese)
#
''Algarvio''– Algarve (there is a particular dialect in a small part of western Algarve).
#
''Minhoto''nbsp;– Districts of
Braga
Braga ( , ; cel-x-proto, Bracara) is a city and a municipality, capital of the northwestern Portuguese district of Braga and of the historical and cultural Minho Province. Braga Municipality has a resident population of 193,333 inhabitants (in ...
and Viana do Castelo (hinterland).
#
''Beirão''; ''Alto-Alentejano''– Central Portugal (hinterland).
#
![Loudspeaker](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Loudspeaker.svg)
– Central Portugal.
#
![Loudspeaker](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Loudspeaker.svg)
nbsp;– Regions of Coimbra and Lisbon (this is a disputed denomination, as Coimbra and is not part of "Estremadura", and the Lisbon dialect has some peculiar features that are not only not shared with that of Coimbra, but also significantly distinct and recognizable to most native speakers from elsewhere in Portugal).
#
''Madeirense''(Madeiran) – Madeira.
#
''Portuense''nbsp;– Regions of the district of Porto and parts of Aveiro, Portugal, Aveiro.
#
''Transmontano''nbsp;– Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro.
Other countries and dependencies
* –
''Angolano'' (Angolan Portuguese)
* –
''Cabo-verdiano''(Cape Verdean Portuguese)
* –
''Timorense''(East Timorese Portuguese)
* – ''Damaense'' (Damanese Portuguese) and ''Goês'' (Goan Portuguese)
* –
''Guineense''(Guinean Portuguese)
* –
''Macaense''(Macanese Portuguese)
* –
''Moçambicano''(Mozambican Portuguese)
* –
''Santomense''(São Tomean Portuguese)
* – Riverense Portuñol language, ''Dialectos Portugueses del Uruguay (DPU)''
Differences between dialects are mostly of Accent (dialect), accent and vocabulary, but between the Brazilian dialects and other dialects, especially in their most colloquial forms, there can also be some grammatical differences. The Portuguese creole, Portuguese-based creoles spoken in various parts of Africa, Asia, and the Americas are independent languages.
Characterization and peculiarities
Portuguese, like Catalan language, Catalan, preserves the stressed vowels of
Vulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin, also known as Popular or Colloquial Latin, is the range of non-formal Register (sociolinguistics), registers of Latin spoken from the Crisis of the Roman Republic, Late Roman Republic onward. Through time, Vulgar Latin would evolve ...
which became diphthongs in most other Romance languages; cf. Port., Cat., Sard. ''wikt:pedra, pedra'' ; Fr. ', Sp. ', It. ', Ro. ', from Lat. ' ("stone"); or Port. ', Cat. ', Sard. '; Sp. ', It. ', Fr. ', Ro. ', from Lat. ' ("fire"). Another characteristic of early Portuguese was the loss of :wiktionary:intervocalic, intervocalic ''l'' and ''n'', sometimes followed by the merger of the two surrounding vowels, or by the insertion of an epenthesis, epenthetic vowel between them: cf. Lat. ' ("to exit"), ' ("to have"), ' ("jail"), Port. ', ', '.
When the elision, elided consonant was ''n'', it often nasalization, nasalized the preceding vowel: cf. Lat. ' ("hand"), ' ("frog"), ' ("good"), Old Portuguese ', ', ' (Portuguese: ', ', '). This process was the source of most of the language's distinctive nasal diphthongs. In particular, the Latin endings ''-anem'', ' and ' became ' in most cases, cf. Lat. ' ("dog"), ' ("brother"), ' ("reason") with Modern Port. ', ', ', and their plurals ''-anes'', ''-anos'', ''-ones'' normally became ''-ães'', ''-ãos'', ''-ões'', cf. ''cães'', ''irmãos'', ''razões''.
The Portuguese language is the only Romance language that preserves the clitic case mesoclisis: cf. (I'll give thee), (I'll love you), (I'll contact them). Like Galician language, Galician, it also retains the Latin synthetic pluperfect tense: (I had been), (I had lived), (you had lived). Romanian language, Romanian also has this tense, but uses the -s- form.
Vocabulary
Most of the lexicon of Portuguese is derived, directly or through other Romance languages, from Latin. Nevertheless, because of its original Lusitanians, Lusitanian and Celtic Gallaecian heritage, and the later participation of Portugal in the Age of Discovery, it has a relevant number of words from the ancient
Hispano-Celtic group and adopted
loanword
A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because th ...
s from other languages around the world.
A number of Portuguese words can still be traced to the Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula, pre-Roman inhabitants of Portugal, which included the Gallaeci,
Lusitanians
The Lusitanians ( la, Lusitani) were an Indo-European languages, Indo-European speaking people living in the west of the Iberian Peninsula prior to its conquest by the Roman Republic and the subsequent incorporation of the territory into the Roma ...
, Celtici and Cynetes. Most of these words derived from the Hispano-Celtic Gallaecian language of northwestern Iberia, and are very often shared with Galician language, Galician since both languages have the same origin in the medieval language of Galician-Portuguese. A few of these words existed in Latin as loanwords from other Celtic languages, Celtic sources, often Gaulish. Altogether these are over 2,000 words, some verbs and toponymic names of towns, rivers, utensils and plants.
In the 5th century, the Iberian Peninsula (the Ancient Rome, Roman
Hispania
Hispania ( la, Hispānia , ; nearly identically pronounced in Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, and Italian) was the Roman name for the Iberian Peninsula and its provinces. Under the Roman Republic, Hispania was divided into two provinces: Hispania ...
) was conquered by the Germanic peoples, Germanic,
Suebi
The Suebi (or Suebians, also spelled Suevi, Suavi) were a large group of Germanic peoples originally from the Elbe river region in what is now Germany and the Czech Republic. In the early Roman era they included many peoples with their own names ...
and
Visigoths
The Visigoths (; la, Visigothi, Wisigothi, Vesi, Visi, Wesi, Wisi) were an early Germanic people who, along with the Ostrogoths, constituted the two major political entities of the Goths within the Roman Empire in late antiquity, or what is ...
. As they adopted the Roman civilization and language, however, these people contributed with some 500
Germanic languages, Germanic words to the lexicon. Many of these words are related to:
* warfare, such as 'spur', ('stake'), and ('war'), from Gothic language, Gothic ''*spaúra'', ''*stakka'', and ''*wirro'' respectively;
* natural world, such as ('swine') from ''*sweina'', ('hawk') from ''*gabilans'', ('wave') from ''*vigan'';
* human emotions, such as or ('pride', 'proud') from Old Germanic ''*urguol'', and
* verbs like ('to craft, record, graft') from ''*graba'' or ('to squeeze, quash, grind') from Suebian ''*magōn'' or ('to shred') from ''*harpō''.
The
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, Engli ...
influence also exists in toponymic surnames and patronymic surnames borne by Visigoth sovereigns and their descendants, and it dwells on placenames such as Ermesinde, Esposende and Resende, Portugal, Resende where ''sinde'' and ''sende'' are derived from the Germanic ''sinths'' ('military expedition') and in the case of Resende, the prefix ''re'' comes from Germanic ''reths'' ('council'). Other examples of Portuguese names, surnames and town names of Germanic toponymic origin include Henrique, Henriques (surname), Henriques, Vermoim, Mandim, Calquim, Baguim, Gemunde, Guetim, Sermonde and many more, are quite common mainly in the old
Suebi
The Suebi (or Suebians, also spelled Suevi, Suavi) were a large group of Germanic peoples originally from the Elbe river region in what is now Germany and the Czech Republic. In the early Roman era they included many peoples with their own names ...
and later Visigothic dominated regions, covering today's Northern half of Portugal and
Galicia.
Between the 9th and early 13th centuries, Portuguese acquired some 400 to 600 words from
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
by influence of al-Andalus, Moorish Iberia. They are often recognizable by the initial Definite article in Arabic, Arabic article ''a(l)-'', and include common words such as ('village') from الضيعة ''alḍaiʿa'', ('lettuce') from الخس ''alkhass'', ('warehouse') from المخزن ''almakhzan'', and ('olive oil') from الزيت ''azzait''.
![State_Central_Library,_Goa_Dec_27,_2012_14](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/State_Central_Library%2C_Goa_Dec_27%2C_2012_14.JPG)
Starting in the 15th century, the Portuguese maritime explorations led to the introduction of many loanwords from Asian languages. For instance, ('cutlass') from Japanese language, Japanese ''katana'', ('tea') from
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...
''Tea#Etymology, chá'', and ''Canja de galinha, canja'' ('chicken-soup, piece of cake') from Malay language, Malay.
From the 16th to the 19th centuries, because of the role of Portugal as intermediary in the Atlantic slave trade, and the establishment of large Portuguese colonies in Angola, Mozambique, and Brazil, Portuguese acquired several words of African and indigenous peoples of Brazil, Amerind origin, especially names for most of the animals and plants found in those territories. While those terms are mostly used in the former colonies, many became current in European Portuguese as well. From Kimbundu language, Kimbundu, for example, came ''kifumate'' > ('head caress') (Brazil), ''kusula'' > ('youngest child') (Brazil), ('tropical wasp') (Brazil), and ''kubungula'' > ('to dance like a wizard') (Angola). From South America came ('potato'), from Taíno language, Taino; and , from Tupi–Guarani languages, Tupi–Guarani ''naná'' and Tupi language, Tupi ''ibá cati'', respectively (two species of pineapple), and ('popcorn') from Tupi and ('toucan') from Guarani language, Guarani ''tucan''.
Finally, it has received a steady influx of loanwords from other European languages, especially French and English language, English. These are by far the most important languages when referring to loanwords. There are many examples such as: / ('bracket'/'crochet'), ('jacket'), ('lipstick'), and / ('steak'/'slice'), ('street'), respectively, from French , , , , ; and ('steak'), , , /, , from English "beef," "football," "revolver," "stock," "folklore."
Examples from other European languages: ('pasta'), ('pilot'), ('carriage'), and ('barrack'), from Italian , , , and ; ('hair lock'), ('wet-cured ham') (in Portugal, in contrast with ''presunto'' 'dry-cured ham' from Latin ''prae-exsuctus'' 'dehydrated') or ('canned ham') (in Brazil, in contrast with non-canned, wet-cured (''presunto cozido'') and dry-cured (''presunto cru'')), or ''castelhano'' ('Castilian'), from Spanish ''melena'' ('mane'), ''fiambre'' and ''castellano.''
Classification and related languages
![Linguistic map Southwestern Europe](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/Linguistic_map_Southwestern_Europe-en.gif)
Portuguese belongs to the West Iberian languages, West Iberian branch of the Romance languages, and it has special ties with the following members of this group:
* Galician language, Galician, Fala language, Fala and Riverense Portuñol language, ''portunhol do pampa'' (the way ''riverense'' and its sibling dialects are referred to in Portuguese), its closest relatives.
* Mirandese language, Mirandese, Leonese language, Leonese, Asturian language, Asturian, Extremaduran language, Extremaduran and Cantabrian dialect, Cantabrian (Astur-Leonese languages). Mirandese is the only recognised regional language spoken in Portugal (beside Portuguese, the only official language in Portugal).
*
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...
and Caló language, ''calão'' (the way ''caló'', language of the Iberian Romani people, Romani, is referred to in Portuguese).
Portuguese and other Romance languages (namely
French and Italian language, Italian) share considerable similarities in both vocabulary and grammar. Portuguese speakers will usually need some formal study before attaining strong comprehension in those Romance languages, and vice versa. However, Portuguese and Galician are fully mutually intelligible, and Spanish is considerably intelligible for lusophones, owing to their genealogical proximity and shared genealogical history as West Iberian languages, West Iberian (Ibero-Romance languages), historical contact between speakers and mutual influence, shared areal features as well as modern lexical, structural, and grammatical similarity (89%) between them.
Portuñol/Portunhol, a form of code-switching, has a more lively use and is more readily mentioned in popular culture in South America. Said code-switching is not to be confused with the Portuñol spoken on the borders of Brazil with Uruguay () and Paraguay (), and of Portugal with Spain (), that are Portuguese dialects spoken natively by thousands of people, which have been heavily influenced by Spanish.
Portuguese and Spanish are the only Ibero-Romance languages, and perhaps the only Romance languages with such thriving inter-language forms, in which visible and lively bilingual contact dialects and code-switching have formed, in which functional bilingual communication is achieved through attempting an approximation to the target foreign language (known as 'Portuñol') without a learned acquisition process, but nevertheless facilitates communication. There is an emerging literature focused on such phenomena (including informal attempts of standardization of the linguistic continua and their usage).
Galician-Portuguese in Spain
The closest relative of Portuguese is Galician, which is spoken in the autonomous community (region) and historical nationality of
Galicia (northwestern Spain). The two were at one time a single language, known today as
Galician-Portuguese
Galician-Portuguese ( gl, galego-portugués or ', pt, galego-português or ), also known as Old Portuguese or as Medieval Galician when referring to the history of each modern language, was a West Iberian languages, West Iberian Romance languag ...
, but they have diverged especially in pronunciation and vocabulary due to the political separation of Portugal from Galicia. There is, however, still a linguistic continuity consisting of the variant of Galician referred to as ''galego-português baixo-limiao'', which is spoken in several Galician and Portuguese villages within the transboundary biosphere reserve of Peneda-Gerês National Park, Gerês-Baixa Limia – Serra do Xurés, Xurés. It is "considered a rarity, a living vestige of the medieval language that ranged from Cantabria to Mondego River, Mondego [...]".
As reported by UNESCO, due to the pressure of Spanish on the standard official version of Galician and centuries-old Hispanization, the Galician language was on the verge of disappearing.
According to the UNESCO philologist Tapani Salminen, the proximity to Portuguese protects Galician.
The core vocabulary and grammar of Galician are noticeably closer to Portuguese than to those of Spanish and within the EU context, Galician is often considered the same language as Portuguese.
Galician like Portuguese, uses the future subjunctive, the personal infinitive, and the synthetic pluperfect. Mutual intelligibility (estimated at 90% by R. A. Hall, Jr., 1989) is excellent between Galicians and northern Portuguese. Despite political efforts in Spain to define them as separate languages, many linguists consider Galician language, Galician to be a co-dialect of the Portuguese language with regional variations.
Another member of the Galician-Portuguese group, most commonly thought of as a Galician dialect, is spoken in the Galician-Asturian, Eonavian region in a western strip in Asturias and the westernmost parts of the provinces of Province of León, León and Province of Zamora, Zamora, along the frontier with Galicia, between the Eo (river), Eo and Navia (river), Navia rivers (or more exactly Eo and Frexulfe rivers). It is called ''eonaviego'' or ''gallego-asturiano'' by its speakers.
The Fala language, known by its speakers as ''xalimés'', ''mañegu'', ''a fala de Xálima'' and ''chapurráu'' and in Portuguese as ''a fala de Xálima'', ''a fala da Estremadura'', ''o galego da Estremadura'', ''valego'' or ''galaico-estremenho'', is another descendant of Galician-Portuguese, spoken by a small number of people in the Spanish towns of Valverde del Fresno (''Valverdi du Fresnu''), Eljas (''As Ellas'') and San Martín de Trevejo (''Sa Martín de Trevellu'') in the autonomous community of Extremadura, near the border with Portugal.
There are a number of other places in Spain in which the native language of the common people is a descendant of the Galician-Portuguese group, such as La Alamedilla, Cedillo (''Cedilho''), Herrera de Alcántara (''Ferreira d'Alcântara'') and Olivenza (''Olivença''), but in these municipalities, what is spoken is actually Portuguese, not disputed as such in the mainstream.
The diversity of dialects of the Portuguese language is known since the time of medieval Portuguese-Galician language when it coexisted with the Lusitanian-Mozarabic dialect, spoken in the south of Portugal. The dialectal diversity becomes more evident in the work of Fernão d'Oliveira, in the ''Grammatica da Lingoagem Portuguesa'', (1536), where he remarks that the people of Portuguese regions of Beira, Alentejo, Estremadura, and Entre Douro e Minho, all speak differently from each other. Also Contador d'Argote (1725) distinguishes three main varieties of dialects: the local dialects, the dialects of time, and of profession (work jargon). Of local dialects he highlights five main dialects: the dialect of Estremadura, of Entre-Douro e Minho, of Beira, of Algarve and of Trás-os-Montes. He also makes reference to the overseas dialects, the rustic dialects, the poetic dialect and that of prose.
In the kingdom of Portugal, ''Ladinho'' (or ''Lingoagem Ladinha'') was the name given to the pure Portuguese romance language, without any mixture of Aravia or Gerigonça Judenga. While the term ''língua vulgar'' was used to name the language before D. Dinis decided to call it "Portuguese language", the erudite version used and known as Galician-Portuguese (the language of the Portuguese court) and all other Portuguese dialects were spoken at the same time. In a historical perspective the Portuguese language was never just one dialect. Just like today there is a standard Portuguese (actually two) among the several dialects of Portuguese, in the past there was Galician-Portuguese as the "standard", coexisting with other dialects.
Influence on other languages
![St_Peter_Church_Melaka_3](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/St_Peter_Church_Melaka_3.jpg)
Portuguese has provided
loanword
A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because th ...
s to many languages, such as Indonesian language, Indonesian, Manado Malay, Malayalam, Sri Lanka Tamils (native), Sri Lankan Tamil and Sinhala language, Sinhala, Malay language, Malay, Bengali language, Bengali, English (language), English, Hindi, Swahili language, Swahili, Afrikaans, Konkani language, Konkani, Marathi language, Marathi, Punjabi language, Punjabi, Tetum language, Tetum, Tsonga language, Xitsonga, Japanese language, Japanese, Lanc-Patuá creole, Lanc-Patuá, Esan people#Language, Esan, Bandar Abbas, Bandari (spoken in Iran) and Sranan Tongo (spoken in Suriname). It left a strong influence on the ''Old Tupi, língua brasílica'', a Tupi–Guarani language, which was the most widely spoken in Brazil until the 18th century, and on the language spoken around Sikka Regency, Sikka in Flores Island,
Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...
. In nearby Larantuka, Portuguese is used for prayers in Holy Week rituals.
The Japanese–Portuguese dictionary ''Nippo Jisho'' (1603) was the first dictionary of Japanese in a European language, a product of Society of Jesus, Jesuit missionary activity in Japan. Building on the work of earlier Portuguese missionaries, the ''Dictionarium Anamiticum, Lusitanum et Latinum'' (Annamite–Portuguese–Latin dictionary) of Alexandre de Rhodes (1651) introduced the modern Vietnamese alphabet, orthography of Vietnamese, which is based on the orthography of 17th-century Portuguese. The Romanization of
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...
was also influenced by the Portuguese language (among others), particularly regarding List of common Chinese surnames, Chinese surnames; one example is ''Mei''. During 1583–88 Italians, Italian Jesuits Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci created a Portuguese–Chinese dictionary – the first ever European–Chinese dictionary.
[''Dicionário Português–Chinês : Pu Han ci dian: Portuguese–Chinese dictionary'', by Michele Ruggieri, Matteo Ricci; edited by John W. Witek. Published 2001, Biblioteca Nacional. ]
Partial preview
available on Google Books
For instance, as Portuguese Empire, Portuguese merchants were presumably the first to introduce the sweet orange in Europe, in several modern Indo-European languages the fruit has been named after them. Some examples are Albanian ''wikt:portokall#Albanian, portokall'', Bosnian (archaic) ''portokal'', ''prtokal'', Bulgarian wikt:портокал#Bulgarian, портокал (''portokal''), Greek wikt:πορτοκάλι#Greek, πορτοκάλι (''portokáli''), Macedonian language, Macedonian ', Persian wikt:پرتقال#Persian, پرتقال (''porteghal''), and Romanian ''wikt:portocală#Romanian, portocală''.
Related names can be found in other languages, such as Arabic wikt:البرتقال#Arabic, البرتقال (''burtuqāl''), Georgian language, Georgian wikt:ფორთოხალი#Georgian, ფორთოხალი (''p'ort'oxali''), Turkish ''wikt:portakal#Turkish, portakal'' and Amharic ''birtukan''.
Also, in southern Italian language, Italian dialects (e.g. Neapolitan language, Neapolitan), an orange is '':wikt:portogallo, portogallo'' or '':wikt:it:purtuallo, purtuallo'', literally "(the) Portuguese (one)", in contrast to standard Italian ''arancia''.
Derived languages
Beginning in the 16th century, the extensive contacts between Portuguese travelers and settlers, African and Asian slaves, and local populations led to the appearance of many pidgins with varying amounts of Portuguese influence.
As each of these pidgins became the mother tongue of succeeding generations, they evolved into fully fledged
creole language
A creole language, or simply creole, is a stable natural language that develops from the simplifying and mixing of different languages into a new one within a fairly brief period of time: often, a pidgin evolved into a full-fledged language. ...
s, which remained in use in many parts of Asia, Africa and South America until the 18th century.
Some Portuguese-based or Portuguese-influenced creoles are still spoken today, by over 3 million people worldwide, especially people of partial Portuguese people, Portuguese ancestry.
Phonology
Portuguese phonology is similar to those of languages such as Catalan phonology, Catalan and Franco-Provençal language, Franco-Provençal, whereas Spanish phonology, that of Spanish is similar to those of Sardinian language, Sardinian and the Neapolitan language, Southern Italian dialects. Some would describe the phonology of Portuguese as a blend of
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...
, Gallo-Romance languages, Gallo-Romance (e.g.
French) and the Gallo-Italic languages, languages of northern Italy (especially Genoese dialect, Genoese).
There is a maximum of 9 oral vowels, 2 semivowels and 21 consonants; though some varieties of the language have fewer Phoneme, phonemes. There are also five nasal vowels, which some linguists regard as Allophone, allophones of the oral vowels. Galician-Portuguese developed in the region of the former Roman province of Gallaecia, from the
Vulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin, also known as Popular or Colloquial Latin, is the range of non-formal Register (sociolinguistics), registers of Latin spoken from the Crisis of the Roman Republic, Late Roman Republic onward. Through time, Vulgar Latin would evolve ...
(common Latin) that had been introduced by Roman soldiers, colonists and magistrates during the time of the
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post-Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings around the Mediterr ...
. Although the process may have been slower than in other regions, the centuries of contact with Vulgar Latin, after a period of bilingualism, completely extinguished the native languages, leading to the evolution of a new variety of Latin with a few Gallaecian features.
Gallaecian language, Gallaecian and Lusitanian language, Lusitanian influences were absorbed into the local Vulgar Latin dialect, which can be detected in some Galician-Portuguese words as well as in placenames of Celtic language, Celtic and Iberians, Iberian origin.
An early form of Galician-Portuguese was already spoken in the Kingdom of the Suebi and by the year 800 Galician-Portuguese had already become the vernacular of northwestern Iberia.
The first known phonetic changes in Vulgar Latin, which began the evolution to Galician-Portuguese, took place during the rule of the Germanic groups, the
Suebi
The Suebi (or Suebians, also spelled Suevi, Suavi) were a large group of Germanic peoples originally from the Elbe river region in what is now Germany and the Czech Republic. In the early Roman era they included many peoples with their own names ...
(411–585) and
Visigoths
The Visigoths (; la, Visigothi, Wisigothi, Vesi, Visi, Wesi, Wisi) were an early Germanic people who, along with the Ostrogoths, constituted the two major political entities of the Goths within the Roman Empire in late antiquity, or what is ...
(585–711).
The Galician-Portuguese "inflected infinitive" (or "personal infinitive") and the nasal vowels may have evolved under the influence of local Celtic languages, Celtic (as in Old French). The nasal vowels would thus be a phonologic characteristic of the Vulgar Latin spoken in Roman Gallaecia, but they are not attested in writing until after the 6th and 7th centuries.
Vowels
![FUDACAO ORIENTE](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/FUDACAO_ORIENTE.jpg)
Like Catalan language, Catalan and German language, German, Portuguese uses vowel quality to contrast stressed syllables with unstressed syllables. Unstressed isolated vowels tend to be vowel height, raised and sometimes centralized.
Consonants
Phonetic notes
* Semivowels contrast with unstressed high vowels in verbal conjugation, as in ''(eu) rio'' and ''(ele) riu'' . Phonologists discuss whether their nature is vowel or consonant.
* In most of Brazil and Angola, the consonant hereafter denoted as is realized as a nasal palatal approximant , which Nasalization, nasalizes the vowel that precedes it: .
* proposes that Portuguese possesses labio-velar stops and as additional phonemes rather than sequences of a velar stop and .
* The consonant hereafter denoted as has a variety of realizations depending on dialect. In Europe, it is typically a uvular trill ; however, a pronunciation as a voiced uvular fricative may be becoming dominant in urban areas. There is also a realization as a voiceless uvular fricative , and the original pronunciation as an alveolar trill also remains very common in various dialects. A common realization of the word-initial in the Lisbon accent is a voiced uvular fricative trill .
In Brazil, can be velar consonant, velar, uvular consonant, uvular, or glottal consonant, glottal and may be voiceless unless between voiced sounds. It is usually pronounced as a voiceless velar fricative , a voiceless glottal fricative or voiceless uvular fricative . See also ''Guttural R#Portuguese, Guttural R in Portuguese''.
* and are normally , as in English. However, a number of dialects in northern Portugal pronounce and as apico-alveolar sibilants (sounding somewhat like a soft or ), as in the Romance languages of northern Iberia. A very few northeastern Portugal dialects still maintain the medieval distinction between apical and laminal sibilants (written ''s/ss'' and ''c/ç/z'', respectively).
* As a phoneme, occurs only in loanwords, with a tendency for speakers to substitute in . However, is an allophone of before in a number of Brazilian dialects. Similarly, is an allophone of in the same contexts.
* In northern and central Portugal, the voiced stops (, , and ) are usually lenited to fricatives , , and , respectively, except at the beginning of words or after nasal vowels.
At the end of a phrase, due to final-obstruent devoicing, they may even be devoiced to , , and (for example, ''verde'' at the end of a sentence may be pronounced ).
* Many speakers shift and to and respectively; in Brazil, many speakers further shift to . (A very similar evolution happened in Polish language, Polish.)
Grammar
A notable aspect of the grammar of Portuguese is the verb. Morphologically, more verbal inflections from classical Latin have been preserved by Portuguese than by any other major Romance language. Portuguese and Spanish share very similar grammar. Portuguese also has some grammatical innovations not found in other Romance languages (except Galician and Fala):
* The present perfect has an iterative sense unique to the Galician-Portuguese language group. It denotes an action or a series of actions that began in the past but expected to occur again in the future. For instance, the sentence ''Tenho tentado falar consigo'' would be translated to "I have been trying to talk to you", not "I have tried to talk to you." On the other hand, the correct translation of "Have you heard the latest news?" is not ''*Tens ouvido as últimas?'' but ''Ouviste as últimas?'' since no repetition is implied.
* Portuguese makes use of the future subjunctive mood, which developed from medieval West Iberian languages, West Iberian Romance. In modern Spanish and Galician, it has almost entirely fallen into disuse. The future subjunctive appears in dependent clauses that denote a condition that must be fulfilled in the future so that the independent clause will occur. English normally employs the present tense under the same circumstances:
:''Se eu ''for'' eleito presidente, mudarei a lei.''
:If ''I am'' elected president, I will change the law.
:''Quando ''fores'' mais velho, vais entender.''
:When ''you grow'' older, you will understand.
* The personal infinitive can inflection, inflect according to its subject in Grammatical person, person and Grammatical number, number. It often shows who is expected to perform a certain action. ''É melhor voltares'' "It is better [for you] to go back," ''É melhor voltarmos'' "It is better [for us] to go back." Perhaps for that reason, infinitive clauses replace subjunctive clauses more often in Portuguese than in other Romance languages.
Writing system
Sample text
Article 1 of the ''Universal Declaration of Human Rights'' in Portuguese:
:
Article 1 of the ''Universal Declaration of Human Rights'' in English:
:''All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.''
See also
* Portuguese literature
* Portuguese Africans
* Angolan literature
* Brazilian literature
* Gallaecian language
*Indo-Portuguese
* Reintegrationism, Galician Reintegrationism
* International Portuguese Language Institute
* List of countries and territories where Portuguese is an official language
* List of international organizations which have Portuguese as an official language
* List of Portuguese-language poets
* Lusitanian language
* Mozambican Portuguese
* Portuguese language in Asia
* Portuguese Language Orthographic Agreement of 1990
* Portuguese poetry
References
Citations
Sources
* ''História da Lingua Portuguesa''
Instituto Camões website
* ''A Língua Portuguesa'' i
Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil* ''Carta de dotação e fundação da Igreja de S. Miguel de Lardosa, a.D. 882 (o mais antigo documento latino-português original conhecido)'
; Literature
* ''Poesia e Prosa Medievais'', by Maria Ema Tarracha Ferreira, Ulisseia 1998, 3rd ed., .
* ''Bases Temáticas – Língua, Literatura e Cultura Portuguesa'' i
Instituto Camões
* ''Portuguese literature'' i
The Catholic Encyclopedia
; Phonology, orthography and grammar
*
* Bergström, Magnus & Reis, Neves ''Prontuário Ortográfico'' Editorial Notícias, 2004.
*
*
*
*
*
*
- Instituto Camões website
– Instituto Camões website
– Instituto Camões website
– Instituto Camões website
Portuguese Grammar – Learn101.org
; Reference dictionaries
* Antônio Houaiss (2000), ''Dicionário Houaiss da Língua Portuguesa'' (228,500 entries).
* Aurélio Buarque de Holanda Ferreira, ''Novo Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa'' (1809 pp.)
English–Portuguese–Chinese Dictionary (Freeware for Windows/Linux/Mac)
; Linguistic studies
* Cook, Manuela. Portuguese Pronouns and Other Forms of Address, from the Past into the Future – Structural, Semantic and Pragmatic Reflections, Ellipsis, vol. 11, APSA, www.portuguese-apsa.com/ellipsis, 2013
*
* Cook, Manuela. On the Portuguese Forms of Address: From ''Vossa Mercê'' to ''Você'', Portuguese Studies Review 3.2, Durham: University of New Hampshire, 1995
* Lindley Cintra, Luís F
''Nova Proposta de Classificação dos Dialectos Galego- Portugueses'' (PDF) Boletim de Filologia, Lisboa, Centro de Estudos Filológicos, 1971.
External links
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