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, originating in the
Iberian Peninsula of
Europe. It is an official language of
Portugal,
Brazil,
Cape Verde
, national_anthem = ()
, official_languages = Portuguese
, national_languages = Cape Verdean Creole
, capital = Praia
, coordinates =
, largest_city = capital
, demonym ...
,
Angola,
Mozambique,
Guinea-Bissau 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,
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. 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 and the
County of Portugal, 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. Being the most widely spoken language in
South America and all of the
Southern Hemisphere, it is also the second-most spoken language, after
Spanish, in
Latin America, one of the 10 most spoken languages in
Africa, and an official language of the
European Union,
Mercosur, 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
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, 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 arrived in the
Iberian Peninsula in 216 BC, they brought with them the
Latin language, 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 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, 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 collapsed in
Western Europe, the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by
Germanic peoples 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 and
Buri who originally spoke
Germanic languages, 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 became the administrative and common language in the conquered regions, but most of the
remaining Christian population continued to speak a form of
Romance commonly known as
Mozarabic, which lasted three centuries longer in
Spain. Like other Neo-Latin and European languages, Portuguese has adopted a significant number of
loanwords from
Greek, 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, Old Portuguese or Old Galician, of the northwestern medieval
Kingdom of Galicia of which the
County of Portugal was part.
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 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
Galicia may refer to:
Geographic regions
* Galicia (Spain), a region and autonomous community of northwestern Spain
** Gallaecia, a Roman province
** The post-Roman Kingdom of the Suebi, also called the Kingdom of Gallaecia
** The medieval King ...
.
In the first part of the
Galician-Portuguese 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 in Christian
Hispania, much as
Occitan 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, a monk from
Moissac, who became bishop of
Braga in Portugal in 1047, playing a major role in modernizing written Portuguese using classical
Occitan norms. Portugal became an independent kingdom in 1139, under King
Afonso I of Portugal. 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) 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 missionary efforts, which led to the formation of
creole languages 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,
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, and
Indonesia 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, 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 and
Classical Greek because of the
Renaissance (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 once called Portuguese "the sweet and gracious language", while the Brazilian poet
Olavo Bilac described it as ("the last flower of
Latium, naïve and beautiful"). Portuguese is also termed "the language of Camões," after
Luís Vaz de Camões, one of the greatest literary figures in the Portuguese language and author of the Portuguese
epic poem ''
The Lusiads''.
In March 2006, the
Museum of the Portuguese Language, an interactive museum about the Portuguese language, was founded in
São Paulo, 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
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. Portuguese is mentioned in the
Constitution of South Africa as one of the languages spoken by communities within the country for which the
Pan South African Language Board was charged with promoting and ensuring respect.
There are also significant Portuguese-speaking immigrant communities in many countries including
Andorra (17.1%),
Bermuda,
Canada (400,275 people in the 2006 census),
France (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,
Luxembourg (about 25% of the population as of 2021),
Namibia (about 4–5% of the population, mainly refugees from Angola in the north of the country),
Paraguay (10.7% or 636,000 people),
Macau (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 (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 and
Daman and Diu, the language is still spoken by about 10,000 people. In 2014, an estimated 1,500 students were learning Portuguese in Goa.
Official status
The
Community of Portuguese Language Countries
(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:
Angola,
Brazil,
Cape Verde
, national_anthem = ()
, official_languages = Portuguese
, national_languages = Cape Verdean Creole
, capital = Praia
, coordinates =
, largest_city = capital
, demonym ...
,
East Timor,
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,
Mozambique,
Portugal 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 and
French
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
) 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) and of several international organizations, including
Mercosur, 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 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
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
Southern African Development Community and the
European Union.
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
A diaspora ( ) is a population that is scattered across regions which are separate from its geographic place of origin. Historically, the word was used first in reference to the dispersion of Greeks in the Hellenic world, and later Jews after ...
, 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
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,
Zambia, the
Republic of the Congo
The Republic of the Congo (french: République du Congo, ln, Republíki ya Kongó), also known as Congo-Brazzaville, the Congo Republic or simply either Congo or the Congo, is a country located in the western coast of Central Africa to the w ...
,
Senegal,
Namibia,
Eswatini (Swaziland),
South Africa,
Ivory Coast
Ivory Coast, also known as Côte d'Ivoire, officially the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire, is a country on the southern coast of West Africa. Its capital is Yamoussoukro, in the centre of the country, while its largest city and economic centre is ...
, 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) first language speakers in
Goa,
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, etc. due to
Portuguese colonization
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 ...
. 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
Most languages of Europe belong to the Indo-European language family. Out of a total European population of 744 million as of 2018, some 94% are native speakers of an Indo-European language. Within Indo-European, the three largest phyla are Rom ...
after
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.
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, Portuguese is either mandatory, or taught, in the schools of those South American countries.
Although early in the 21st century, after
Macau was returned to
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
and immigration of Brazilians of
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, an official language of NATO,
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 ...
(alongside Spanish, French and English), one of eighteen official languages of the
European Space Agency
, owners =
, headquarters = Paris, Île-de-France, France
, coordinates =
, spaceport = Guiana Space Centre
, seal = File:ESA emblem seal.png
, seal_size = 130px
, image = Views in the Main Control Room (1205 ...
.
It is also a working language in nonprofit organisations such as the
Red Cross (alongside English, German, Spanish, French, Arabic and Russian),
Amnesty International
Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says it has more than ten million members and sup ...
(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
The African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights, also known simply as the African Court, is an international court established by member states of the African Union (AU) to implement provisions of the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights ...
, also in
Community of Portuguese Language Countries, an international organization formed essentially by
lusophone countries.
Dialects, accents and varieties
, 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.
Modern Standard
European Portuguese ( or ) is based on the Portuguese spoken in the area including and surrounding the cities of
Coimbra and
Lisbon
Lisbon (; pt, Lisboa ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 544,851 within its administrative limits in an area of 100.05 km2. Grande Lisboa, Lisbon's urban area extends beyond the city's administr ...
, 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
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
.
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'' – Spoken in the states of
São Paulo (most markedly on the countryside and rural areas); southern
Minas Gerais, northern
Paraná and southeastern
Mato Grosso do Sul
Mato Grosso do Sul () is one of the Midwestern states of Brazil. Neighboring Brazilian states are (from north clockwise) Mato Grosso, Goiás, Minas Gerais, São Paulo and Paraná. It also borders the countries of Paraguay, to the southwest, and ...
. 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
Belo Horizonte (, ; ) is the sixth-largest city in Brazil, with a population around 2.7 million and with a metropolitan area of 6 million people. It is the 13th-largest city in South America and the 18th-largest in the Americas. The metropol ...
. It is often said that ''caipira'' appeared by
decreolization of the
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
Colonial Brazil ( pt, Brasil Colonial) comprises the period from 1500, with the arrival of the Portuguese, until 1815, when Brazil was elevated to a kingdom in union with Portugal as the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves. Durin ...
, closely related to its northern counterpart
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
stigmatized as being strongly associated with a
substandard variant, now mostly rural.
#
''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
syllable-timed rhythm and the greatest tendency to pronounce unstressed vowels as open-mid and .
#
''Fluminense''nbsp;– A broad dialect with many variants spoken in the states of
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'' – in
Rio Grande do Sul
Rio Grande do Sul (, , ; "Great River of the South") is a Federative units of Brazil, state in the South Region, Brazil, southern region of Brazil. It is the Federative_units_of_Brazil#List, fifth-most-populous state and the List of Brazilian st ...
, 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
Spanish-speaking nations. The ''gaúcho'' word in itself is a Spanish
loanword into Portuguese of obscure
Indigenous Amerindian origins.
#
''
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
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,
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
Belo Horizonte (, ; ) is the sixth-largest city in Brazil, with a population around 2.7 million and with a metropolitan area of 6 million people. It is the 13th-largest city in South America and the 18th-largest in the Americas. The metropol ...
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
The agreste (, "countryside") is a narrow zone of Brazil in the states of Rio Grande do Norte, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Alagoas, Sergipe and Bahia between the coastal forest ''zona da mata'' and the semiarid ''sertão''. The agreste fades out after ...
) 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
along the coasts. It can be divided in two regional variants, one that includes the northern
Maranhão and southern of
Piauí
Piaui (, ) is one of the states of Brazil, located in the country's Northeast Region. The state has 1.6% of the Brazilian population and produces 0.7% of the Brazilian GDP.
Piaui has the shortest coastline of any coastal Brazilian state at 66&n ...
, and other that goes from
Ceará
Ceará (, pronounced locally as or ) is one of the 26 states of Brazil, located in the northeastern part of the country, on the Atlantic coast. It is the eighth-largest Brazilian State by population and the 17th by area. It is also one of the ...
to
Alagoas.
# ''Nortista'' or ''amazofonia'' – Most of
Amazon Basin
The Amazon basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its tributaries. The Amazon drainage basin covers an area of about , or about 35.5 percent of the South American continent. It is located in the countries of Bolivi ...
states, i.e.
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
Manaus () is the capital and largest city of the Brazilian state of Amazonas. It is the seventh-largest city in Brazil, with an estimated 2020 population of 2,219,580 distributed over a land area of about . Located at the east center of the s ...
has a more European flavor in phonology, prosody and grammar.
# ''
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
the state of São Paulo (where it coexists with ''caipira''). ''Caipira'' is the hinterland sociolect of much of the
Central-Southern half of Brazil, nowadays conservative only in the rural areas and associated with them, that has a historically
low prestige in cities as Rio de Janeiro, Curitiba, Belo Horizonte, and until some years ago, in São Paulo itself.
Sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any or all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and society's effect on language. It can overlap with the sociology of l ...
, or what by times is described as "
linguistic prejudice", often correlated with
classism, is a polemic topic in the entirety of the country since the times of
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-Western states, and also much of
Tocantins and
Rondônia
Rondônia () is one of the 26 states of Brazil, located in the northern subdivision of the country (central-western part). To the west is a short border with the state of Acre, to the north is the state of Amazonas, in the east is Mato Grosso, ...
. 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
Rio Grande do Sul (, , ; "Great River of the South") is a Federative units of Brazil, state in the South Region, Brazil, southern region of Brazil. It is the Federative_units_of_Brazil#List, fifth-most-populous state and the List of Brazilian st ...
and southern regions of São Paulo state, encompassing most of
southern Brazil
The South Region of Brazil (; ) is one of the five regions of Brazil. It includes the states of Paraná, Rio Grande do Sul, and Santa Catarina, and covers , being the smallest region of the country, occupying only about 6.76% of the territory ...
. The city of
Curitiba does have a fairly distinct accent as well, and a relative majority of speakers around and in
Florianópolis
Florianópolis () is the capital and second largest city of the state of Santa Catarina, in the South region of Brazil. The city encompasses Santa Catarina Island and surrounding small islands, as well as part of the mainland. It has a populat ...
also speak this variant (many speak ''florianopolitano'' or ''manezinho da ilha'' instead, related to the European Portuguese dialects spoken in
Azores and
Madeira
)
, anthem = ( en, "Anthem of the Autonomous Region of Madeira")
, song_type = Regional anthem
, image_map=EU-Portugal_with_Madeira_circled.svg
, map_alt=Location of Madeira
, map_caption=Location of Madeira
, subdivision_type=Sovereign st ...
). Speech of northern Paraná is closer to that of inland São Paulo.
# ''
Florianopolitano'' – Variants heavily influenced by European Portuguese spoken in
Florianópolis
Florianópolis () is the capital and second largest city of the state of Santa Catarina, in the South region of Brazil. The city encompasses Santa Catarina Island and surrounding small islands, as well as part of the mainland. It has a populat ...
city (due to a heavy immigration movement from Portugal, mainly its
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
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 ''
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
deforested
Deforestation or forest clearance is the removal of a forest or stand of trees from land that is then converted to non-forest use. Deforestation can involve conversion of forest land to farms, ranches, or urban use. The most concentrated d ...
areas.
# ''Recifense'' – used in
Recife and its metropolitan area.
Portugal
#
''Micaelense (Açores)''(São Miguel) –
Azores.
#
''Alentejano''–
Alentejo
Alentejo ( , ) is a geographical, historical, and cultural region of south–central and southern Portugal. In Portuguese, its name means "beyond () the Tagus river" (''Tejo'').
Alentejo includes the regions of Alto Alentejo and Baixo Alent ...
(
Alentejan Portuguese)
#
''Algarvio''–
Algarve (there is a particular dialect in a small part of western Algarve).
#
''Minhoto''nbsp;– Districts of
Braga and Viana do Castelo (hinterland).
#
''Beirão''; ''Alto-Alentejano''– Central Portugal (hinterland).
#
– Central Portugal.
#
nbsp;– Regions of
Coimbra and
Lisbon
Lisbon (; pt, Lisboa ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 544,851 within its administrative limits in an area of 100.05 km2. Grande Lisboa, Lisbon's urban area extends beyond the city's administr ...
(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
)
, anthem = ( en, "Anthem of the Autonomous Region of Madeira")
, song_type = Regional anthem
, image_map=EU-Portugal_with_Madeira_circled.svg
, map_alt=Location of Madeira
, map_caption=Location of Madeira
, subdivision_type=Sovereign st ...
.
#
''Portuense''nbsp;– Regions of the district of
Porto and parts of
Aveiro.
#
''Transmontano''nbsp;–
Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro.
Other countries and dependencies
* –
''Angolano'' (
Angolan Portuguese
Angolan Portuguese ( pt, Português de Angola) is a group of dialects and accents of the Portuguese language used mostly in Angola, where it is an official language. In 2005 it was used there by 60% of the population, including by 20% as their f ...
)
* –
''Cabo-verdiano''(
Cape Verdean Portuguese
Cape Verdean Portuguese ( pt, Português cabo-verdiano) is the variety of Portuguese language, Portuguese spoken in Cape Verde.
Status
While Cape Verdean Creole is the mother tongue of nearly all the population in Cape Verde, Portuguese i ...
)
* –
''Timorense''(
East Timorese Portuguese)
* – ''Damaense'' (Damanese Portuguese) and ''Goês'' (
Goan Portuguese)
* –
''Guineense''(
Guinean Portuguese)
* –
''Macaense''(
Macanese Portuguese)
* –
''Moçambicano''(
Mozambican Portuguese)
* –
''Santomense''(
São Tomean Portuguese)
* –
''Dialectos Portugueses del Uruguay (DPU)''
Differences between dialects are mostly of
accent Accent may refer to:
Speech and language
* Accent (sociolinguistics), way of pronunciation particular to a speaker or group of speakers
* Accent (phonetics), prominence given to a particular syllable in a word, or a word in a phrase
** Pitch ac ...
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-based creoles spoken in various parts of Africa, Asia, and the Americas are independent languages.
Characterization and peculiarities
Portuguese, like
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. ''
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
intervocalic ''l'' and ''n'', sometimes followed by the merger of the two surrounding vowels, or by the insertion of an
epenthetic vowel between them: cf. Lat. ' ("to exit"), ' ("to have"), ' ("jail"), Port. ', ', '.
When the
elided consonant was ''n'', it often
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
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 ...
that preserves the clitic case
mesoclisis: cf. (I'll give thee), (I'll love you), (I'll contact them). Like
Galician, it also retains the Latin synthetic
pluperfect tense: (I had been), (I had lived), (you had lived).
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
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
loanwords from other languages around the world.
A number of Portuguese words can still be traced to the
pre-Roman inhabitants of Portugal, which included the
Gallaeci,
Lusitanians,
Celtici and
Cynetes. Most of these words derived from the
Hispano-Celtic Gallaecian language of northwestern Iberia, and are very often shared with
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
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 ...
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
Roman Hispania) was conquered by the
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. As they adopted the Roman civilization and language, however, these people contributed with some 500
Germanic words to the lexicon. Many of these words are related to:
* warfare, such as 'spur', ('stake'), and ('war'), from
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 influence also exists in
toponymic surnames and
patronymic surname
A patronymic surname is a surname originated from the given name of the father or a patrilineal ancestor. Different cultures have different ways of producing patronymic surnames.
For example, early patronymic Welsh surnames were the result of th ...
s borne by Visigoth sovereigns and their descendants, and it dwells on placenames such as
Ermesinde,
Esposende and
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, 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
Galicia may refer to:
Geographic regions
* Galicia (Spain), a region and autonomous community of northwestern Spain
** Gallaecia, a Roman province
** The post-Roman Kingdom of the Suebi, also called the Kingdom of Gallaecia
** The medieval King ...
.
Between the 9th and early 13th centuries, Portuguese acquired some 400 to 600 words from
Arabic by influence of
Moorish Iberia. They are often recognizable by the initial
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''.
Starting in the 15th century, the Portuguese maritime explorations led to the introduction of many loanwords from Asian languages. For instance, ('
cutlass') from
Japanese ''
katana'', ('tea') from
Chinese ''
chá'', and ''
canja
(literally "chicken congee"), or simply , is a popular chicken soup of Portuguese cuisine, Portuguese, Cape Verdean cuisine, Cape Verdean, and Brazilian cuisine, Brazilian cuisine. The Portuguese language, Portuguese term literally means "hen", ...
'' ('chicken-soup, piece of cake') from
Malay
Malay may refer to:
Languages
* Malay language or Bahasa Melayu, a major Austronesian language spoken in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore
** History of the Malay language, the Malay language from the 4th to the 14th century
** Indonesi ...
.
From the 16th to the 19th centuries, because of the role of Portugal as intermediary in the
Atlantic slave trade
The Atlantic slave trade, transatlantic slave trade, or Euro-American slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas. The slave trade regularly used the triangular trade route and i ...
, and the establishment of large Portuguese colonies in Angola, Mozambique, and Brazil, Portuguese acquired several words of African and
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
Kimbundu, a Bantu language which has sometimes been called Mbundu
or 'North Mbundu' (see Umbundu), is the second-most-widely-spoken Bantu language in Angola.
Its speakers are concentrated in the north-west of the country, notably in the Lua ...
, 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
Taino; and , from
Tupi–Guarani ''naná'' and
Tupi Tupi may refer to:
* Tupi people of Brazil
* Tupi or Tupian languages, spoken in South America
** Tupi language, an extinct Tupian language spoken by the Tupi people
* Tupi oil field off the coast of Brazil
* Tupi Paulista, a Brazilian municipalit ...
''ibá cati'', respectively (two species of
pineapple), and ('
popcorn
Popcorn (also called popped corn, popcorns or pop-corn) is a variety of corn kernel which expands and puffs up when heated; the same names also refer to the foodstuff produced by the expansion.
A popcorn kernel's strong hull contains the se ...
') from Tupi and ('
toucan') from
Guarani ''tucan''.
Finally, it has received a steady influx of loanwords from other European languages, especially French and
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
Portuguese belongs to the
West Iberian branch of the
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 ...
s, and it has special ties with the following members of this group:
*
Galician,
Fala
The Armed Forces of the Liberation of Angola ( pt, Forças Armadas de Libertação de Angola) or FALA was the armed wing of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), a prominent political faction during the Angolan Civil ...
and
''portunhol do pampa'' (the way ''riverense'' and its sibling dialects are referred to in Portuguese), its closest relatives.
*
Mirandese
The Mirandese language ( mwl, mirandés, links=no or ''lhéngua mirandesa''; pt, mirandês or ) is an Astur-Leonese language or language variety that is sparsely spoken in a small area of northeastern Portugal in Terra de Miranda (made up of th ...
,
Leonese,
Asturian,
Extremaduran and
Cantabrian (
Astur-Leonese languages). Mirandese is the only recognised regional language spoken in Portugal (beside Portuguese, the only official language in Portugal).
*
Spanish and
''calão'' (the way ''caló'', language of the Iberian
Romani
Romani may refer to:
Ethnicities
* Romani people, an ethnic group of Northern Indian origin, living dispersed in Europe, the Americas and Asia
** Romani genocide, under Nazi rule
* Romani language, any of several Indo-Aryan languages of the Roma ...
, is referred to in Portuguese).
Portuguese and other Romance languages (namely
French
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
and
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 (
Ibero-Romance languages), historical contact between speakers and mutual influence, shared
areal features
In geolinguistics, areal features are elements shared by languages or dialects in a geographic area, particularly when such features are not descended from a proto-language, or, common ancestor language. That is, an areal feature is contrasted to ...
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
Galicia may refer to:
Geographic regions
* Galicia (Spain), a region and autonomous community of northwestern Spain
** Gallaecia, a Roman province
** The post-Roman Kingdom of the Suebi, also called the Kingdom of Gallaecia
** The medieval King ...
(northwestern Spain). The two were at one time a single language, known today as
Galician-Portuguese, 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
Gerês-
Xurés. It is "considered a rarity, a living vestige of the medieval language that ranged from
Cantabria to
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 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
Eonavian region in a western strip in
Asturias and the westernmost parts of the provinces of
León and
Zamora, along the frontier with Galicia, between the
Eo and
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
Portuguese has provided
loanwords to many languages, such as
Indonesian,
Manado Malay,
Malayalam,
Sri Lankan Tamil
Sri Lankan Tamils ( or ), also known as Ceylon Tamils or Eelam Tamils, are Tamils native to the South Asian island state of Sri Lanka. Today, they constitute a majority in the Northern Province, live in significant numbers in the Eastern Pr ...
and
Sinhala,
Malay
Malay may refer to:
Languages
* Malay language or Bahasa Melayu, a major Austronesian language spoken in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore
** History of the Malay language, the Malay language from the 4th to the 14th century
** Indonesi ...
,
Bengali,
English,
Hindi,
Swahili
Swahili may refer to:
* Swahili language, a Bantu language official in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda and widely spoken in the African Great Lakes
* Swahili people, an ethnic group in East Africa
* Swahili culture
Swahili culture is the culture of ...
,
Afrikaans,
Konkani,
Marathi
Marathi may refer to:
*Marathi people, an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group of Maharashtra, India
*Marathi language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people
*Palaiosouda, also known as Marathi, a small island in Greece
See also
*
* ...
,
Punjabi
Punjabi, or Panjabi, most often refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to Punjab, a region in India and Pakistan
* Punjabi language
* Punjabi people
* Punjabi dialects and languages
Punjabi may also refer to:
* Punjabi (horse), a British Th ...
,
Tetum,
Xitsonga,
Japanese,
Lanc-Patuá,
Esan,
Bandari (spoken in Iran) and
Sranan Tongo (spoken in Suriname). It left a strong influence on the ''
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 in
Flores
Flores is one of the Lesser Sunda Islands, a group of islands in the eastern half of Indonesia. Including the Komodo Islands off its west coast (but excluding the Solor Archipelago to the east of Flores), the land area is 15,530.58 km2, and th ...
Island,
Indonesia. In nearby
Larantuka
Larantuka () is a ''kecamatan'' (district) and the seat capital of East Flores Regency, on the eastern end of Flores Island, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia. Like much of the region, Larantuka has a strong a colonial Portuguese influence. The town ...
, 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
Jesuit
, image = Ihs-logo.svg
, image_size = 175px
, caption = ChristogramOfficial seal of the Jesuits
, abbreviation = SJ
, nickname = Jesuits
, formation =
, founders ...
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
orthography of Vietnamese, which is based on the orthography of 17th-century Portuguese. The
Romanization of
Chinese was also influenced by the Portuguese language (among others), particularly regarding
Chinese surnames; one example is ''Mei''. During 1583–88
Italian Jesuits Michele Ruggieri and
Matteo Ricci
Matteo Ricci, SJ (; la, Mattheus Riccius; 6 October 1552 – 11 May 1610), was an Italians, Italian Society of Jesus, Jesuit Priesthood in the Catholic Church, priest and one of the founding figures of the Jesuit China missions. He create ...
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 merchants
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
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 ''
portokall'', Bosnian (archaic) ''portokal'', ''prtokal'', Bulgarian
портокал (''portokal''), Greek
πορτοκάλι (''portokáli''),
Macedonian
Macedonian most often refers to someone or something from or related to Macedonia.
Macedonian(s) may specifically refer to:
People Modern
* Macedonians (ethnic group), a nation and a South Slavic ethnic group primarily associated with North M ...
', Persian
پرتقال (''porteghal''), and 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 languages, 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, Gallo-Romance languages, Gallo-Romance (e.g.
French
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
) 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. 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 (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
Like
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
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 ...
. 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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