Portuguese Dialects

Portuguese dialects are the mutually intelligible variations of the Portuguese language over Portuguese-speaking countries and other areas holding some degree of cultural bound with the language. Portuguese has two standard forms of writing and numerous regional spoken variations (with often large phonological and lexical differences).

In Portugal, the language is regulated by the Sciences Academy of Lisbon, Class of Letters and its national dialect is called European Portuguese. This written variation is the one preferred by Portuguese ex-colonies in Africa and Asia, including Cabo Verde, Mozambique, Angola, Timor-Leste, Macau and Goa. The written form of Portuguese used in Brazil is regulated by the Brazilian Academy of Letters and is sometimes called Brazilian Portuguese (although the term primarily means all dialects spoken in Brazil as a whole).

Differences between European and Brazilian written forms of Portuguese occur in a similar way (and are often compared to) those of British English and American, though spelling divergencies were generally believed to occur with a little greater frequency in the two Portuguese written dialects until a new standard orthography came into full effect in the 2010s. Differences in syntax and word construction, not directly related with spelling, are also observed. Furthermore, there were attempts to unify the two written variations, the most recent of them being the Orthographic Agreement of 1990, which only began to take effect in the 2000s and is still under implementation in some countries. This and previous reforms faced criticism by people who say they are unnecessary or inefficient or even that they create more differences instead of reducing or eliminating them.

The differences between the various spoken Portuguese dialects are mostly in phonology, in the frequency of usage of certain grammatical forms, and especially in the distance between the formal and informal levels of speech. Lexical differences are numerous but largely confined to "peripheral" words, such as plants, animals, and other local items, with little impact in the core lexicon.

Dialectal deviations from the official grammar are relatively few. As a consequence, all Portuguese dialects are mutually intelligible although for some of the most extremely divergent pairs, the phonological changes may make it difficult for speakers to understand rapid speech.

Main subdivisions

Europe

The dialects of Portugal can be divided into two major groups:
*The southern and central dialects are broadly characterized by preserving the distinction between and , and by the tendency to monophthongize ''ei'' and ''ou'' to and . They include the dialect of the capital, Lisbon, but it has some peculiarities of its own. Although the dialects of the Atlantic archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira have unique characteristics, as well, they can also be grouped with the southern dialects.
*The northern dialects are characterized by preserving the pronunciation of ''ei'' and ''ou'' as diphthongs , , and by somewhat having sometimes merged with (like in Spanish). They include the dialect of Porto, Portugal's second largest city.

Within each of these regions, however, is further variation, especially in pronunciation. For example, in Lisbon and its vicinity, the diphthong ''ei'' is centralized to instead of being monophthongized, as in the south.

It is usually believed that the dialects of Brazil, Africa, and Asia are derived mostly from those of central and southern Portugal.

Barranquenho

In the Portuguese town of Barrancos (on the border between Extremadura, Andalucia and Portugal), a dialect of Portuguese heavily influenced by Southern Spanish dialects, known as ''barranquenho'' is spoken by a small community of 1500 people.

South America

Brazilian dialects are divided into northern and southern groups, the northern dialects tending to slightly more open pre- stressed vowels. The dialects of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro have had some influence on the rest of the country in Brazil due to their economic and cultural dominance in the country. However, migration from the Northern states to the Southern states cause the influence to be a two-way phenomenon. Cultural issues also play their roles. Speakers of the ''Gaúcho'' accent, for example, usually have strong feelings about their own way of speaking and are largely uninfluenced by the other accents. Also, people of inner cities of the three southern states usually speak with a very notable German, Italian or Polish accent, and among the inhabitants of the Santa Catarina Island (i.e. insular Florianópolis), the Azorean Portuguese dialect, in its local variant, predominates.

Between Brazilian Portuguese, particularly in its most informal varieties, and European Portuguese, there can be noticeable differences in grammar, aside from the differences in pronunciation and vocabulary. The most prominent ones concern the placement of clitic pronouns, and the use of subject pronouns as objects in the third person. Non-standard inflections are also common in colloquial Brazilian Portuguese.

Africa, Asia and Oceania

For historical reasons, the dialects of Africa are generally closer to those of Portugal than the Brazilian dialects, but in some aspects of their phonology, especially the pronunciation of unstressed vowels, they resemble Brazilian Portuguese more than European Portuguese. They have not been studied as exhaustively as European and Brazilian Portuguese.

Asian Portuguese dialects are similar to the African ones and so are generally close to those of Portugal. In Macau, the syllable onset rhotic is pronounced as a voiced uvular fricative or uvular trill .

Notable features of some dialects

Many dialects have special characteristics. Most of the differences are seen in phonetics and phonology, and here are some of the more prominent:

Conservative

*In some regions of northern Portugal and Brazil, the digraph ''ou'' still denotes a falling diphthong , but it has been monophthongized to by most speakers of Portuguese.
*In the dialects of Alto-Minho and Trás-os-Montes (northern Portugal), the digraph ''ch'' still denotes the affricate , as in Galicia, but for most speakers, it has merged with .
*Some dialects of northern Portugal still contrast the predorsodental sibilants ''c''/''ç'' and ''z'' with apicoalveolar sibilants ''s(s)'' and ''s'' , with minimal pairs such as ''passo'' "step" and ''paço'' "palace" or ''coser'' "to sew" and ''cozer'' "to cook", which are homophones in most dialects. The other dialects of northern Portugal that have lost this distinction have apicoalveolar sibilants instead of the predorsodental fricatives, found in all southern dialects of Portugal as well as in Brazil. In those dialects, they also appear in syllable codas instead of the realizations that can be observed in all southern dialects.
*In northern Portugal, the pronoun ''vós'' and its associated verb forms are still in use.
*In Alentejo and parts of the Algarve (southern Portugal), one finds word-final where standard EP has , a feature shared with BP.
*Also in Brazil, Alentejo and the Algarve, progressive constructions are formed with the gerund form of verbs instead of ''a'' followed by the infinitive that one finds in most dialects of Portugal: ''está chovendo'' vs. ''está a chover'' ("it's raining").

Innovative

*In central and southern Portugal (except the city of Lisbon and its vicinity), the diphthong is monophthongized to . The nasal diphthong is often monophthongized to as well.
*In and near Lisbon, and are pronounced and , respectively. Furthermore, stressed is pronounced or before a palato-alveolar or a palatal consonant followed by another vowel.
*In the dialect of the Beiras (Beira Interior Norte