Northern Portuguese is the oldest dialect of the

Portuguese language Portuguese ( or, in full, ) is a western Romance language of the Indo-European language family, originating in the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. It is an official language of Portugal, Brazil, Cape Verde, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau and ...

. It is spoken in coastal northern

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 ...

from

Viana do Castelo Viana do Castelo () is a municipality and seat of the district of Viana do Castelo in the Norte Region of Portugal. The population in 2011 was 88,725, in an area of 319.02 km². The urbanized area of the municipality, comprising the city, ...

Porto Porto or Oporto () is the second-largest city in Portugal, the capital of the Porto District, and one of the Iberian Peninsula's major urban areas. Porto city proper, which is the entire municipality of Porto, is small compared to its metropol ...

and stretching inland as far as

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 ...

. The region is considered the birthplace of the Portuguese language. It is popularly known as ''Nortenho'' (Northerner), but linguists traditionally call it Interâmnico or Interamense to differentiate it from other dialects spoken inland in northern Portugal. The dialects of Northern Portuguese constitute one of the major groupings of the Portuguese language. There are two subdialects: Porto-Póvoa and Braga-Viana. Each of these sub-dialects is further divided into Porto, Póvoa, Braga, and Viana. Every accent in the region is derived from the accents in these four hubs. The dialectal map of Leite de Vasconcelos, 1893–1897, proposed that the Northern Portuguese had three subdialects in a dialect, subdialect, and variety organization: *Alto-minhoto (between Minho and

Lima Lima ( ; ), originally founded as Ciudad de Los Reyes (City of The Kings) is the capital and the largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, Rímac and Lurín Rivers, in the desert zone of the central coastal part of ...

rivers); *Baixo-minhoto (between Lima and

Douro The Douro (, , ; es, Duero ; la, Durius) is the highest-flow river of the Iberian Peninsula. It rises near Duruelo de la Sierra in Soria Province, central Spain, meanders south briefly then flows generally west through the north-west part o ...

rivers), that included the Variety of Porto and the Variety of Póvoa; *Baixo-duriense (between Tâmega and Corgo rivers).

References

Portuguese dialects {{Portugal-stub