Portuguese
português
Pronunciation	[puɾtuˈɣeʃ] (EP) [portuˈɡe(j)s][1] (BP) [poɾtuˈɣes]1 (G)
Spoken in	See geographic distribution of Portuguese
Native speakers	203 million Total: 252 million (2011)[2]
Language family	Indo-European Italic Romance Western Romance Gallo-Iberian Ibero-Romance West-Iberian Galician-Portuguese Portuguese
Writing system	Latin (Portuguese alphabet)
Official status
Official language in	9 countries  Angola  Brazil  Cape Verde  East Timor  Equatorial Guinea  Guinea-Bissau  Mozambique  Portugal  São Tomé and Príncipe 1 dependency  Macau (China) Numerous international organisations
Regulated by	International Portuguese Language Institute Academia Brasileira de Letras (Brazil) Academia das Ciências de Lisboa, Classe de Letras (Portugal) CPLP
Language codes
ISO 639-1	pt
ISO 639-2	por
ISO 639-3	por
Linguasphere	51-AAA-a
Native language   Official and administrative language   Cultural or secondary language   Portuguese speaking minorities   Portuguese-based creole languages
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Portuguese ( português (help·info) or língua portuguesa) is a Romance language. It is the official language of Portugal, Brazil, Mozambique, Angola, Cape Verde, Guiné-Bissau and São Tomé e Príncipe.^[3] Portuguese has co-official status (alongside the indigenous language) in Macau, and in East Timor in South East Asia; Portuguese speakers are also found in Goa in India.^[4]

Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes once called Portuguese "the sweet language" and Spanish playwright Lope de Vega referred to it as "sweet", while the Brazilian writer Olavo Bilac poetically described it as a última flor do Lácio, inculta e bela (the last flower of Latium, wild and beautiful). Portuguese is also termed "the language of Camões", after one of Portugal's greatest literary figures, Luís Vaz de Camões.^[5][6][7]

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.^[8]

With a total of 236 million speakers, Portuguese is the 6th most spoken language in the world, the 3rd most spoken language in the western hemisphere, and the most spoken language in the southern hemisphere.

History[link]

When Romans arrived in the Iberian Peninsula in 216 BC, they brought the Latin language, from which all Romance languages descend. The language was spread by arriving Roman soldiers, settlers, and merchants, who built Roman cities mostly near the settlements of previous civilizations.

Between AD 409 and 711, as the Roman Empire collapsed in Western Europe, the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by Germanic peoples (Migration Period). The occupiers, mainly Suebi and Visigoths, quickly adopted late Roman culture and the Vulgar Latin dialects of the peninsula. After the Moorish invasion of 711, Arabic became the administrative language in the conquered regions, but most of the population continued to speak a form of Romance commonly known as Mozarabic. The influence exerted by Arabic on the Romance dialects spoken in the Christian kingdoms was mainly restricted to affecting their lexicon.

Portuguese evolved from the medieval language, known today by linguists as Galician-Portuguese or Old Portuguese or Old Galician, of the north-western medieval Kingdom of Galicia. 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 Galicia, then a subkingdom of León. In the first part of 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. Portugal became an independent kingdom in 1139, under King Afonso I of Portugal. In 1290, King Denis of Portugal created the first Portuguese university in Lisbon (the Estudos Gerais, later moved to Coimbra) and decreed that Portuguese, then simply called the "common language", 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, the language was taken to many regions of Africa, Asia and the Americas. Nowadays, the great majority of Portuguese speakers live in Brazil, in South America, Portugal's biggest former colony. By the mid 16th century Portuguese had become a lingua franca in Asia and Africa, used not only for colonial administration and trade but also for communication between local officials and Europeans of all nationalities. 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 a creole language 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, 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 a 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 since the Renaissance, which greatly enriched the lexicon.

Geographic distribution[link]

Portuguese is the language of majority of people in Angola (80%),^[9] Brazil,^[10] Portugal,^[11] and São Tomé and Príncipe (95%).^[12] Although only just over 10% of the population are native speakers of Portuguese in Mozambique, the language is spoken by about 50.4% there according to the 2007 census.^[13] It is also spoken by 11.5% of the population in Guinea-Bissau.^[14] No data is available for Cape Verde, but almost all the population is bilingual, and the monolingual population speaks Cape Verdean Creole.

There are also significant Portuguese-speaking immigrant communities in many countries including Andorra (15.4%),^[15] Australia,^[16] Bermuda,^[17] Canada (0.72% or 219,275 persons in the 2006 census^[18] but between 400,000 and 500,000 according to Nancy Gomes),^[19] Curaçao, France,^[20] Japan,^[21] Jersey,^[22] Luxembourg (9%),^[11] Namibia (about 4-5% of the population, mainly refugees from Angola in the North of the country)^[23] Paraguay (10.7% or 636,000 persons),^[24] Macau (0.6% or 12,000 persons),^[25] South Africa,^[26] Switzerland (196,000 nationals in 2008),^[27] Venezuela (1 to 2% or 254,000 to 480,000),^[28] and the USA (0.24% of the population or 687,126 speakers according to the 2007 American Community Survey),^[29] mainly in Connecticut,^[30] Florida,^[31] Massachusetts (where it is the second most spoken language in the state),^[32] New Jersey,^[33] New York^[34] and Rhode Island.^[35]

In some parts of the former Portuguese India, i.e. Goa,^[36] Daman and Diu,^[37] the language is still spoken.

Official status[link]

Countries and regions where Portuguese has official status

The Community of Portuguese Language Countries^[3] (with the Portuguese acronym CPLP) consists of the eight independent countries that have Portuguese as an official language: Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal and São Tomé and Príncipe.^[3]

Equatorial Guinea made a formal application for full membership to the CPLP in June 2010 and should add Portuguese as its third official language (alongside Spanish and French) since this is one of the conditions. The President of Equatorial Guinea, Obiang Nguema Mbasog, and Prime-Minister Cheaf of State, Ignacio Milam Tang, have approved on July 20, 2011 the new Constitutional bill that intends to add Portuguese as an official language of the country. The bill is now waiting for ratification by the People's Representative Chamber and it shall come into force 20 days after its publication at the official state's gazette.^[38][39][40]

Portuguese is also one of the official languages of the Chinese special administrative region of Macau (alongside Chinese) and of several international organizations, including the Mercosur,^[41] the Organization of Ibero-American States,^[42] the Union of South American Nations,^[43] the Organization of American States,^[44] the African Union^[45] and the European Union.^[46]

Population of countries and jurisdictions of Portuguese official or co-official language[link]

According to statistical and credible data from each government and their statistical national bureaus the population of each of the nine jurisdictions is as follows (by descending order):

• Brazil: 190,755,799 (definite results of the 2010 Census);^[47]
• Mozambique: 20,366,795 (definite results of the 2007 Census);^[48][49]
• Angola: 15,116,000 (government's estimate. Angola hasn't had a census counting for a few decades, the next one is scheduled for 2013);^[50]
• Portugal: 10,555,853 (preliminary results of the 2011 Census);^[51][52]
• Guinea-Bissau: 1,520,830 (definite results of the 2009 Census);^[53]
• Timor-Leste: 1,066,582 (preliminary results of the 2010 Census);^[54]
• Macau: 558,100 (estimate of the DSEC of SAR Macau. The countings of the 2011 Census are now being made.^[55][56][57]
• Cape Verde: 491,575 (preliminary results of the 2010 Census);^[58]
• São Tomé and Principe: 137,599 (results of the 2001 Census published in 2003)^[59]

This means that the population living in the lusophone official area is of 240,569,133 inhabitants.

To this number there is yet to add the big diaspora of lusophone nations spread throughout the world, estimated in little less than 10 million people (4.5 million Portuguese, 3 million Brazilians, half a million Cape Verdeans, etc.) although it is hard to obtain official accurate numbers — including the percentage of this diaspora that can actually speak Portuguese, because a significative portion of these citizens are Portuguese or non-Portuguese citizens born outside of lusophone territory, descendants of immigrants, and who do not speak the language. It is also important to refer that a big part of these national diasporas is a part of the already counted population of the Portuguese-speaking countries and territories, like the high number of Brazilian and PALOP's emigrant citizens in Portugal, or the high number of Portuguese emigrant citizens in the PALOP's and Brazil.

So being, the Portuguese language serves daily little more than 240 million people, who have direct or indirect legal, juridic 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.

It's also noticeable the growing numbers of these countries and jurisdictions' population to raw numbers easily identified: Continental Portugal with 10 million speakers and Azores and Madeira counting already half a million together; Brazil reaches 190 million, Mozambique 20 million, Angola 15 million, Guinea-Bissau an accurate 1 and a half million, Cape Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe count for half a million together as well, Macau reaches half a million and Timor reaches finally the group of countries with one million inhabitants leaving the list of thousands. These are recent and real numbers that individually and all together strengthen the lusophone identities and the Portuguese language on an international basis.

Portuguese as a foreign language[link]

The mandatory offering of Portuguese in school curricula is observed in Uruguay^[60] and Argentina.^[61] Other countries where Portuguese is taught at schools or is being introduced now include Venezuela,^[62] Zambia,^[63] Congo,^[64] Senegal,^[64] Namibia,^[23] Swaziland,^[64] Côte d'Ivoire,^[64] and South Africa.^[64]

Future[link]

According to estimates by UNESCO, Portuguese and Spanish are the fastest-growing European languages after English and the language has the highest potential for growth as an international language in southern Africa and South America.^[65] The Portuguese-speaking African countries are expected to have a combined population of 83 million by 2050. In total, the Portuguese-speaking countries will have 335 million people by the same year.^[65]

Since 1991, when Brazil signed into the economic community of Mercosur with other South American nations, such as Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, there has been an increase in interest in the study of Portuguese in those South American countries. The demographic weight of Brazil in the continent will continue to strengthen the presence of the language in the region.

Although early in the 21st century, after Macau was ceded to China, the use of Portuguese was in decline in Asia, it is once again becoming a language of opportunity there; mostly because of increased Chinese diplomatic and financial ties with Portuguese-speaking countries.^[66]

Dialects[link]

Modern Standard Portuguese (português padrão) is based on the Portuguese spoken in the area including and surrounding the city of Coimbra, in Central Portugal. Standard 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 dialects in Brazil are exclusive to South America, and cannot be found in Europe. However, the Santomean Portuguese in Africa may be confused with a Brazilian accent. Some aspects link some Brazilian accents with the ones spoken in Africa, such as the pronunciation of "menino", which is pronounced as [mininu] compared to [mɨninu] in Standard Portuguese. Dialects from inland Northern Portugal have significant similarities with Galician.

Audio samples of some dialects and accents of Portuguese are available below.^[67] There are some differences between the areas but these are the best approximations possible. IPA transcriptions refer to the names in local pronounce.

Angola[link]

Portuguese dialects of Angola.

1. Benguelense—Benguela province.
2. Luandense—Luanda province.
3. Sulista—South of Angola.
4. Huambense—Huambo province.

Brazil[link]

• Baiano (3) —Bahia and Sergipe range of accents.

• Nordestino (2) —[nɔhdɛʃˈtinu], more markedly in the Sertão (7) and less distinctive in the cities, includes all the dialectal variations found in Northeastern Brazil from Alagoas to Maranhão.^[68]

• Nortista (8) —[nɔhˈtʃiʃtɐ], most of Amazon Basin states i.e. Northern Brazil.

• Sertanejo (10) —Center-Western states, and also much of Tocantins and Rondônia. It is closer to mineiro, caipira, nordestino or nortista depending on the location.

• Mineiro (6) — Minas Gerais (not prevalent in the Triângulo Mineiro). Southern, Southeastern and Northern areas of the state have fairly distinctive accents as well, approximanting to caipira, fluminense (popularly called, often pejoratively, carioca do brejo, "marsh carioca") and baiano respectively there. Areas adjacent to Belo Horizonte also have a peculiar accent.

Variants and sociolects of Brazilian Portuguese.

• Caipira (1) —Both [kɐjˈpiɾɐ] and [kajˈpiɾɐ], in the states of São Paulo (most markedly on the countryside and rural areas); southern Minas Gerais, northern Paraná, southeastern Mato Grosso do Sul. Depending on the vision of what constitutes caipira, Triângulo Mineiro, Southern Goiás, the remaining parts of Mato Grosso do Sul, and the frontier of caipira in Minas Gerais is expanded some further northerly, sufficiently to include localities in the "Zona da Mata Mineira", nevertheless does not reach Belo Horizonte expanded metropolitan area.
  It is often said that caipira appeared by decreolization of São Paulo's língua brasílica and its related língua geral paulista, a former lingua franca in most of the contemporary Centro-Sul of Brazil before the 18th century, spoken by most of the bandeirantes, interior pioneers of Colonial Brazil, closely related to its Northern counterpart Nheengatu, and that is why the dialect shows many general differences from other variants of the language.^[69]
  Nevertheless, its most marked difference from fluminense and many other Brazilian dialects, the postalveolar "r" instead of the usual guttural "r", is often said do derivate from the transmutation of the traditional paulista feature alveolar flap in combination with the presence of American immigrants. In Greater Campinas, which happens to be the center of American immigration in Brazil, caipira accent is particularly distinctive.

• Cafundó (Cupópia) —[kafũˈdɔ], a 'secret' variant with a large number of Bantu words, called by some linguists an anti-creole, spoken in the quilombo of Cafundó, in the rural area of Salto de Pirapora, 121 km west of São Paulo city (9). Cafundó is in itself a Vernacular Brazilian Portuguese placeholder name for a very distant, isolated or hardly accessible place.

Share of Portuguese speakers among different countries.

• Paulistano (9)—Variants spoken around Greater São Paulo in its maximum definition and some eastern areas of São Paulo state, and most cultivated speakers from anywhere in the state of São Paulo. Inside the paulistano area, there is a continuum from the variants which most closely resemble standard forms of Brazilian Portuguese (most famously the one closer to the early and mid-20th century standard, which is called quatrocentão, "the big 400", in reference to the elite said to have roots in São Paulo as old as the foundation of the city itself) to the ones most closer to the caipira variant. Caipira is the inland sociolect of much of the Central-Southern half of Brazil, stronger in the rural areas, and it has historically low prestige in cities as Rio de Janeiro, Curitiba, Belo Horizonte, and until some years ago, in São Paulo itself. Sociolinguistics, or what by times is described as 'linguistic prejudice', often correlated with classism,^[70][71][72] is a polemic topic in the entirety of the country since the times of Adoniran Barbosa.

• Sulista (11) —The variants spoken in the areas between the northern regions of Rio Grande do Sul and southern regions of São Paulo state, encompassing most of Southern Brazil. The city of Curitiba do have a fairly distinct accent as well, and a minority of speakers in Florianópolis speak the variant (most of them make part of a continuum which ends in manezinho da ilha, related to the European Portuguese dialects spoken in Azores and Madeira).

• Gaúcho (5) —[gaˈuʃʊ], in Rio Grande do Sul. 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.

• Capixaba (4) [upward]—[kap(i)ˈʃabɐ], the variants spoken throughout Espírito Santo. Continuum between the most typically rural accents, in its extreme in the Southern region close to Rio de Janeiro state but to some extent also distancing a little from the coast which approximate to mineiro and to some extent caipira (which nevertheless weakened in cities as Cachoeiro do Itapemirim), and the more cultivated speech which slightly resembles standard Brazilian Portuguese spoken in Minas Gerais while being more European Portuguese-like, nevertheless by far not as intense as it is in Rio de Janeiro, typical of many speakers in Greater Vitória and mid to big municipalities.

Dialects of European Portuguese, the Galician language plus the Fala, excluding those spoken outside the continental area.

• Florianopolitano—Variants heavily influenced by European Portuguese spoken in Florianópolis city (due to a heavy immigration movement from Portugal, mainly its autonomous 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 EP ones, called, often pejoratively, manezinho da ilha.

• Fluminense (4) [downward] and brasiliense—Variants spoken in the state of Rio de Janeiro, and the related variant spoken in the Brazilian Federal District. It appeared after locals came in contact with the Portuguese aristocracy amidst the Portuguese royal family fled in early 19th century. Some sources do not include the city of Rio de Janeiro and its adjacent metropolitan area, which have their own accents, collectively called carioca.

• Carioca—Sociolect of the fluminense variant spoken in an area roughly corresponding to Greater Rio de Janeiro. There is actually a continuum between countryside accents, the carioca sociolect, generally used colloquially, and the educated speech (the norma culta) which most closely resembles other Brazilian Portuguese standards but with markedly European Portuguese-like features, the nearer ones among the country's dialects along manezinho da ilha sociolect of florianopolitano.

Portugal[link]

Dialects of Portuguese in Portugal.

1. Micaelense (Açores) (São Miguel)—Azores.
2. Alentejano—Alentejo (Alentejan Portuguese)
3. Algarvio—Algarve (there is a particular dialect in a small part of western Algarve).
4. Alto-Minhoto—North of Braga (hinterland).
5. Baixo-Beirão; Alto-Alentejano—Central Portugal (hinterland).
6. Beirão— Central Portugal.
7. Estremenho—Regions of Coimbra, Leiria and Lisbon (this is a disputed denomination, as Coimbra is not part of "Estremadura", and the Lisbon dialect has some peculiar features that not only are not shared with the one of Coimbra, as make it significantly distinct and recognizable to most native speakers from elsewhere in Portugal).
8. Madeirense (Madeiran)—Madeira.
9. Nortenho—Regions of the districts of Braga, Porto and parts of Aveiro.
10. Transmontano—Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro.

Other countries[link]

•  Cape Verde— Português cabo-verdiano (Cape Verdean Portuguese)
• Daman and Diu, India—Damaense (Damanese Portuguese)
• Goa, India—Goês (Goan Portuguese)
•  Guinea-Bissau— Guineense (Guinean Portuguese)
•  Macau, China— Macaense (Macanese Portuguese)
•  Mozambique— Moçambicano (Mozambican Portuguese)
•  São Tomé and Príncipe— Santomense (São Tomean Portuguese)
•  Spain—Oliventian Portuguese, and controversially other varieties sometimes deemed as separate languages.
•  Uruguay—Dialectos Portugueses del Uruguay (DPU)
•  Timor-Leste— Timorense (East Timorese Portuguese)

Differences between dialects are mostly of accent and vocabulary, but between the Brazilian dialects and other dialects, especially in their most colloquial forms, there can also be some grammatical differences. The Portuguese-based creoles spoken in various parts of Africa, Asia, and the Americas are independent languages.

Characterization[link]

Portuguese, like Catalan and Sardinian, preserved the stressed vowels of Vulgar Latin, which became diphthongs in most other Romance languages; cf. Port., Cat., Sard. pedra ; Fr. pierre, Sp. piedra, It. pietra, Ro. piatră, from Lat. petram ("stone"); or Port. fogo, Cat. foc, Sard. fogu; Sp. fuego, It. fuoco, Fr. feu, Ro. foc, from Lat. focus ("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. salire ("to leave"), tenere ("to have"), catenam ("chain"), Sp. salir, tener, cadena, Port. sair, ter, cadeia.

When the elided consonant was n, it often nasalized the preceding vowel: cf. Lat. manum ("hand"), ranam ("frog"), bonum ("good"), Port. mão, rãa, bõo (now mão, rã, bom). This process was the source of most of the language's distinctive nasal diphthongs. In particular, the Latin endings -anem, -anum and -onem became -ão in most cases, cf. Lat. canem ("dog"), germanum ("brother"), rationem ("reason") with Modern Port. cão, irmão, razão, and their plurals -anes, -anos, -ones normally became -ães, -ãos, -ões, cf. cães, irmãos, razões.

Vocabulary[link]

Library of the Mafra National Palace, Portugal.

Baroque Library of the Coimbra University, Portugal.

Most of the lexicon of Portuguese is derived from Latin. Nevertheless, because of the Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages, and the participation of Portugal in the Age of Discovery, it has adopted loanwords from all over the world.

Very few Portuguese words can be traced to the pre-Roman inhabitants of Portugal, which included the Gallaeci, Lusitanians, Celtici and Cynetes. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians, briefly present, also left some scarce traces. Some notable examples are abóbora "pumpkin" and bezerro "year-old calf", from the nearby Celtiberian language (probably through the Celtici); cerveja "beer", from Celtic; through Latin "cervisia."

In the 5th century, the Iberian Peninsula (the Roman Hispania) was conquered by the Germanic Suebi and Visigoths. As they adopted the Roman civilization and language, however, these people contributed only a few words to the lexicon, mostly related to warfare—such as espora "spur", estaca "stake", and guerra "war", from Gothic *spaúra, *stakka, and *wirro, respectively. The influence also exists in toponymic and patronymic surnames borne by Visigoth sovereigns and their descendants, and it dwells on placenames such has 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).

Between the 9th and 13th centuries, Portuguese acquired about 800 words from Arabic by influence of Moorish Iberia. They are often recognizable by the initial Arabic article a(l)-, and include many common words such as aldeia "village" from الضيعة alḍai`a, alface "lettuce" from الخس alkhass, armazém "warehouse" from المخزن almakhzan, and azeite "olive oil" from الزيت azzait. From Arabic came also the grammatically peculiar word oxalá إن شاء الله "hopefully". The Mozambican currency name metical was derived from the word متقال mitqāl, a unit of weight. The word Mozambique itself is from the Arabic name of sultan Muça Alebique (Musa Alibiki).

Starting in the 15th century, the Portuguese maritime explorations led to the introduction of many loanwords from Asian languages. For instance, catana "cutlass" from Japanese katana and chá "tea" from Chinese chá.

From South America came batata "potato", from Taino; ananás and abacaxi, from Tupi–Guarani naná and Tupi ibá cati, respectively (two species of pineapple), and tucano "toucan" from Guarani tucan.

From the 16th to the 19th centuries, because of the role of Portugal as intermediary in the Atlantic slave trade, and the establishment of large Portuguese colonies in Angola, Mozambique, and Brazil, Portuguese got 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, for example, came kifumate → cafuné "head caress", kusula → caçula "youngest child", marimbondo "tropical wasp", and kubungula → bungular "to dance like a wizard".

Finally, it has received a steady influx of loanwords from other European languages. For example, melena "hair lock", fiambre "wet-cured ham" (in contrast with presunto "dry-cured ham" from Latin prae-exsuctus "dehydrated"), and castelhano "Castilian", from Spanish; colchete/crochê "bracket"/"crochet", paletó "jacket", batom "lipstick", and filé/filete "steak"/"slice", rua "street" respectively, from French crochet, paletot, bâton, filet; macarrão "pasta", piloto "pilot", carroça "carriage", and barraca "barrack", from Italian maccherone, pilota, carrozza, baracca; and bife "steak", futebol, revólver, estoque, folclore, from English beef, football, revolver, stock, folklore.

Classification and related languages[link]

Map showing the historical retreat and expansion of Portuguese (Galician-Portuguese) within the context of its linguistic neighbours between the year 1000 and 2000

Portuguese belongs to the West Iberian branch of the Romance languages, and it has special ties with the following members of this group:

• Galician and Fala, its closest relatives.
• Mirandese, Leonese and Asturian (Astur-Leonese linguistic group). Mirandese is the only recognised regional language spoken in Portugal (beside Portuguese, the only official language in Portugal).
• Spanish.

Despite the obvious lexical and grammatical similarities between Portuguese and other Romance languages, it is not mutually intelligible with them. Apart from Galician and Spanish, Portuguese speakers will usually need some formal study of basic grammar and vocabulary before attaining a reasonable level of comprehension in the other Romance languages, and vice versa.

Galician and the Fala[link]

The closest language to Portuguese is Galician, spoken in the autonomous community of Galicia (northwestern Spain). The two were at one time a single language, known today as Galician-Portuguese, but since the political separation of Portugal from Galicia they have diverged, especially in pronunciation and vocabulary. Nevertheless, the core vocabulary and grammar of Galician are still noticeably closer to Portuguese than to those of Spanish. In particular, like Portuguese, it uses the future subjunctive, the personal infinitive, and the synthetic pluperfect. Mutual intelligibility (estimated at 85% by R. A. Hall, Jr., 1989)^[73] is very good between Galicians and northern Portuguese, but poorer between Galicians and speakers from central Portugal. Nevertheless, many renowned linguists still consider Galician to be a dialect of the Portuguese language.

The Fala language is another descendant of Galician-Portuguese, spoken by a small number of people in the Spanish towns of Valverde del Fresno, Eljas and San Martín de Trevejo (autonomous community of Extremadura, near the border with Portugal).

Influence on other languages[link]

Portuguese has provided loanwords to many languages, such as Indonesian, Manado Malay, Sri Lankan Tamil and Sinhalese, Malay, Bengali, English, Hindi,Swahili, Afrikaans, Konkani, Marathi, Tetum, Xitsonga, Papiamentu, Japanese, Lanc-Patuá (spoken in northern Brazil), Esan 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 Island, Indonesia. In nearby Larantuka, Portuguese is used for prayers in Holy Week rituals. The Japanese–Portuguese dictionary Nippo Jisho (1603) was the first dictionary of Japanese in a European language, a product of Jesuit missionary activity in Japan. Building on the work of earlier Portuguese missionaries, the Dictionarium Anamiticum, Lusitanum et Latinum (Annamite–Portuguese–Latin dictionary) of Alexandre de Rhodes (1651) introduced the modern 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 created a Portuguese–Chinese dictionary—the first ever European–Chinese dictionary.^[74][75]

Derived languages[link]

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 ancestry.

Phonology[link]

There is a maximum of 9 oral vowels and 19 consonants, though some varieties of the language have fewer phonemes (Brazilian Portuguese is usually analyzed as having 7 oral vowels). There are also five nasal vowels, which some linguists regard as allophones of the oral vowels, ten oral diphthongs, and five nasal diphthongs. In total, Brazilian Portuguese has 13 vowel phonemes.^[76][77]

Vowels[link]

To the seven vowels of Vulgar Latin, European Portuguese has added two near central vowels, one of which tends to be elided in rapid speech, like the e caduc of French (/ɯ̽/, but commonly represented as [ɨ]). The functional load of these two additional vowels is very low. The high vowels /e o/ and the low vowels /ɛ ɔ/ are four distinct phonemes, and they alternate in various forms of apophony. Like Catalan, Portuguese uses vowel quality to contrast stressed syllables with unstressed syllables: isolated vowels tend to be raised, and in some cases centralized, when unstressed. Nasal diphthongs occur mostly at the ends of words.

Consonants[link]

The consonant inventory of Portuguese is fairly conservative. The medieval affricates /ts/, /dz/, /tʃ/, /dʒ/ merged with the fricatives /s/, /z/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, respectively, but not with each other, and there have been no other significant changes to the consonant phonemes since then. However, some notable dialectal variants and allophones have appeared, among which:

• In most regions of Brazil and some rural Portuguese accents, /t/ and /d/ have the affricate allophones [tʃ] and [dʒ], respectively, before /i/ and /ĩ/.
• At the end of a syllable, the phoneme /l/ is velarized to [ɫ] in European Portuguese and vocalized to [w] in Brazilian Portuguese.
• In some parts of Brazil and Angola, intervocalic /ɲ/ is pronounced as a nasal palatal approximant [j̃], which nasalizes the preceding vowel, so that, for instance, /ˈniɲu/ is pronounced [ˈnĩj̃u].
• In most of Brazil, the alveolar sibilants /s/ and /z/ occur in complementary distribution at the ends of syllables, depending on whether the consonant that follows is voiceless or voiced, as in English. But in European, African and Asian Portuguese, and some parts of Brazil (always in nearly all sociolects of florianopolitano and fluminense, and nearly always in some sociolects of nortista, nordestino, mineiro, brasiliense and capixaba), sibilants are postalveolar at the ends of syllables, /ʃ/ before voiceless consonants, and /ʒ/ before voiced consonants (in Judeo-Spanish, /s/ is often replaced with /ʃ/ at the ends of syllables, too).
• In rural caipira speech, /ʎ/ is nearly always replaced with /j/, as such mulher (woman) becomes "muié", os olhos (the eyes) becomes "os oio" (but not óleos, oils, which is homophone with olhos in most of Brazil, and always pronounced with a lateral) and there goes, but it is also present in the colloquial speech of a number of sociolects, including carioca. Some Galician speakers also present this feature as an influence from yeísmo, a phenomenon of the Spanish language in which /ʎ/ merges with /ʝ/ (the latter phoneme is absent in all Portuguese and Galician dialects), although it is discouraged by the Real Academia Galega.
• Although there are two rhotic phonemes, they contrast only between vowels. Word-initially and after /n l s/ only /ʁ/ occurs; after other consonants only /ɾ/ occurs. No contrast occurs at the end of a syllable, but the actual sound in this position varies greatly depending on the dialect, especially in Brazil. There is also considerable dialectal variation in the actual pronunciation of the rhotic phoneme /ʁ/. The actual pronunciation of [ʁ ~ χ], [ʀ] is common in Portugal, although the older trill [r] is also heard. In Brazil, an unvoiced fricative (e.g. [χ x h]) is most commonly heard (although a few sociolects preserved European [ʁ] or more commonly present a variation). In many Brazilian dialects, the same unvoiced fricative occurs before a consonant, although in other dialects the sound of [ɾ], [ɹ] or even [r] occurs. Word-finally in Brazil, the rhotic is often dropped entirely when speaking colloquially; when preserved, the same variation occurs as before a consonant.
• In Portugal, the voiced stops [b d ɡ] are pronounced as the corresponding voiced fricatives [β ð ɣ] between vowels. Voiced fricatives are a much more common feature in Lisbon and surrounding areas than among rural and older speakers of Southern and Insular Portugal at the other end.

Examples of different pronunciation[link]

Excerpt from the Portuguese national epic Os Lusíadas, by author Luís de Camões (I, 33)

Grammar[link]

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. It has also some innovations not found in other Romance languages (except Galician and the 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 and are expected to keep repeating in the future. For instance, the sentence Tenho tentado falar com ela would be translated to "I have been trying to talk to her", not "I have tried to talk to her". On the other hand, the correct translation of the question "Have you heard the latest news?" is not *Tem ouvido a última notícia?, but Ouviu a última notícia?, since no repetition is implied.^[81]
• Vernacular Portuguese still uses the future subjunctive mood, which developed from medieval West Iberian Romance and in present-day Spanish and Galician 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: infinitives can inflect according to their subject in person and number, often showing who is expected to perform a certain action; cf. É melhor voltares "It is better [for you] to go back", É melhor voltarmos "It is better [for us] to go back." Perhaps for this reason, infinitive clauses replace subjunctive clauses more often in Portuguese than in other Romance languages.

Writing system[link]

Portuguese is written with 26 letters of the Latin script, making use of five diacritics to denote stress, vowel height, contraction, nasalization, and other sound changes (acute accent, grave accent, circumflex accent, tilde, and cedilla). Accented characters and digraphs are not counted as separate letters for collation purposes.

Museum of the Portuguese Language in São Paulo, Brazil.

Spelling reforms[link]

See also[link]

	Angola portal
	Brazil portal
	Cape Verde portal
	East Timor portal
	Galicia portal
	Goa portal
	Guinea-Bissau portal
	Macau portal
	Malacca portal
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	Language portal

• Portuguese literature
• Portuguese poetry
• List of Portuguese language poets
• List of international organisations which have Portuguese as an official language
• Brazilian literature
• List of Brazilian poets
• Lusophone
• Anglophone pronunciation of foreign languages (Portuguese section)
• Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP)
• Instituto Camões
• International Portuguese Language Institute
• Museum of the Portuguese Language
• Portuñol
• Portuguese in the United States

Notes[link]

1.^ also pronounced [poɾtuˈħes] by speakers featuring gheada

References[link]