Portuguese language

Portuguese language
Name	Portuguese
Nativename	português
Pronunciation	[puɾtuˈɣeʃ], [poʁtuˈɡe(j)s]
States	Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, East Timor, Equatorial Guinea, Macau, Goa, Daman and Diu, São Tomé and Príncipe, Cape Verde
Region	Iberian Peninsula, Latin America, Africa, Asia
Ethnicity	Portuguese people, Brazilians, Luso-Africans
Speakers	~260 million
Date	2020
Familycolor	Indo-European
Fam2	Italic
Fam3	Latino-Faliscan
Fam4	Romance
Fam5	Italo-Western
Fam6	Western Romance
Fam7	Ibero-Romance
Fam8	West Iberian
Ancestor	Old Latin
Ancestor2	Vulgar Latin
Ancestor3	Galician-Portuguese
Script	Latin script (Portuguese alphabet)
Nation	See list
Agency	International Portuguese Language Institute, Community of Portuguese Language Countries
Iso1	pt
Iso2	por
Iso3	por
Glotto	port1283
Glottorefname	Portuguese
Lingua	51-AAA-a
Mapcaption	Official and administrative language Co-official or cultural language Minority or secondary language Portuguese-based creole languages

Portuguese language. It is a Romance language originating in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia and the County of Portugal on the Iberian Peninsula. With approximately 260 million total speakers, it is the sixth-most spoken native language globally and the most widely spoken in the Southern Hemisphere. It serves as the official language of nine sovereign states, including Portugal, Brazil, and several nations in Africa and Asia.

History

The language evolved from Vulgar Latin brought to the Iberian Peninsula by Roman soldiers and colonists following the Second Punic War. By the 9th century, the Galician-Portuguese dialect began to differentiate from other Ibero-Romance varieties. The earliest known records are administrative documents from the 9th century, with poetic works like the Cantigas de Santa Maria flourishing in the Kingdom of Galicia. The political rise of the County of Portugal, which became the Kingdom of Portugal under Afonso I, cemented its status. The Age of Discoveries, led by figures like Henry the Navigator and Vasco da Gama, spread it to Brazil, Africa, and Asia, creating contact with languages like Tupi-Guarani and Kimbundu.

Geographic distribution

It is an official language in Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe, and East Timor, and holds co-official status in Macau and Equatorial Guinea. Major communities exist in Goa, Daman and Diu, and among diaspora populations in the United States, France, and Luxembourg. It is a working language of the African Union, the Organization of American States, and the Community of Portuguese Language Countries. Brazil, with over 200 million speakers, represents the vast majority of its global speaker base, influencing its modern international prestige.

Phonology

The sound system varies between major standards, notably European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese. It features up to 9 oral vowels, 5 nasal vowels, and several diphthongs. Consonants include a distinction between apical and laminal sibilants, and the rhotic consonants can be realized as an alveolar trill in Portugal or a guttural R in Lisbon. Notable processes include vowel reduction, where unstressed vowels become more centralized, and the deletion of final consonants, particularly in informal Brazilian Portuguese. The prosody is characterized by stress-timed rhythm in European Portuguese and syllable-timed tendencies in Brazilian Portuguese.

Grammar

It is a synthetic, fusional language with a subject–verb–object basic word order. Verbs are highly inflected for tense, mood, aspect, person, and number, with a rich system of synthetic and analytic forms. The personal infinitive is a distinctive feature, allowing infinitives to be inflected for person. The pronoun system includes clitic pronouns that can be proclitic or enclitic, with placement rules differing between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese. It has two copular verbs, *ser* and *estar*, and uses the future subjunctive mood in conditional and temporal clauses.

Vocabulary

Most lexicon derives directly from Vulgar Latin, with significant contributions from pre-Roman Celtic and Galician substrates. The Reconquista introduced a substantial number of Arabic loanwords, often prefixed with *al-*. The colonial era brought influences from Tupi-Guarani in Brazil (e.g., *abacaxi*), Kimbundu in Angola, and Konkani in Goa. In the modern era, it has absorbed numerous internationalisms from French, Italian, and especially English. Spelling reforms, like the Portuguese Language Orthographic Agreement of 1990, have sought to standardize variants.

Writing system

It uses a 26-letter Latin alphabet, supplemented by diacritics like the acute accent, circumflex, and tilde to denote stress, vowel quality, and nasalization. The Portuguese Language Orthographic Agreement of 1990, adopted by Portugal, Brazil, and other member states of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries, standardized spelling by eliminating certain silent consonants and harmonizing rules. The Cedilla (ç) and the Tilde (ã, õ) are integral to its orthography. Historical texts, such as those by Luís de Camões, show earlier orthographic conventions.

Category:Languages of Portugal Category:Languages of Brazil Category:Romance languages Category:Portuguese language