Portuguese language

Portuguese
Português
Pronunciation	[puɾtuˈɡeʃ] (European), [poɾtuˈɡes] (Galician), [poχtuˈɡe(j)ʃ] (BP-carioca), [poɾtuˈɡe(j)s] (BP-paulistano), [poɹtuˈɡejs] (BP-caipira), [poχ(h)tuˈɡes] (BP-mineiro), [pɔhtuˈɡejs] (BP-nordestino), [poɾtuˈɡes] (BP-gaúcho)
Native to	See geographic distribution of Portuguese
Region	Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and Oceania
Native speakers	Native: 236.1 million Total: 300.9 million
Language family	Indo-European Italic Romance Italo-Western Western Romance Gallo-Iberian Ibero-Romance West-Iberian Galician-Portuguese Portuguese
Writing system	Latin alphabet (Portuguese variant)
Official status
Official language in	8 countries Angola Brazil Cape Verde East Timor Guinea-Bissau Mozambique Portugal São Tomé and Príncipe 1 dependent entity Macau Numerous international organisations
Regulated by	International Portuguese Language Institute; CPLP; Academia Brasileira de Letras (Brazil); Academia das Ciências de Lisboa, Classe de Letras (Portugal)
Language codes
ISO 639-1	pt
ISO 639-2	por
ISO 639-3	por
Linguasphere	51-AAA-a

Portuguese ( or língua portuguesa) is a Romance language that arose in ancient Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of that ancient Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095 (kingdom from 1139). While Galicia decays increasingly the independent Portugal expands to South (conquest of Lisbon, 1147), and spreads the language, with the Reconquista, to Southern Portugal and with the Portuguese discoveries to Brazil, Africa and other parts of the world. It is an official language of the European Union, the Organisation of American States, the African Union, and Lusophone countries. It has around 272.9 million speakers making it the fifth-most spoken language in the world. Portuguese is the third-most spoken language in the Western Hemisphere, and the most spoken in the Southern Hemisphere.

During the Age of Exploration, Portuguese sailors were among the first to sail to distant locations in the Americas, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Eastern Asia. The exploration was followed by the attempts to colonise new lands by Portugal and as a result Portuguese became a widely dispersed language around the world. Alongside Portugal, Portuguese is the main mother tongue of Brazil. It is also widely used as a lingua franca in former Portuguese colonies of Mozambique, Angola, Cape Verde, Guiné-Bissau and São Tomé e Príncipe, all of which are in Africa. Additionally Portuguese speakers are also found in the Asian territories of Macau, East Timor and Goa (in India), all of which were Portuguese colonies until the second half of the 20th century.

Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes once called Portuguese "the sweet language", Lope de Vega referred to it as "sweet", while 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 best known literary figures, Luís Vaz de Camões.

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.

Geographic distribution

Main article: Geographic distribution of Portuguese

The Portuguese language in the world:

Native language   Official and administrative language   Cultural or secondary language

Portuguese speaking minorities   Portuguese-based creole languages

Portuguese is the language of majority of people in Angola (80%), Brazil, Portugal, and São Tomé and Príncipe (95%). Although only 6.5 percent of the population are native speakers of Portuguese in Mozambique, the language is spoken by about 39.6% there according to the 1997 census. It is also spoken by 11.5% of the population in Guinea-Bissau. 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%), Australia, Bermuda, Canada (0.72% or 219,275 persons in the 2006 census but between 400,000 and 500,000 according to Nancy Gomes), Curaçao, France, Japan, Jersey, Luxembourg (9%), Namibia, Paraguay (10.7% or 636,000 persons), South Africa, Switzerland (196,000 nationals in 2008), Venezuela (1 to 2% or 254,000 to 480,000), and the USA (0.24% of the population or 687,126 speakers according to the 2007 American Community Survey), mainly in Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts (where it is the second most spoken language in the state), New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island.

In some parts of what was Portuguese India, such as Goa and Daman and Diu, the language is still spoken.

Official status

Main article: List of countries where Portuguese is an official language

Countries and regions where Portuguese has official status.

The Community of Portuguese Language Countries (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.

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.

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, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the Union of South American Nations, the Organization of American States, the African Union and the European Union.

Portuguese as a foreign language

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

Future

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. 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.

Since 1991, when Brazil signed into the economic market of Mercosul 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.

Dialects

Main article: Portuguese dialects

Modern Standard Portuguese (Português Padrão) is based on the Portuguese spoken in Estremadura region in Portugal. Standard Portuguese is also the preferred standard by the Portuguese-speaking African countries, as such and despite its speakers are dispersed around the world, Portuguese has only two dialects used for learning: the European and the Brazilian. All aspects and sounds found in dialects in Portugal can be found in some dialect in Brazil. But it is Santomean Portuguese in Africa that may be confused to be 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. There are some differences between the areas but these are the best approximations possible.

File:Portugueselanguagedialects-Angola.png

Portuguese dialects of Angola

Angola

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

Dialects of Portuguese in Brazil

Brazil

1. Caipira—States of São Paulo (countryside; the city of São Paulo and the eastern areas of the state have their own accent, called paulistano); southern Minas Gerais, northern Paraná, southeastern Mato Grosso do Sul.
2. Cearense—Ceará.
3. Baiano—Bahia.
4. Fluminense—Variants spoken in the state of Rio de Janeiro (excluding the city of Rio de Janeiro and its adjacent metropolitan areas, which have their own dialect, called carioca).
5. Gaúcho—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.)
6. Mineiro—Minas Gerais (not prevalent in the Triângulo Mineiro; includes southern and southeastern Minas Gerais; the city of Belo Horizonte has an accent of its own.).
7. Nordestino—northeastern states of Brazil (Pernambuco, Paraíba and Rio Grande do Norte have a particular way of speaking).
8. Nortista—Amazon Basin states.
9. Paulistano—Variants spoken around São Paulo city and some eastern areas of São Paulo state.
10. Sertanejo—States of Goiás and Mato Grosso.
11. Sulista—Variants spoken in the areas between the northern regions of Rio Grande do Sul and southern regions of São Paulo state. (The cities of Curitiba and Florianópolis have fairly distinct accents as well.)
12. Carioca—Variants spoken in Rio de Janeiro City and surround area.
13. Brasiliense—Variant only spoken in Brasília, due to many waves of immigration, attracted by the government in order to build Brasília.

Dialects of Portuguese in Portugal

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 (the Lisbon dialect has some peculiar features not shared with the one of Coimbra).
8. Madeirense (Madeiran)—Madeira.
9. Nortenho—Regions of Braga and Porto.
10. Transmontano—Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro.

Other countries

• Cape Verde— Português cabo-verdiano (Cape Verdean Portuguese)
• Daman and Diu, India—Damaense (Damanese Portuguese)
• East Timor— Timorense (East Timorese Portuguese)
• Goa, India—Goês (Goan Portuguese)
• Guinea-Bissau— Guineense (Guinean Portuguese)
• Macau— Macaense (Macanese Portuguese)
• Mozambique— Moçambicano (Mozambican Portuguese)
• São Tomé and Príncipe— Santomense (São Tomean Portuguese)
• Uruguay—Dialectos Portugueses del Uruguay (DPU)

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 that should not be confused with Portuguese.

History

Main articles: Iberian Romance languages, Galician-Portuguese, and History of the Portuguese language

Baroque Library of the Coimbra University, Portugal.

When they arrived the Iberian Peninsula in 216 BC, the Romans brought with them 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.

Medieval Portuguese poetry
Das que vejo
nom desejo
outra senhor se vós nom,
e desejo
tam sobejo,
mataria um leon,
senhor do meu coraçom:
fim roseta,
bela sobre toda fror,
fim roseta,
nom me meta
em tal coita voss'amor!
João de Lobeira (c. 1270–1330)

Between 409 and 711 AD, 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 small, affecting mainly their lexicon.

The earliest surviving records of a distinctively Portuguese language are administrative documents of the 9th century, still interspersed with many Latin phrases. Today this phase is known as Proto-Portuguese (between the 9th and the 12th centuries). In the first period of Old Portuguese—Galician-Portuguese Period (from the 12th to the 14th century)—the language gradually came into general use. 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. Portugal became an independent kingdom from the Kingdom of León 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, from the 14th to the 16th centuries, with the Portuguese discoveries, the language was taken to many regions of Asia, Africa and the Americas (nowadays, the great majority of Portuguese speakers live in Brazil, in South America). By the 16th century, it 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.

Characterization

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, 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 nasal diphthongs typical in Portuguese. 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

Main article: Portuguese vocabulary

Library of the Mafra National Palace, 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. See List of Brazil state name etymologies, for some more examples.

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, steak, football, revolver, stock, folklore.

Classification and related languages

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. See below.
• 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. (See also Differences between Spanish and Portuguese)

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

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 (see the section on the grammar of Portuguese, below). Mutual intelligibility (estimated at 85% by R. A. Hall, Jr., 1989) 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

See also: List of English words of Portuguese origin, Loan words in Indonesian, Japanese words of Portuguese origin, List of Malay loanwords, Portuguese loanwords in Sinhala, and Loan words in Sri Lankan Tamil § Portuguese

Portuguese has provided loanwords to many languages, such as Indonesian, Manado Malay, Sri Lankan Tamil and Sinhalese (see Sri Lanka Indo-Portuguese), Malay, Bengali, English, Hindi, 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.

Derived languages

Main article: Portuguese-based creole languages

Beginning in the 16th century, the extensive contacts between Portuguese travelers and settlers, African 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 and Africa 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.

Museum of the Portuguese Language in São Paulo, Brazil.

Phonology

Main article: Portuguese phonology

There is a maximum of 9 oral vowels and 19 consonants, though some varieties of the language have fewer phonemes (Brazilian Portuguese has 8 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.

Vowels

File:Portuguese vowel chart.png

Chart of monophthongs of the Portuguese of Lisbon

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 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

Consonant phonemes of Portuguese

	Bilabial		Labio- dental		Dental/ Alveolar		Post- alveolar		Palatal		Velar		Uvular
Nasal	m				n				ɲ
Plosive	p	b			t	d					k	ɡ
Fricative			f	v	s	z	ʃ	ʒ			ʁ
Lateral					l				ʎ
Flap					ɾ

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 many regions of Brazil, /t/ and /d/ have the affricate allophones [tʃ] and [dʒ], respectively, before /i/ and /ĩ/. (Quebec French has a similar phenomenon, with alveolar affricates instead of postalveolars. Japanese is another example).
• At the end of a syllable, the phoneme /l/ has the allophone [u̯] in Brazilian Portuguese (L-vocalization).
• In some parts of Brazil and Angola, intervocalic /ɲ/ is pronounced as a nasalized palatal approximant [ȷ̃], which nasalizes the preceding vowel, so that, for instance, /ˈniɲu/ is pronounced [ˈnĩȷ̃u].
• 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 most of Portugal and parts of Brazil (especially Rio de Janeiro), 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).
• There is considerable dialectal variation in the value of the rhotic phoneme /ʁ/. See Guttural R in Portuguese, for details.
• In Portugal, the voiced stops [b d̪ ɡ] are pronounced as the corresponding voiced fricatives [β ð ɣ] between vowels.

Examples of different pronunciation

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

Original	IPA (Lisbon)	IPA (São Paulo)	IPA (Santiago de Compostela)	Translation
Sustentava contra ele Vénus bela,	suʃtẽˈtavɐ ˈkõtɾɐ ˈelɨ ˈvɛnuʒ ˈβ̞ɛlɐ	sustẽˈtavɐ ˈkõtɾɐ ˈeli ˈvenuz ˈbɛlɐ	sustenˈtaβ̞a ˈkontɾa ˈel ˈβ̞ɛnuz ˈβ̞ɛla	Held against him the lovely Venus
Afeiçoada à gente Lusitana,	ɐfɐjsuˈað̞a ˈʒẽtɨ luziˈtɐnɐ	afejsuˈada ˈʒẽtʃi luziˈtɐnɐ	afejθoˈað̞aː ˈʃente lusiˈtana	Fondly to the people of Portugal,
Por quantas qualidades via nela	puɾ ˈkwɐ̃tɐʃ kwɐliˈð̞að̞ɨʒ ˈviɐ ˈnɛlɐ	puɾ ˈkwɐ̃tɐs kwaliˈdadʒiz ˈviɐ ˈnɛlɐ	por ˈkantas kwaliˈð̞að̞ez ˈβ̞ia ˈnɛla	For many qualities he saw in her
Da antiga tão amada sua Romana;	dãˈtiɡɐ tɐ̃w̃ ɐˈmað̞ɐ ˈsuɐ ʁuˈmɐnɐ	da ɐ̃ˈtʃiɡɐ tɐ̃w̃ ɐ̃ˈmadɐ ˈsuɐ hoˈmɐnɐ	danˈtiɣ̞a taŋ aˈmað̞a ˈsua roˈmana	From his old beloved Roman;
Nos fortes corações, na grande estrela,	nuʃ ˈfɔɾtɨʃ kuɾɐˈsõȷ̃ʒ nɐ ˈɡɾɐ̃dɨʃˈtɾelɐ	nus ˈfɔɾtʃis koɾaˈsõȷ̃z na ˈɡɾɐ̃dʒisˈtɾelɐ	nos ˈfɔɾtes koɾaˈθons na ˈɣ̞ɾandesˈtɾela	In the stout hearts, in the big star
Que mostraram na terra Tingitana,	kɨ muʃˈtɾaɾɐ̃w̃ nɐ ˈtɛʁɐ tĩʒiˈtɐnɐ	ki mosˈtɾaɾɐ̃w̃ na ˈtɛhɐ tʃĩʒiˈtɐnɐ	ke mosˈtɾaraŋ na ˈtera tinʃiˈtana	That showed in the land Tingitana,
E na língua, na qual quando imagina,	i nɐ ˈlĩɡwɐ nɐ kwaɫ ˈkwɐ̃dw imɐˈʒinɐ	i na ˈlĩɡwɐ na kwaw ˈkwɐ̃dimaˈʒinɐ	ɛ na ˈlingwa na ˈkal kandojmaˈʃina	And in the language, which when it is imagined
Com pouca corrupção crê que é a Latina.	kõ ˈpokɐ kuʁupˈsɐ̃w̃ ˈkɾe kjɛ ɐ lɐˈtinɐ	kũ ˈpokɐ kohup(i)ˈsɐ̃w̃ ˈkɾe kjɛ a laˈtʃinɐ	komˈpowka korupˈθoŋ ˈkɾe ke ˈɛ a laˈtina	With little corruption, believes that it is Latin.

Grammar

Main article: Portuguese 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. See Romance copula for a detailed comparison. 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.
• 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

Written varieties

Portugal and non-1990 Agreement countries	Brazil and 1990 Agreement countries	translation
direcção	direção	direction
óptimo	ótimo	best, excellent, optimal

Main articles: Portuguese alphabet and Portuguese orthography

Portuguese is written with 23 or 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, 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.

Spelling reforms

Main article: Reforms of Portuguese orthography

See also

• 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

References

General

• História da Lingua Portuguesa Instituto Camões
• A Língua Portuguesa in Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil (...)

Literature

• Poesia e Prosa Medievais, by Maria Ema Tarracha Ferreira, Ulisseia 1998, 3rd ed., ISBN 978-972-568-124-4.
• Bases Temáticas—Língua Portuguesa in Instituto Camões
• Portuguese Literature in The Catholic Encyclopedia

Phonology, orthography and grammar

• Barbosa, Plínio A.; Albano, Eleonora C. (2004), "Brazilian Portuguese", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 34 (2): 227–232, doi:10.1017/S0025100304001756
• Cruz-Ferreira, Madalena (1995), "European Portuguese", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 25 (2): 90–94, doi:10.1017/S0025100300005223
• Mateus, Maria Helena & d'Andrade, Ernesto (2000) The Phonology of Portuguese ISBN 0-19-823581-X (Excerpt available at Google Books)
• Bergström, Magnus & Reis, Neves Prontuário Ortográfico Editorial Notícias, 2004.
• A pronúncia do português europeu—European Portuguese Pronunciation
• Dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões
• Audio samples of the dialects of Portugal
• Audio samples of the dialects from outside Europe

Reference dictionaries

• Antônio Houaiss (2000), Dicionário Houaiss da Língua Portuguesa (228,500 entries).
• Aurélio Buarque de Holanda Ferreira, Novo Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa (1809pp)
• English–Portuguese–Chinese Dictionary (Freeware for Windows/Linux/Mac)

Linguistic studies

• Lindley Cintra, Luís F. Nova Proposta de Classificação dos Dialectos Galego-Portugueses (PDF) Boletim de Filologia, Lisboa, Centro de Estudos Filológicos, 1971.

External links

• Swadesh list in English and Portuguese
• Portuguese phrasebook on Wikitravel
• Learn Portuguese BBC
• USA Foreign Service Institute Portuguese basic course
• Portuguese Language Notes BBC
• Template:Pt Society for the Portuguese Language (Sociedade da Língua Portuguesa)
• AULP—Associação das Universidades de Língua Portuguesa Portuguese Language Universities Association.
• Portuguese in East Timor an interview with Dr. Geoffrey Hull.
• ABL—Academia Brasileira de letras (em português)—(Brazilian Academy of Letters) (Portuguese)