Portuguese

Língua portuguesa

Number of native speakers

about 220 million

Official language in

Brazil (185 million), Portugal/Azores/Madeira (11 million), Angola (60 thousand), Mozambique (30 thousand), Cape Verde (25 thousand), East-Timor, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé and Principe, Macau, EU

Minority language in

Paraguay (750,000), South Africa (617,000), Uruguay (28,000), Goa (250,000)

Language of diaspora

France (750,000), US (365,000), Canada, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany (about 80,000 each), Luxembourg (50,000), Venezuela

Alphabet
26 letters

Grammatical cases
0

Language code
pt, por

Linguistic typology
inflectional , pro-drop , SVO

Language family
Indo-European, Romance

Number of dialects
Several hundred dialects and creoles (European, Brazilian, African, Asian). One dialect regards itself as a language (Galician).

Longest word

tetraclorodibenzoparadioxina

chemistry, "tetrachlorodibenzoparadioxine"

desconstitucionalização

politics, "deconstitutionalization"

hiperparatireoidismo

medicine, "hyperparathyroidism"

Curious word or sentence

aceitou

"he accepted", all 5 vowels in alphabetical order

uauaçu

a Brazilian fruit

A aranha arranha a rã.

The spider grabs the frog.

Ih, ó o auê aí, ó!

"Hey, look at that fight, look", Brazilian Portuguese

Introduction

From a tiny corner of the Iberian Peninsula, Portuguese was spread far and wide by the ships of its sea-borne empire. On their way to Far-Eastern riches the Portuguese naus established trading posts and forts along the coasts of Africa, in India (Goa), China (Macao) and along strategically important shipping lines (Cabo Verde, East Timor). However, 90% of the sailors died on each trip, and no large population transfer occurred. In its more immediate neighbourhood, Portugal settled the Azores and Madeira, both now with their own dialects, and the islands were important bridge heads for further expansion. The real masterstroke of the Portuguese expansion was, however, Brazil, which became a melting pot of Indian, Portuguese and - thanks to a ruthless and large-scale slaving trade - African genes. In the process, the Portuguese language, European diseases and the bandeirantes slave captains decimated thousands of Indian languages, with only one serious competitor, the Tupi-based Lingua Geral, which was widely used in the Amazon area for a few hundred years. Today, the vast majority of Portuguese speakers are Brazilians, and where printing presses were once banned by royal decree, telenovela soap operas have now inversed the cultural flow between Portugal and its former colony.

History

409 – 711

Migration period
Visigoth influence
711

Moorish invasion
Arabic influence
9-11th century

Beginning reconquista: Galicia
1095

Independent Portugal
12-14th century

Language of lyrics
1249

End of reconquista
1290

First Portuguese university
15-16th century

Language of discoverers, traders and missionaries, Empire
1419 – 1420

Madeira
1427 – 1431

Azorean islands
1498

Calcutta, India
1500

Cabral-expedition: Brazil
1510

Goa (India)
1557

Macao (China)
1580 ‒ 1640

Union with Spain
1755 ‒ 1779

Pombaline reform period
1807

Napoleonic invasion, royal court moved to Brazil
1822

Brazilian independence
1960 ‒ 1970

Decolonization wars in Africa Exodus of millions of Portuguese

Chronological map showing linguistic evolution in southwest Europe.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Like its Romance sister languages, Portuguese has undergone a number of systematic sound changes during its evolution from common Latin roots. However, though lexically closest to Spanish, Portuguese is more akin to Italian and Catalan in terms of vowels, having retained the original Latin vowels where Spanish and French introduced diphthongs.

Writing system and pronunciation

Portuguese uses the ordinary Latin alphabet, but includes ç and allows accents on vowels. These accents are not simply stress markers, but have phonetic value.

Portuguese orthography is quite regular, and in most cases (standard) pronunciation can be predicted from the written word. The language has a high vowel/consonant-ratio, a trait that is emphasized in Brazilian Portuguese which has enslaved itself to an iambic-syllabic rhythm even to the point of inserting extra vowels in consonant clusters in the spoken language, e.g. pi-si-co-lo-gi-a instead of psicologia (psychology). In Portugal, on the other hand, the vowels are weakened to such a degree that the result sounds like an incomprehensible slur of consonants to Brazilian ears, e.g. Frnandpssoa instead of Fer-nan-do Pe-sso-a (a famous poet). Needless to say, the more rhythmic Brazilian variant has fostered a vibrant dancing culture, while the mournful and drawn melancholy of Portuguese fado is more inclined to induce weeping rather than dancing.

Grammar

Noun phrase inflection:

	Male	Female
	the black horse	the round table
Singular	o cavalo preto	a mesa redonda
Plural	os cavalos pretos	as mesas redondas

Verb phrase inflection:

Portuguese has 3 regular conjugations (-ar, -er, and -ir), e.g. falar (talk), comer (eat) and dormir (sleep), as well as several dozen irregular verbs or verb groups. A semi-irregular feature is a vowel shift between root-stressed and endings-stressed forms, and between dark (a/o) and light (e/i) vowel endings.

	Root-stressed	Ending-stressed
dormir sleep	durmo I sleep	dormimos we sleep

	Dark-vowel ending	Light-vowel ending
consentir agree	consinto I agree	consente he/she agrees

Indicative
comer eat	Singular			Plural
	1st person	2nd person	3rd person	1st person	2nd person	3rd person
Present	como	comes	come	comemos	comeis	comem
Imperfect	comia	comias	comia	comíamos	comíeis	comiam
Preterite	comi	comeste	comeu	comemos	comestes	comeram
Pluperfect	comera	comeras	comera	comêramos	comêreis	comeram
Future	comerei	comerás	comerá	comeremos	comereis	comerão
Subjunctive
Present	coma	comas	coma	comamos	comais	comam
Imperfect	comesse	comesses	comesse	comêssemos	comêsseis	comessem
Future	comer	comeres	comer	comermos	comerdes	comerem
-
Conditional	comeria	comerias	comeria	comeríamos	comeríeis	comeriam
Imperative		come	(coma)	(comamos)	comei	(comam)
Personal infinitive	comer	comeres	comer	comermos	comerdes	comerem

In addition, the following compound tenses can be formed with the auxiliary ter (have), with examples in the first person singular:

	Indicative	Subjunctive
Compound perfect preterite	tenho comido	tenha comido
Compound pluperfect	tinha comido	tivesse comido
Future perfect	terei comido	tiver comido
Compound conditional	teria comido	-

Word formation and lexicon

Portuguese is not a compounding language, allowing only prefixes (e.g. hiper- "hyper") and suffixes (e.g. -ização "-ization"), but not root compounding. Therefore, the longest words in the language are scientific words with Greek or Latin roots (chemistry, medicine, sociology).

Arabic words in European Portuguese

Deeply rooted in European Portuguese, are many Arabic words from over 500 years of Islamic rule and the reconquista. These words are often recognizable from their initial 'al-' (the Arabic article).

arroz
rice
safra
harvest
aduana
customs
alface
lettuce
javali
wild boar
maroma
rope

Tupí words in Brazilian Portuguese

The Portuguese were at a linguistic loss when confronted with Brazilian nature and tens of thousands of animal, plant and place names were borrowed from Indian languages, first and foremost Tupí and its Jesuit-regularized version Lingua Geral.

capivara (the worlds largest rodent)
place-names ending in -açu ("big"), e.g. the giant waterfall Iguaçu ("big water")
mirim ("little"), e.g. táxi-mirim (mini-taxi)
capim (grass, slang usage: money)

Angolan words in Portuguese

The food and religion of Angolan slaves have become an essential part of the Brazilian soul, contributing cultural icons such as feijoada (bean stew) and exu (spiritistic daemon).

Dialects

Portuguese has only 2 written standards used for teaching, European (Lusitan) Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese, comparable to the orthographical-lexical split between British and American English, but also featuring some grammatical differences. The dialectal landscape of spoken Portuguese, however, is very varied in terms of accents and lexicon. There are 10 main dialect areas in Portugal and its islands. Among Portuguese dialects in Spain, Galician is prominent and sometimes considered a separate language for political reasons. In Brazil, dialects carry many lexical traces of Indian and African languages, as well as other European immigrant languages. In all corners of the former Empire, Portuguese dialects remain. The current revival of Portuguese in Angola and Mozambique is backed by a strong standardisation effort detrimental to the dialects. Finally, there is a number of surviving Portuguese creoles, that are not dialects, but languages evolved from Portuguese trading pidgins: Kabuverdiano (Cape Verde), Forro (São Tomé & Principe) and Papiamento (Dutch Carribean ABC islands).

Dialect map of continental Portugal with other Romance languages

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Portugués septetrional
Portugués central
Portugués litoral
Portugués meridional

Gallego occidental
Gallego central
Gallego oriental
Gallego jalimés

Mirandés
Asturiano occidental o Leonés
Asturiano central
Asturiano oriental
Montañés
Alto-Extremeño

Español septentrional
Español meridional
Español andaluz

Aragonés

Valenciano
Catalán occidental
Catalán oriental
Catalán septentrional
Alguerés
Balear

Gascón
Languedociano
Provenzal
Limosín
Auvernense
Vivaroalpino

Portuguese

Number of native speakers

Official language in

Minority language in

Language of diaspora

Longest word

Curious word or sentence

Introduction

History

409 – 711

711

9-11th century

Beginning reconquista: Galicia

1095

12-14th century

1249

1290

15-16th century

Language of discoverers, traders and missionaries, Empire

1419 – 1420

1427 – 1431

1498

1500

1510

1557

1580 ‒ 1640

1755 ‒ 1779

1807

1822

1960 ‒ 1970