Portuguese ( or língua
portuguesa) is a Romance
language that originated in what is now Galicia
and northern
Portugal
. It is derived from the
Latin spoken by the
romanized pre-Roman peoples of
the Iberian Peninsula (namely the
Gallaeci, the
Lusitanians, the
Celtici
and the
Conii) around 2000 years ago.
It spread
worldwide in the 15th and 16th centuries as Portugal established a
colonial and commercial empire
(1415–1999) which spanned from Brazil
in the
Americas to Goa
and other
parts of India
, Macau
in China
and Timor
(north of
Australia). It was used as the
exclusive lingua franca on the island
of Sri
Lanka
for almost 350 years. During that time, many
creole languages based on
Portuguese also appeared around the world, especially in
Africa, Asia, and the
Caribbean
.
Today it is one of the world's major languages,
ranked
seventh according to number of native speakers (between 191 and
230 million). It is the language of about half of
South America's population, even though Brazil
is the only Portuguese-speaking nation in
the Americas. It is also a major lingua franca
in Portugal's former colonial possessions in Africa.
It is an official
language in nine countries (see the table on the right), also being
co-official with Cantonese
Chinese in Macau and Tetum in East Timor
. There are sizeable communities of Portuguese
speakers in various regions of North
America, notably in the United States
(New
Jersey
, New
England
, California
and south Florida
) and in
Ontario
, Canada
.
In various aspects, the
system of
sounds in Portuguese is more similar to the
phonologies of
Catalan or
French than, say, those of
Spanish or
Italian.
Spanish
author
Miguel de Cervantes once called
Portuguese "the sweet language", Lope de
Vega referred to it as "suave" 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.
Geographic distribution
Countries and regions where Portuguese
has official status.
Members of the Community of Portuguese
Language Countries.
Today,
Portuguese is the official
language of Angola
, Brazil (190.6
million), Cape
Verde
, Guinea-Bissau
, Portugal (10.6
million), São Tomé and Príncipe
and Mozambique
. It is also one of the official languages of
the special
administrative region of Macau (with
Chinese) and East Timor, (with Tetum). It is
the language of most of the population in Portugal (100%), Brazil
(100%), São Tomé and Príncipe (99.8%) and Angola (80%), and is the
most widely spoken language in Mozambique (40%), though only 6.5%
are native speakers. No data are available for Cape Verde, but
almost all the population is bilingual, and the monolingual
population speaks
Cape Verdean
Creole.
Small Portuguese-speaking communities subsist in former overseas
colonies of Portugal such as Macau, where it is spoken by 7% of the
population, and East Timor (13.6%).
Uruguay
gave Portuguese an equal status to Spanish in its
educational system at the north border with Brazil. In the
rest of the country, it is taught as an obligatory subject
beginning in the 6th grade.
It is
also spoken by substantial immigrant communities, though not
official, in Andorra
, Australia, France
, Luxembourg
, Jersey
(with a
statistically significant Portuguese-speaking community of
approximately 10,000 people), Paraguay
, Namibia
, South Africa, Switzerland
, Venezuela
, Japan
and the
U.S.
states of California, Connecticut
, Florida, Massachusetts
, New
Jersey, New
York
and Rhode
Island
.In some parts of India, such as Goa and Daman and Diu
, Portuguese is still spoken. There are also
significant populations of Portuguese speakers in Canada (mainly
concentrated in and around Toronto
), Bermuda
and the Netherlands Antilles
.
Portuguese is an official language of several international
organizations.
The Community of Portuguese Language
Countries
(with the Portuguese acronym CPLP) consists of the
eight independent countries that have Portuguese as an official
language. It is also an official language of the
European Union, accounting for 3% of
its population, Mercosul, the Organization
of American States
, the Organization of
Ibero-American States, the Union of South American
Nations, and the African Union
(one of the working languages) and one of the official languages of
other organizations. The Portuguese language is gaining
popularity in Africa, Asia, and South America as a second language
for study.
Portuguese and Spanish are the fastest-growing European languages
(with the exception of English, being the world lingua franca) ,
and, according to estimates by UNESCO, the Portuguese 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 in the early 21st century, after Macau was
ceded to China in 1999, the use of Portuguese was in decline in
Asia, it is becoming a language of opportunity there; mostly
because of East Timor's boost in the number of speakers in the last
five years but also because of increased Chinese diplomatic and
financial ties with Portuguese-speaking countries.
In July
2007, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema announced his government's
decision to establish Portuguese as Equatorial Guinea
's third official language, to meet the requirements
to apply for full membership of the Community of Portuguese Language
Countries. This upgrading from its current Associate
Observer condition would result in Equatorial Guinea being able to
access several professional and academic exchange programs and the
facilitation of cross-border circulation of citizens. Its
application is currently being assessed by other CPLP
members.
In March
1994 the Bosque de
Portugal
(Portugal's Woods) was founded in the Brazilian
city of Curitiba
. The park houses the Portuguese Language
Memorial, which honors the Portuguese immigrants and the countries
that adopted the Portuguese language.
Originally there were
seven nations represented with pillars, but the independence of
East
Timor brought yet another pillar for that nation in
2007.
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 speakers in the world.
Dialects
Portuguese is a pluricentric language with two main
groups of dialects, those of Brazil and those of
the Old World. For historical
reasons, the dialects of Africa and Asia are generally closer to
those of Portugal than the Brazilian dialects, although in some
aspects of their phonetics, especially the pronunciation of
unstressed vowels, they resemble
Brazilian Portuguese more than
European Portuguese. They have not been
studied as widely as European and Brazilian Portuguese.
Audio samples of some dialects of Portuguese are available below.
There are some differences between the areas but these are the best
approximations possible. For example, the
caipira dialect
has some differences from the one of Minas Gerais, but in general
it is very close.
A good example of Brazilian Portuguese may
be found in the capital city, Brasília
, because of the generalized population from all
parts of the country.
Portuguese dialects of Angola
Angola
- Benguelense — Benguela
province.
Luandense — Luanda
province.- Sulista — South of Angola.
Dialects of Portuguese in Brazil
Brazil
- 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
, Goiás
and
Mato Grosso do Sul.
- Cearense — Ceará
.
- Baiano — Bahia.
- Fluminense — Variants spoken in
the states of Rio de Janeiro
(excluding the city of Rio de Janeiro and its
adjacent metropolitan areas, which have their own dialect, called
carioca).
- 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, those which have settled several colonies throughout the
state.)
- Mineiro — Minas Gerais (not prevalent in the Triângulo Mineiro, southern and
southeastern Minas
Gerais and also excluding the city of Belo
Horizonte
, which has
its own accent.).
- Nordestino — northeastern states of Brazil
(Pernambuco, Paraíba
and Rio Grande do
Norte have a particular way of speaking).
- Nortista — Amazon
Basin states.
- Paulistano — Variants spoken
around São
Paulo city and the eastern areas of São Paulo
state.
- Sertanejo — States of
Goiás and
Mato Grosso (the city of Cuiabá
has a particular way of speaking).
- 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, Florianópolis
, and Itapetininga
have fairly distinct accents as well.)
- Carioca — Variants spoken in Rio de
Janeiro
City and Niteroi
Dialects of Portuguese in
Portugal
Portugal
- Açoriano (Azorean) — Azores.
- Alentejano — Alentejo
- Algarvio — Algarve (there is a particular dialect in a small
part of western Algarve).
- Alto-Minhoto — North of Braga (hinterland).
- Baixo-Beirão;
Alto-Alentejano — Central Portugal
(hinterland).
- Beirão — Central Portugal.
- Estremenho — Regions of Coimbra and Lisbon
(the
Lisbon dialect has some peculiar features not shared with the one
of Coimbra).
- Madeirense (Madeiran) — Madeira
.
- Nortenho — Regions of Braga and
Porto
.
- Transmontano — Trás-os-Montes e Alto
Douro.
Other countries
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
which should not be confused with Portuguese itself.
History
Arriving
in 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
of the north 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 Leon 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" should 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
A distinctive feature of Portuguese is that it preserved the
stressed vowels of
Vulgar Latin, which
became diphthongs in other Romance languages; cf. Fr.
pierre, Sp.
piedra, It.
pietra, Ro.
piatră, Port.
pedra ("stone"), from Lat.
petram; or Sp.
fuego, It.
fuoco, Fr.
feu, Ro.
foc, Port.
fogo, from Lat.
focus ("fireplace"). 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 which are
typical of 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
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; and
cachorro "dog", from
Basque.
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
aldaya,
alface "lettuce" from الخس
alkhass,
armazém "warehouse" from المخزن
almahazan, 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).
The name
of the Portuguese town of Fátima
comes from the name of one of the daughters of the
prophet Muhammad.
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" 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,
time from English
beef,
football,
revolver,
stock,
folklore, and
team.
Common phrases in Portuguese
|
Portuguese language
|
Translation in English
|
| Olá!/Oi! (the latter mostly used in Brazil and between
Lusitanian youths) [Hey, ei, e aí? = what's up? Extremely informal,
Br]; Salve!/Saudações! |
Hello!/Hi!; Hail/Greetings! |
| Alô?; Sim; Pronto; [Diga, Fale. Between intimate acquaitances]
(Brazil)/ (Quem) Está lá? Está cá?; Estou sim? (formal); Tou?, ta
lá? (informal) (Portugal) |
Hello (mostly by telephone). |
| Pois não? /(Estou) Às (suas) ordens, à sua disposição./Posso
ajudar? Em que posso ajudá-lo? (male), ajudá-la? (female) |
Hello; Yes; of course; What do you wish?; May I help you?. |
| Saúde/Tintim/Um Brinde a.../Bebamos a... |
(When toasting, wassailing) |
| Boa viagem/Vá com Deus/Desejo-te só o que há de melhor/Tudo de
bom/Deus te proteja/Deus te guie! |
Have a nice trip/I wish you all the best/Godspeed. |
| Tudo bem?/Como está(s)?/Como vai você?(Brazil)/Como vai?
(Brazil)/Como vai(s) andando? (Portugal)/Como tem passado? |
How are you?. |
| Bem, obrigado(a) |
I am fine, thank you. |
| Prazer em conhecer-te (in Portugal for both genders)/ Prazer em
conhecê-lo (male, very used in Brazil, yet formal in Portugal and
PALOP)/ conhecê-la (female, same as
previous)/(Muito) Prazer/Satisfação/Encantado(a) |
Nice to meet you. |
| Bom dia. |
Good morning. |
| Boa tarde. |
Good afternoon. |
| Boa noite. |
Good evening/Good night. |
| Adeus!/Tchau!/Tchau-tchau!/Adeusinho, tchauzinho. |
Goodbye/Bye/bye-bye. |
| Despedir-se/Dizer adeus/Dar tchau |
To bid farewell, to say goodbye. |
| (Que) Tenha um bom/belo dia/Fique bem/Passar bem! |
Have a nice day!/ Literally: Be well! |
| Bom apetite! |
Enjoy your meal. |
| Até logo/Até breve/Até mais ver/Até já (Portugal)/Até depois/Te
vejo depois/A gente se vê (Br)/A gente se fala (Br)/Até mais
tarde/Até amanhã/Até à próxima sexta (sexta-feira)/Até segunda/Te
vejo segunda-feira. |
See you soon/later/tomorrow/Till next Friday/See you
Monday |
| Desculpa/Desculpe/Perdão/Desculpa-me/Desculpe-me/Peço
desculpa |
I am sorry/Accept my apologies |
| Lamento (muito)! |
I'm (so) sorry! |
| Perdoa-me/Perdoe-me |
Forgive me!/I beg your pardon! |
| Como?/O que é que disseste?/O que disse?/O quê?/Pode(s)
repetir? |
What?/What did you say?/Can you repeat? |
| Com licença/Perdão/Desculpe |
Excuse me. |
| Por favor/Se faz(es) favor/Por gentileza/Por obséquio/Se vos
apraz/Se vos aprouver/Se lhe aprouver/Se lhe satisfaz/Se for de sua
vontade/Se não for incómodo (pt)/Se não for incômodo (br)/Eu
agradeceria/Eu agradecia/ Eu ficaria/ficava grato/a. |
Please. |
| (Muito) obrigado(male)/ obrigada (female). |
Thank you (very much)/Much obliged. |
| Fico grato/agradecido (male)/ Grata/agradecida (female)./
Bondade sua/ É muita gentileza (sua)/ É muita generosidade/ É muita
mercê. |
Much obliged. |
| Fico/Fiquei/Estou lisonjeado (male)/ lisonjeada (female). |
I am flattered. |
| De nada/Por nada/Disponha/Não tem de quê/Não tem por onde/Não
por isso/Foi uma satisfação/Foi um prazer. |
You are quite welcome/Think nothing of it/Do not mention it/It
was a pleasure. |
| Parabéns/Felicitações/Congratulações! |
Congratulations. |
| Parabéns / Feliz aniversário! |
Happy birthday. |
| Boa sorte. |
Good luck. |
| Que dia é hoje? |
Which day is today? |
| Que horas são? |
What time is it? |
| Quantos anos tens?/Quantos anos você tem?/Que idade tens?/Qual
(é) a sua/tua idade? |
How old are you?/What is your age? |
| Qual é o seu/teu nome? / Como (é que) te chamas /se chama ? /
Como é o teu/seu nome? / Como você se chama? (br) / Qual sua graça?
(not very used) |
What is your name? |
| (O) meu nome é... /(Eu) sou o/a... / (Eu) chamo-me... / (Eu) me
chamo... |
My name is.../I am... |
| Quanto custa?/Quanto é?/Quanto vale? |
How much (for money)? |
| Onde é a casa-de-banho?/Onde fica a casa-de-banho?/Onde é/são
o(s) lavabo(s)/a toalete/sanitário/banheiro (br)? Onde fica o
lavatório? |
Where is the bathroom? |
| (Desejo-lhe/Desejo-te) as melhoras!/Estimo as
melhoras!/Desejo-lhe uma rápida recuperação/Estimo-lhe um pronto
restabelecimento! |
I wish you a speedy recovery! |
| (Eu) te amo/(Eu) amo-te/(Eu) amo você/ Vos amo!/ Ego te amo/
(Eu) adoro-te/ (Eu) te adoro/ (Eu) adoro você! / (Eu) gosto de ti/
(Eu) gosto de você/ Eu curto ... (Br) |
I love you/thee!/ I adore you/ I like you!/ I dig/fancy
... |
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:
Despite the obvious lexical and grammatical similarities between
Portuguese and other Romance languages, it is not
mutually intelligible with them. Apart
from Galician, Portuguese speakers will usually need some formal
study of basic grammar and vocabulary, before attaining a
reasonable level of comprehension of those languages, and vice
versa. Native speakers of Portuguese do tend to understand standard
Spanish which is spoken clearly, but the reverse is generally not
true unless formal education is involved.
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
somewhat, 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 good between Galicians and
northern Portuguese, but poorer between Galicians and speakers from
central Portugal.
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
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) 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.
See also
List
of English words of Portuguese origin,
Loan words in Indonesian,
Japanese words of Portuguese
origin,
Borrowed words
in Malay,
Sinhala
words of Portuguese origin,
Loan words from
Portuguese in Sri Lankan Tamil.
Derived 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.
Movement to make Portuguese an official language of the UN
Justifications
There is a growing number of people in the Portuguese-speaking
media and the internet who are presenting the case to the CPLP and
other organizations to run a debate in the
Lusophone community with the purpose of bringing
forward a petition to make Portuguese an official language of the
United Nations.
In October 2005, during the international Convention of the
Elos Club International that took place in Tavira,
Portugal, a petition was written and unanimously approved whose
text can be found on the internet with the title
Petição Para
Tornar Oficial o Idioma Português na ONU. Romulo Alexandre
Soares, president of the Brazil-Portugal Chamber highlights that
the positioning of Brazil in the international arena as one of the
emergent powers of the 21st century, the size of its population,
and the presence of the language around the world provides
legitimacy and justifies a petition to the UN to make the
Portuguese language an official language of the UN.
Challenges
Several factors detract from this campaign. The current official
languages of the UN are either 1) official/dominant in many
countries (English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, and French) or 2)
have several hundreds of millions of speakers (Chinese). English,
Spanish, and Arabic fulfill both criteria. Portuguese is a global
language in that it is the official tongue of several sovereign
countries on four continents. It also has over 200 million
speakers. However, it exhibits some noticeable differences when
compared to the current 6 UN official languages. For example,
English, French, Arabic and Spanish are each official languages of
multiple states and of over half of the world's countries. In
contrast, four out of every five speakers of the
Portuguese-speaking world live in just one country: Brazil. In
addition to Brazil, Portuguese is the official language in only 7
other sovereign states; however, English is official in 53 states,
French in 29 states, Arabic in 25 states, and Spanish in 20
states.
More significantly, in each part of the world with a
Portuguese-speaking country, this language is overshadowed by other
powerful languages that are already official languages of the UN.
For example, in the Americas, the 190 million Portuguese-speaking
Brazilians are overshadowed by the most spoken languages in the
Western Hemisphere: Spanish (~360 million speakers) and English
(~340 million speakers). Portuguese is overshadowed to an even
greater extent in Europe, the continent in which four of the six UN
languages originated (
English,
French,
Spanish, and
Russian). In the European context,
Portuguese is not even among the ten most spoken languages on the
continent, with a number of speakers comparable to those of
Czech and
Bulgarian. In Africa, Portuguese is
eclipsed as a continental
lingua franca by English and
French in countries that surround Cape Verde, São Tomé and
Príncipe, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique. Finally in Asia, a
continent with several languages that have hundreds of millions of
speakers, the only sovereign state with Portuguese as an official
language is East Timor, which has only a million people. While
Brazilian migration has brought 300,000 fluent Portuguese speakers
to Japan, Portuguese does not enjoy any official status whatsoever
in that country. Therefore, while Portuguese will gain increasing
importance as Brazil continues its development as a major economy,
it will likely face the same hurdles that prevented Japanese and
German (both languages of major global economies with millions of
speakers) from becoming both international languages and official
ones of the UN.
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
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 (represented as
either , or , or ). The high vowels and the low vowels 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
The consonant inventory of Portuguese is fairly conservative. The
medieval affricates , , , merged with the fricatives , , , ,
respectively, but not with each other, and there were 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, and have the affricate allophones
and , respectively, before and . (Quebec
French has a similar phenomenon, with alveolar affricates
instead of postalveolars. Japanese
is another example).
- At the end of a syllable, the phoneme has the allophone in
Brazilian Portuguese (L-vocalization).
- In many parts of Brazil and Angola, intervocalic is pronounced
as a nasalized palatal approximant which nasalizes the
preceding vowel, so that, for instance, is pronounced .
- In most of Brazil, the alveolar sibilants and 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, sibilants are
postalveolar at the ends of syllables, before voiceless consonants,
and before voiced consonants (in Judeo-Spanish, is often replaced with at the
ends of syllables, too).
- There is considerable dialectal variation in the value of the
rhotic phoneme . See Guttural R in Portuguese, for
details.
Examples of different pronunciation
- Excerpt from the Portuguese national
epic Os Lusíadas, by
author Luís de Camões (I,
33)
| Original |
IPA (European
Portuguese) |
IPA (Brazilian
Portuguese) |
Translation |
| Sustentava contra ele Vénus bela, |
|
|
Against him spoke the lovely Venus |
| Afeiçoada à gente Lusitana, |
|
|
Favoring the people of Portugal, |
| Por quantas qualidades via nela |
|
|
She saw resurrected in them |
| Da antiga tão amada sua Romana; |
|
|
For her love of Roman virtue; |
Nos fortes corações,
na grande estrela, |
|
|
In their stout hearts, in the great star |
| Que mostraram na terra Tingitana, |
|
|
Which shone bright above Ceuta, |
| E na língua, na qual quando imagina, |
|
|
In the language which when it is imagined |
| Com pouca corrupção crê que é a Latina. |
|
|
With little corruption, believes that it is Latin. |
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 tense
has an iterative sense unique to Galician-Portuguese language
group. It denotes an action or a series of actions which 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.
- The future subjunctive tense,
which was developed by medieval West Iberian Romance, but has now
fallen into disuse in Spanish and Galician, is still used in
vernacular Portuguese. It appears in
dependent clauses that denote a condition which must be fulfilled
in the future, so that the independent clause will occur. English
normally employs the present tense under the same
circumstances:
- Se for eleito presidente, mudarei a lei.
- If I am elected president, I will change the law.
- Quando fores mais velho, vais entender.
- When you are 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 |
excellent, optimal |
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
See also
Notes
References
General
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
Reference dictionaries
Linguistic studies
External links
Top topics
Wikis
Quiz
Facts
Map
Search
