We explain which countries speak Portuguese and what the characteristics of this language are. In addition, we tell you the history of the Portuguese language.
In which countries is Portuguese spoken?
The Portuguese It is a Romance language (that is, descended from Latin) of European origin and belonging to the Indo-European language family. Its direct predecessor was the Galician-Portuguese. It is the ninth most spoken language in the world, with some 270 million native speakers, and the most spoken in the southern hemisphere of the planet.
Known as “the language of Camões”, the greatest poet of the language, the Portuguese language It is the official language of eight countries in Europe, Africa, America and Asia and it is also spoken in its creolized form in the different regions that were part of the Portuguese colonies in the world. Furthermore, during the 20th century the Portuguese people emigrated abundantly to Spanish, German and Anglo-Saxon speaking countries, where the language is still present among migrant communities.
The presence and international importance of the Portuguese language led to the emergence in 1996 of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries, a multilateral entity of Portuguese-speaking nations, based in Lisbon, Portugal. This organization sponsors the International Institute of the Portuguese Language, responsible for the dissemination, study and enrichment of Portuguese worldwide.
See also: Countries that speak Spanish
History of the Portuguese language
The Portuguese It emerged in the Iberian Peninsula, the result of the long evolution of Vulgar Latin or spoken Latin that the Romans brought to the Celtiberian peoples of the region in the 3rd century BC. C. The Romans baptized those regions as Lusitania and Gallaecia, historical precursors of modern Portugal and Galicia. The variant of Latin that was spoken in these regions It was strongly influenced by the language of the Celts which lacked writing.
Later, the Latin of this region received an important contribution from the Suebian and Visigoth peoples, who settled in the area after the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. C. When the latter occurred, linguistic uniformity was fractured, since different peoples spoke Latin in their own way, and That led to the creation of new dialects, some quite different from each other, such as Catalan, Galician-Portuguese and the Hispanic languages (Castilian, Aragonese, Leonese, Asturian, among others).
Something similar happened in the year 711, when the Muslim invasion of the Iberian Peninsula took place and a good part of it remained under the control of al-Andalus. This Islamic regime, compared to medieval Europe, was the bearer of great cultural and scientific wealth, and an important cultural tolerance that not only allowed the Latin dialects to continue existing, but also contributed to them extensively, especially in lexical matters and phonetics.
Already in the 9th century, the first texts written in an independent language appeared in the northern region of Portugal although continually accompanied by Latin phrases. Many of them had to do with the Portucalense County, founded in 868 during the first efforts to expel the Arabs from the Iberian Peninsula (the Reconquista).
But only with the birth of the Kingdom of Portugal in 1139, with the coronation of Alfonso I of Portugal (1109-1185) and the victory in the battle of Ourique against the Muslims, the vernacular language took its first steps towards establishing itself as a national language.
Called “vulgar Latin” at that time, Galician-Portuguese (or medieval Portuguese) became the substitute language for classical Latin in the royal court and in the studies of the first Portuguese university (the General status founded by King Dionysius I of Portugal). Just six years later it was already the language of the chancellery and in which local poetry was composed, and From the end of the 13th century to the 14th century there was a time of splendor and cultural flourishing in the region.
At the beginning of the 15th century, Galician-Portuguese presented its first divisions as a result of the political and territorial separation between the kingdom of Portugal and the region of Galicia, under the control of the nascent Spanish (Castilian) monarchy. Thus, as the central-southern Portuguese variant was established as the cultured norm of the language, the Portuguese language began to be formally distinguished from Galician.
The period of expansion of the Portuguese language took place between the 15th and 16th centuries as a result of the imperial competition between Spain and Portugal for the conquest of America, and the use of Portuguese as lingua franca between Europe and Asia, given the importance of Portuguese navigators and explorers in the founding of maritime trade routes to the East. From then on, Portuguese was spoken not only in Brazil, but also in India, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Malaysia, Indonesia, and regions of China and Japan.
Likewise, the language also spread to Africa, when the colonial and commercial Empire of Portugal established colonies in Angola, Mozambique, East Timor, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde and other regions of the continent, which played a fundamental role in the trade of slaves to the plantations of the so-called “New Continent”.
Features of Portuguese
The general features of the Portuguese language are the following:
- It is a Romance language, derived from Latin and related to Spanish, French, Galician and Catalan, among others. At the same time, it has a great influence from Arabic, Carthaginian, Phoenician and Celtic.
- It is distinguished from its sister languages in many aspects, not only phonetic and lexical, but also grammatical keeping certain similarities with Vulgar Latin and Old Spanish. In addition, it has a complex phonological system, with 9 vowel and 19 consonant phonemes, as well as 10 oral and 5 nasal diphthongs.
- It has been orthographically reformed five times: 1911, 1943, 1945, 1971 and 1990. In the latter, common standards were established for all Portuguese-speaking countries.
- It is usually called luso either Lusitanian in reference to the pre-Roman towns of the region (which the Romans baptized “Lusitania”). The fact of speaking Portuguese is called lusophony.
Portuguese speaking countries
Portuguese is an important international language, whose largest number of speakers are found in Brazil (81%), Portugal (4%), Angola (4%) and Mozambique (3%), but which has a presence in other national entities. Portuguese is an official, co-official or minority language in almost twenty countries.
| Country | % of Lusophone citizens | Number of Portuguese speakers | Language status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Portugal | 99% | 10,262,000 inhabitants | Official language |
| Angola | 71% | 20,426,700 inhabitants | Co-official language |
| Argentina | 1.9% | 802,341 inhabitants | Minority language |
| Brazil | 95.59% | 198,700,000 inhabitants | Official language |
| Cape Verde | 89.9% | 450,526 inhabitants | Official language |
| Spain | 0.08% | 40,000 inhabitants | Minority language |
| Guinea-Bissau | 15% | 1,460,253 inhabitants | Official language |
| Equatorial Guinea | 1.18% | 21,000 inhabitants | Co-official language |
| India | 0.005% | 65,000 inhabitants | Minority language |
| Japan | 0.3% | 467,150 inhabitants | Minority language |
| Macau (China) | 2% | 13,000 inhabitants | Co-official language |
| Mozambique | 50.3% | 12,600,000 inhabitants. | Official language |
| Paraguay | 8.9% | 600,000 inhabitants | Minority language |
| Sao Tome and Principe | 95% | 183,742 inhabitants | Official language |
| South Africa | 1.13% | 600,000 inhabitants | Minority language |
| East Timor | 31.94% | 339,541 inhabitants | Co-official language |
| Uruguay | 25.9% | 854,441 inhabitants | Minority language |
| Venezuela | 1.6% | 527,700 inhabitants | Minority language |
Dialects and variants of the Portuguese language
The Portuguese language, as is the case with most colonial languages, has a large number of dialects and geographical variants, as well as creolizations and hybridizations resulting from the expansion of the language to other continents and sustained contact with other cultures. The main dialects of Portuguese are:
- European dialect. It refers to the typical way of speaking Portuguese in Portugal, which presents more or less marked differences depending on the region of the country, or whether it is the Portuguese spoken in the Azores islands or in Madeira. In general, the Portuguese of the central-southern region of the country, such as that spoken in Lisbon and the University of Coimbra, is considered the cultured norm, a more rigid and closed Portuguese compared to its American variants.
- Brazilian dialect. It refers to the Portuguese spoken in the different regions of Brazil, which presents differences in vocabulary, pronunciation and some few orthographic discrepancies with respect to the European variant, despite the fact that it is actually a set of dialects, given the enormous size and quantity of population of Brazil. However, they have common features, such as the use of voice rather you. The main Brazilian dialects are Northeastern (states of Alagoas, Maranhão, Piauí, Paraíba, Pernambuco), Baiano (Bahia and Sergipe), Paulistano (São Paulo), Gaúcho (Rio Grande do Sul), Fluminense (Rio de Janeiro and Espíritu Santo) and the sertão (Goiás, Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul).
- Angolan dialect. It refers to Angolan Portuguese, the variant with the most speakers in all of Africa. Despite being the official language and the cultured university norm, Portuguese is in constant interference and hybridization with other local languages, which is why, together with the (less intense) Mozambican variant, it is one of the Portuguese dialects. more variety and diversification. Its pronunciation is quite different from the European and American variants, with its own cadence and a lexicon very adapted to local reality.
- Macau dialect. It refers to the Portuguese dialect spoken in the Chinese special administrative region of Macau, distinct from Macanese Creole, a hybrid born in this Asian region. The Portuguese of Macau differs from the variants of Europe and America both in its grammar and in its pronunciation and cadence, since it is a variant that is more faithful to the medieval Portuguese that arrived with the explorers of the 16th century. And also, naturally, the lexicon of this variant has been adapted to the Chinese cultural reality.
- Oliventine dialect. It refers to the Portuguese dialect spoken in the region of Olivenza and Táliga, in the Spanish province of Badajoz. This dialect arises from the fact that these two Spanish municipalities were part of the Kingdom of Portugal between 1297 and 1801. It is a Portuguese very similar to that spoken in the Portuguese region of Alentejo, and which is currently experiencing a marked process of Castilianization, therefore which is considered a variant in danger of extinction.
Influence of Portuguese on other languages
Portuguese, as a colonial language, has left its mark on other languages of the world, contributing terms and uses (known as Lusitanisms) and giving birth to Creole variants in different Asian and African territories, such as Macanese Creole, Cape Verdean Creole, Forro Creole, Indo-Portuguese Creole or Papiamento. From his meetings with the Spaniard, the portuñola kind of intermediate language between the two.
Continue with: Countries that speak French
References
- “History of the Portuguese language” on Wikipedia.
- “Portuguese dialects” on Wikipedia.
- “Origins of Portuguese Language” in The Translation Company.
- “Portuguese language (português)” in The Encyclopaedia Britannica.
