Fifth most widely spoken language in the world;
Spoken as an official language in Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Cape Verde, East Timor, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and São Tomé and Príncipe;
Spoken by 272.9 million people, thus being the most spoken language in the southern hemisphere.
Portuguese is a Latin language;
Galician origins;
Portuguese re-conquering;
Sea expansion, cultural and vocabulary influence.
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Portuguese has different characteristics. This happens within Portugal itself, but also in Brazil and in other Portuguese speaking countries.
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These differences are related to phonetics, vocabulary and some grammatical structures.
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Portuguese based Creolo languages are extremely different in all of those features.
Within Portugal different dialects exist in various regions. They differ in some expressions. Here are the most important dialects and some examples of native speakers:
1- Micaelense (Açores) (São Miguel)—Azores. Pedro Pauleta, retired footballer 2 - Alentejano—Alentejo (Alentejan Portuguese) José Carlos Malato, TV presenter 3 - Algarvio—Algarve (there is a particular dialect in a small part of western Algarve) Cavaco Silva, current president of Portugal 4 - Alto-Minhoto—North of Braga (hinterland). Abel Salazar, doctor and scientist 5 - Baixo-Beirão; Alto-Alentejano—Central Portugal (hinterland). Eugénia Melo e Castro, famous singer and songwriter 6 - Beirão— Central Portugal. Carlos Lopes, former olympic Gold medalist 7 - Estremenho—Regions of Leiria and Lisbon, David Fonseca, famous singer
8 - Madeirense (Madeiran)—Madeira, Cristiano Ronaldo, famous football player 9 - Nortenho—Regions of the districts of Braga, Porto and parts of Aveiro. Jorge Nuno Pinto da Costa, President of FCP 10 - Transmontano Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro. Leonel Vieira, famous film director.
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1
10
8
6
9
2 3
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7
Brazilian Portuguese is the most spoken variety of portuguese. It is very different from European Portuguese mainly when regarding pronunciation.
Because Brazil is such a big country, many different dialects emerged. Many famous people are native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese:
Lula da Silva, former president of Brazil, from Pernambuco speaking the “Nordestino” variety (7).
Ronaldinho Gaúcho, famous football player, from Porto Alegre, speaking the “Gaúcho” variety (5).
Cape Verde Portuguese is closer to European Portuguese than Brazilian Portuguese but it is however, different. There is also a mix between Cape Verdean Portuguese and Creole, which is closer to the other African varieties of Portuguese.
Cesária Évora, a famous Cape Verdean singer (Creole speaker)
Some
voices
demand
the
recognition
of
“Angolan
Portuguese” as a specific variant.
However, while there are certain idiomatic particularities in the Portuguese spoken by Angolans, their government is still deciding whether or not these differences are enough to make it being a special variant.
José Eduardo dos Santos, president of the Angolan Republic
There are also other countries where Portuguese varieties are spoken such as:
•
Daman and Diu, India—Damaense (Damanese Portuguese)
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East Timor—Timorense (East Timorese Portuguese)
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Goa, India—Goês (Goan Portuguese)
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Guinea-Bissau—Guineense (Guinean Portuguese)
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Macau— Macaense (Macanese Portuguese)
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Mozambique—Moçambicano (Mozambican Portuguese)
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São Tomé and Príncipe— Santomense (São Tomean Portuguese)
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Uruguay—Dialectos Portugueses del Uruguay (DPU)
The interaction between Portuguese and Asian and South American native populations, caused the appearance of
many loan words.
Indonesian, Manado, Malay, Sri Lankan Tamil and Sinhalese and many South Asian languages are somewhat Romanized by the influence of Portuguese.
Other native Amazonian tribal languages were modified by traces of the Portuguese language.
The Romanization of Chinese was also influenced by the Portuguese language. One example is Mei.
Starting in the 16th century, the extensive contacts between Portuguese travelers and settlers, African slaves, and local
populations led to the appearance of many pidgins (simplified languages).
As each of these pidgins became the mother tongue of succeeding generations, they evolved into fully developed creole languages, which remained in use in parts of Asia and Africa.
Some Portuguese-based or Portuguese-influenced creoles are still spoken today, by over 3 million people worldwide.
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Most of the Portuguese vocabulary derives from Latin, since Portuguese is a Romanic language. However, other languages
that came into contact with it have also left their mark. In the 13th century, the lexicon of Portuguese had about 80% words of Latin origin and 20% of pre-Roman, Germanic and Arabic origin.
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Due to 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.
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The Phoenicians and Carthaginians also left some scarce traces.
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In the 5th century, the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by the Germanic and Visigoths. They contributed with a few words to the lexicon, mostly related to warfare.
Between the 9th and 13th centuries, when Portugal was under influence of the Moors, Portuguese acquired about 800 words from Arabic. They are often recognizable by the initial Arabic article “al”.
Beginning in the 15th century, the Portuguese maritime explorations led to the introduction of many
loanwords from Asian languages.
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Due to 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 from Africa, especially names for most of the animals and plants found in those territories.
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Finally, it has received a steady influx of loanwords from other European languages, such as French, Spanish, English, etc.
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A notable aspect of the grammar of Portuguese is the verb. Morphologically, more verbal tenses from classical Latin have been preserved by Portuguese than by any other major Romanic language.
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It has also some innovations not found in other Romance languages.
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European Portuguese still uses the future subjunctive mood, which developed from medieval West Iberian Romance and in present-day Spanish and Galician has almost entirely become obsolete.
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Currently, the use of a new grammatical agreement
is taking place. It brings Brazilian Portuguese and Vernacular Portuguese closer together.
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Some mute consonants are repressed, some stresses disappeared and the use of capital letters in certain words has changed.
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This agreement has been criticized by some linguists due to its unpredictable rules and the changing of
words without concerning its phonology.
The phonology of Portuguese considerably between dialects;
can
vary
It can lead to difficulties in understanding properly what is supposed to be;
Portuguese is a pluricentric language;
Portuguese has one of the richest vowel phonologies of all Romance languages, having both oral and nasal vowels, diphthongs, and triphthongs.
Portuguese uses vowel height to contrast stressed syllables with unstressed syllables.
Portuguese has 14 phonemic diphthongs: 10 oral and 4 nasal.
Examples: In the word ‘’pai’’ the oral diphthong is –ai [aj].
In the word ‘’mão’’ the nasal diphthong is –ão [ɐ̃w]
As a triphthong: [waj] can be written as – uai as in the word “Paraguai”;
Regarding consonants there are 19 of them. Some are written with more than one alphabetic consonant
Example: the sound /ʃ/ can be written as ch- as in ‘’chato’’
Portuguese literature is notably known for its important lyricists, novelists and play writers such as Fernando Pessoa, José Saramago and Gil Vicente respectively.
It was born in the ‘’Cantigas de Amigo’’ popularized by King Dinis
In the Renaissance one of the most important pieces ‘’Os Lusíadas’’ was written by Camões.
In the Romanticism, Almeida Garrett wrote numerous novels highly regarded by literary critics, even after its decay in the rest of Europe.
The Realist current emerged later on as famous realist writers were already dead when Eça de Queiroz wrote his popular novel “Os Maias”.
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Portuguese literature was quite relevant in the European Modernism as Fernando Pessoa is regarded as one of the greatest modernist poets of all time.
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Finally, Nobel prize winner and now deceased writer, JosĂŠ Saramago is one of the most famous novelists of the modern world.
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The Portuguese language is a true testament to the Portuguese History and Culture along with its former colonies, its famous writers and its complex grammatical rules.
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It is indeed an old language that has resisted the test of time, become modern and marked the life of millions of people all over the world!