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Portuguese (
Today it is one of the world's major languages, ranked 6th according to number of native speakers (approximately 177 million). It is the language with the largest number of speakers in South America, spoken by nearly all of Brazil's population, which amounts to over 51% of the continent's population even though it 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 the official language of ten countries (see the table on the right), also being co-official with Spanish and French in Equatorial Guinea, with Cantonese Chinese in the Chinese special administrative region of Macau, and with Tetum in East Timor. There are sizable communities of Portuguese-speakers in various regions of North America, notably in the United States and in Ontario, Canada.
Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes once called Portuguese "the sweet language", 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".
DialectsPortuguese is a pluricentric language with two main groups of dialects, those of Brazil and those of the Old World.
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Portuguese (
Today it is one of the world's major languages, ranked 6th according to number of native speakers (approximately 177 million). It is the language with the largest number of speakers in South America, spoken by nearly all of Brazil's population, which amounts to over 51% of the continent's population even though it 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 the official language of ten countries (see the table on the right), also being co-official with Spanish and French in Equatorial Guinea, with Cantonese Chinese in the Chinese special administrative region of Macau, and with Tetum in East Timor. There are sizable communities of Portuguese-speakers in various regions of North America, notably in the United States and in Ontario, Canada.
Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes once called Portuguese "the sweet language", 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".
DialectsPortuguese 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.
Angola
- Benguelense — Benguela province.
- — Luanda province.
- Sulista — South of Angola.
Brazil
- Caipira — States of São Paulo (countryside; the city of São Paulo and the eastern areas of the state have their own dialect, called paulistano); southern Minas Gerais, northern Paraná, Goiás and Mato Grosso do Sul.
- Cearense — Ceará.
- Baiano — Bahia.
- — Variants spoken in the states of Rio de Janeiro and Espírito Santo (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).
- — northeastern states of Brazil.
- 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.)
Portugal
- (Azorean) — Azores.
- — Alentejo
- — Algarve (there is a particular dialect in a small part of western Algarve).
- — North of Braga (hinterland).
- — Central Portugal (hinterland).
- — Central Portugal.
- — Regions of Coimbra and Lisbon (the Lisbon dialect has some peculiar features not shared with the one of Coimbra).
- (Madeiran) — Madeira.
- — Regions of Braga and Porto.
- — 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 coloquial 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 |
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| 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 AD 409 and 711, as the Roman Empire collapsed in Western Europe, the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by Germanic peoples. 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 like Occitan was the language of the poetry of the troubadours. Portugal was formally recognized as an independent kingdom by the Kingdom of Leon in 1143, with Afonso Henriques as king. In 1290, king Dinis 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 century, 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 from the 16th century to 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.
CharacterizationA 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, Port. pedra, from Lat. petra; or Sp. fuego, It. fuoco, Port. fogo, from Lat. focum. Another characteristic of early Portuguese was the loss of 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, tenere, catena, Sp. salir, tener, cadena, Port. sair, ter, cadeia.
When the elided consonant was n, it often nasalized the preceding vowel: cf. Lat. manum, rana, bonum, 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, germanum, rationem with Modern Port. cão, irmão, razão, and their plurals -anes, -anos, -ones normally became -ães, -ãos, -ões, cf. cães, irmãos, razões.
Movement to make Portuguese an official language of the UNThere 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 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 21 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 an official language at the UN.
VocabularyMost 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; saco "bag", from Phoenician; and cachorro "dog, puppy", from Basque.
In the 5th century, the Iberian Peninsula (the Roman Hispania) was conquered by the Germanic Suevi 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.
Between the 9th and 15th centuries Portuguese acquired about 1000 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 ?????? aldaya, alface "lettuce" from ???? alkhass, armazém "warehouse" from ?????? almahazan, and azeite "olive oil" from ??? azzait. From Arabic came also the grammatically peculiar word oxalá "hopefully". The Mozambican currency name metical was derived from the word ????? mi?qal, 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; corja "rabble" from Malay kórchchu; 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 century, the role of Portugal as intermediary in the Atlantic slave trade, with 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, from English beef, 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:
Despite the obvious lexical and grammatical similarities between Portuguese and other Romance languages, it is not mutually intelligible with most of 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.
Galician and the FalaThe 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 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 Valverdi du Fresnu, As Ellas and Sa Martín de Trebellu (autonomous community of Extremadura, near the border with Portugal).
Influence on other languagesMany languages have borrowed words from Portuguese, such as Indonesian, Sri Lankan Tamil and Sinhalese (see Sri Lanka Indo-Portuguese), Malay, Bengali, English, Hindi, Konkani, Marathi, Tetum, Xitsonga, Papiamentu, Japanese, Bajan Creole (Spoken in Barbados), 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.
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 languagesBeginning 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 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.
Phonology
There is a maximum of 9 oral vowels and 19 consonants, though some varieties of the language have fewer phonemes (Brazilian Portuguese has only 8 oral vowel phones). There are also five nasal vowels, which some linguists regard as allophones of the oral vowels, ten oral diphthongs, and five nasal diphthongs.
Vowels
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 either as , 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 end of words.
Consonants
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 remarkable dialectal variants and allophones have appeared, among which:
- In many regions of Brazil, and have the affricate allophones and , respectively, before and ..
- 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 end 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 end of syllables, before voiceless consonants, and before voiced consonants (in Judeo-Spanish, is often replaced with at the end of syllables, too).
Writing systemWritten varieties| Portugal/Africa/Asia | Brazil | translation | | anónimo | anônimo | anonymous | | facto | fato | fact | | ideia | idéia | idea | | direcção | direção | direction | | óptimo | ótimo | great | | frequente | freqüente | frequent | | voo | vôo | flight |
Portuguese is written with 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). Brazilian Portuguese also uses the diaeresis mark. Accented characters and digraphs are not counted as separate letters for collation purposes.
Brazilian vs. European spelling
There are some minor differences between the orthographies of Brazil and other Portuguese language countries. One of the most pervasive is the use of acute accents in the European/African/Asian orthography in many words such as sinónimo, where the Brazilian orthography has a circumflex accent, sinônimo. Another important difference is that Brazilian spelling often lacks c or p before c, ç, or t, where the European orthography has them; for example, cf. Brazilian fato with European facto, "fact", or Brazilian objeto with European objecto, "object". Some of these spelling differences reflect differences in the pronunciation of the words, but others are merely graphic.
ExamplesExcerpt from the Portuguese national epic | |
