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The Portuguese language

Sometimes overlooked, Portuguese is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. It is also
one of the fastest growing European languages, along with English and Spanish. With its humble
origins in the tiny western European nation of Portugal, Portuguese is now spoken in communities
across Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas.
The two major dialects of Portuguese are known as European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese,
which vary primarily in vocabulary and spelling. These are the most commonly taught variants, but
because of the languages wide dispersion, many other dialects are spoken around the world.
Standard Portuguese is based in European Portuguese.
As Brazil continues to emerge as a world power, the Portuguese language will continue to grow and
gain influence as a world language. Other former colonies of Portugal, including Macau in China, and
Angola, Mozambique, and several other African nations, continue to use Portuguese as an official
language. Portuguese is also an official language of the African Union and the European Union.
Roots of the Language: Like other Romance languages, Portuguese is rooted in Latin, which was
brought to the Iberian Peninsula during the Roman Empire. The region that is now Portugal (along
with part of Spain), was once the Roman Province of Lusitania, which used Latin as its common
language. After the collapse of the Roman Empire, language in Lusitania shared a similar fate to that
of its nearest neighbour, Spain. Vulgar Latin evolved into the first version of Portuguese, sometimes
known as Galician-Portuguese. Galicia, today an autonomous region of northern Spain, and Portugal
had once been united.
After the Moorish invasion in 711, Portuguese was influenced by Arabic when it became the official
government language. Soon after Portugal broke away from the rest of the region and became the
independent Kingdom of Portugal in the 12th century, King Denis declared Portuguese the official
language, replacing Latin as the common language.
During the Age of Exploration, Portuguese explorers led European exploration, establishing trade
routes and colonies across the globe. As a result of Portugals exploration, the Portuguese language
spread to colonies in Africa, Asia, and the Americas.
Language characteristics:
Portuguese is very closely related to Galician, spoken in the autonomous region in northern Spain,
which shares strong historical ties to Portugal. Portuguese and Galician are mutually intelligible
languages, especially the dialects of northern Portugal, as the languages diverged from one another
relatively recently.
Portuguese is similar to other Romance languages, with its vocabulary based in Latin and influences
from Arabic. Though speakers of Portuguese are often able to understand Spanish, Portuguese
pronunciation makes the language more difficult for Spanish speakers to understand.
As a widely dispersed language, Portuguese has been influenced by languages along its trade and
exploration routes, including Japanese, Chinese, and indigenous South American and African
languages. It contains loanwords from other European languages, including French, Spanish, and
English.
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Written form:
The Portuguese language uses the standard Latin alphabet, along with accents and tildes, much like
Spanish. Unlike modern Spanish, Portuguese is marked with the use of the cedilla, or hook, with the
letter C ( ), also used in French.
Portuguese spelling was not standardized in Portugal until the 16th century, and Brazil in 1938.
Variations in spelling between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese remain, and the
language has undergone a series of spelling reforms since then, until as recently as 2009.