Portuguese (language)

Portuguese
português
Pronunciation	[puɾtuˈɣeʃ], [poʁtuˈɡes]
Native to	Portugal, Brazil, Goa, Angola, Mozambique, and other Lusophone countries
Native speakers	215 million (2010) Total (L1 plus L2): 250 million (2012)
Language family	Indo-European Italic Romance Western Romance Ibero-Romance West Iberian Galician-Portuguese Portuguese
Early forms	Medieval Galician Portuguese
Writing system	Latin (Portuguese alphabet) Portuguese Braille
Signed forms	Manually coded Portuguese
Official status
Official language in	9 countries  Angola  Brazil  Cape Verde  East Timor  Equatorial Guinea  Guinea-Bissau  Mozambique  Portugal  São Tomé and Príncipe 1 dependency  Macau 1 autonomous region  Galicia (disputed) Cultural language Goa (India) Numerous international organisations
Regulated by	International Portuguese Language Institute Academia Brasileira de Letras (Brazil) Academia das Ciências de Lisboa, Classe de Letras (Portugal) CPLP
Language codes
ISO 639-1	pt
ISO 639-2
ISO 639-3
Glottolog	port1283
Linguasphere	51-AAA-a
Native language   Official and administrative language   Cultural or secondary language   Portuguese speaking minorities   Portuguese-based creole languages
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Portuguese (português or, in full, língua portuguesa) is a Romance language and the sole official language of Portugal, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Angola, and São Tomé and Príncipe. It also has co-official language status in East Timor, Equatorial Guinea and Macau. As the result of expansion during colonial times, a cultural presence of Portuguese and Portuguese creole speakers are also found in Goa, Daman and Diu in India; in Batticaloa on the east coast of Sri Lanka; in the Indonesian island of Flores; and in Malacca in Malaysia.

Portuguese is part of the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, and has kept some Celtic phonology. With approximately 215 to 220 million native speakers and 260 million total speakers, Portuguese is usually listed as the sixth most natively spoken language in the world, the third-most spoken European language in the world in terms of native speakers, and a major language of the Southern Hemisphere. It is also the most spoken language in South America and the second-most spoken in Latin America after Spanish, and is an official language of the European Union, Mercosul, OAS, ECOWAS and the African Union.