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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)
Early forms
Medieval Galician
  • Portuguese
Latin (Portuguese alphabet)
Portuguese Braille
Manually coded Portuguese
Official status
Official language in




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
Map of the portuguese language in the world.svg
  Native language
  Official and administrative language
  Cultural or secondary language
  Portuguese speaking minorities
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.
Written varieties
Portugal and non-1990 Agreement countries Brazil and 1990 Agreement countries translation
direcção direção direction
óptimo ótimo best, excellent, optimal

Portuguese (português or, in full, língua portuguesa) is a Romance language and the sole official language of Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal, 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.


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