Portuguese Language

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{{Infobox Language|name=Portuguese|nativename=Português|pronunciation= (European), , or (Brazilian)|states=Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, European Union, Guinea Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Macau, Mozambique, Portugal and São Tomé and Príncipe.]|fam3=Romance language|fam4=Italo-Western languages|fam5=Western|fam6=Gallo-Iberian languages|fam7=Ibero-Romance languages|fam8=West Iberian languages|fam9=Portuguese-Galician languages|script=Latin alphabet (Portuguese alphabet)|nation= Angola
Brazil
Cape Verde
East Timor
Equatorial Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Macau (PRC)
Mozambique
Portugal
São Tomé and Príncipe

African Union (AU)
European Union (EU)
Mercosur
Organization of American States
Community of Portuguese Language Countries; [CPLP that originated in what is now [Galicia (Spain) and Portugal from the Latin language spoken by Romanization (cultural) Celtiberians about 1000 years ago. It spread worldwide in the 15th and 16th centuries as Portugal established a Portuguese Empire (1415–1999) which spanned from Brazil in the Americas to Goa in India and Macau in China. During that time, many Portuguese Creole also appeared around the world, especially in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.

Today it is one of the world's major languages, List of languages by number of native speakers sixth according to number of native speakers (over 200 million). It is the language with the largest number of speakers in South America (188 million, over 51% of the continent's population), and also a major lingua franca in Africa. It is the official language of nine countries (see the table on the right), being co-official with Spanish language and French language in Equatorial Guinea, with Chinese language in the Chinese special administrative region of Macau, and with Tetum in East Timor.

In July 2007, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema announced his government's decision to make Portuguese Equatorial Guinea's third official language, in order to meet the requirements to apply for full membership of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries. This upgrading from its current Associate Observer condition would result in Equatorial Guinea being able to access several professional and academic exchange programs and the facilitation of cross-border circulation of citizens. Its application is currently being assessed by other CPLP members. "Obiang convierte al portugués en tercer idioma oficial para entrar en la Comunidad lusófona de Naciones", Terra. 13-07-2007

Spain 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".

Geographic distribution Portuguese is the official language of Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal, São Tomé and Príncipe and Mozambique. CPLP Official website It is also one of the official languages of Equatorial Guinea (with Spanish language and French language), East Timor (with Tetum) and of the Chinese Macau (with Chinese language). It is widely spoken, but not official, in Andorra, Luxembourg, Namibia and Paraguay (in the latter country there were 112,520 native Portuguese speakers according to the 2002 census), and in the U.S. states of California, Connecticut Where America's Other Languages Are Spoken, Florida Widely spoken but 'minor'? Portuguese seeks respect, Massachusetts, New JerseyHispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Twentieth-Century Arrivals from Portugal Settle in Newark, New Jersey, New York Brazucas (Brazilians living in New York), and Rhode Island.Hispanic Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress website, Whaling, Fishing, and Industrial Employment in Southeastern New England There is also a statistically significant Portuguese-speaking community (approximately 10,000 people) in Jersey. Portuguese Creoles are, while not officially recognized, the standard language for communication in Cape Verde and part of Guinea-Bissau's population. In Cape Verde most also speak standard Portuguese and have native-level proficiency. There are also significant populations of Portuguese speakers in Canada (mainly concentrated in and around Toronto) Multicultural Canada and Bermuda. World InfoZone: Bermuda There are also small populations of speakers in the former Portuguese colonies of Goa Portuguese Language in Goa and Daman and Diu The Portuguese Experience: The Case of Goa, Daman and Diu which are now part of India.The Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP) is an international organization consisting of the eight independent countries that have Portuguese as an official language. Portuguese is also an official language of the European Union, EUROPA website Languages in the EU Mercosul and the African Union (one of the working languages) and one of the official languages of other organizations. The Portuguese language is gaining popularity in Africa, Asia, and South America as a second language for study.

Although in the early 21st century, after Macau was ceded to China in 1999, the use of Portuguese was in decline in Asia, the language is becoming a language of opportunity there; mostly because of East Timor's boost in the number of speakers in the last five years but also because of increased Chinese diplomatic and financial ties with Portuguese-speaking countries.

Portuguese (along with Spanish (language)) is the fastest-growing European language, and, according to estimates by UNESCO, the language with the highest potential for growth as an international language in southern Africa and South America. The Portuguese-speaking African countries are expected to have a combined population of 83 million by 2050. Since 1991Mercosur, when Brazil signed into the economic market of Mercosul with other South American nations, such as Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, there has been an increase in interest in the study of Portuguese in those South American countries. The demographic weight of Brazil in the continent will continue to strengthen the presence of the language in the region.

In March of 2006, the Museum of the Portuguese Language, an interactive museum about the Portuguese language, was founded in São Paulo, Brazil, the city with the largest number of Portuguese speakers in the world., in São Paulo, Brazil.

Dialects Portuguese is a pluricentric language. It has 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 phonology, especially the pronunciation of unstressed vowels, they resemble Brazilian Portuguese more than European Portuguese. They have not been studied as exhaustively as European and Brazilian Portuguese. In various parts of Africa, Asia, and the Americas, Portuguese creoles are spoken, but they are independent languages which should not be confused with Portuguese itself.

Some audio samples of some of the main 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

Luandense (sample) — Luanda province

Sulista — South of Angola

Brazil

Caipira — São Paulo (state) countryside (ex. towns of Itapetininga and Piracicaba; southern Minas Gerais (ex. towns of Poços de Caldas and Varginha), northern Paraná (state) (ex. town of Maringá), Goiás and Mato Grosso do Sul

Cearense — Ceará

Baiano — Bahia

Fluminense (sample) — Variants spoken in Rio de Janeiro (state) and Espírito Santo states. (The city of Rio de Janeiro and its adjacent metropolitan areas have a particular way of speaking, the so-called Carioca accent.)

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 predominant in Triângulo Mineiro, southern and southeastern Minas Gerais).

Nordestino (sample) — Northeast Region, Brazil (the states of Pernambuco and Rio Grande do Norte have a particular way of speaking) Note: the speaker of this sound file is from Rio, and he is talking about his experience with Nordestino and Nortista accents.

Nortista — Amazon Basin states

Paulista — Variants spoken around São Paulo city and eastern areas of São Paulo (state) 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.)

Cape Verde

Cape Verdean Portuguese (sample) — Cape Verde

Portugal

Azorean (sample) — Azores - São Miguel

Alentejano (sample) — Alentejo

Algarvio (sample) — Algarve (there is a particular small dialect in the western area)

Alto-Minhoto (sample) — North of Braga (interior)

Baixo-Beirão; Alto-Alentejano (sample) — Central Portugal (interior)

Beirão (sample) — central Portugal

Estremenho (sample) — Regions of Coimbra and Lisbon (can be subdivided into Lisbon Portuguese and Coimbra Portuguese)

Madeirense (sample) — Madeira

Nortenho (sample) — Regions of Braga and Porto

Transmontano (sample) — Trás-os-Montes

Other countries

Guinean Portuguese (sample) — Guinea-Bissau
Macanese Portuguese (sample) — Macau, China
Mozambican Portuguese (sample) — Mozambique
Santomense (sample) — São Tomé and Principe
East Timorese Portuguese (sample) — East Timor
Damaense — Daman and Diu, India
Goês — State of Goa, India
Dialectos Portugueses del Uruguay (DPU) — Uruguay

Classification and related languages Portuguese belongs to the West Iberian languages branch of the Romance languages, and it has special ties with the following members of this group:

Galician language and the Fala language, its closest relatives. See below.
Spanish language, the major language closest to Portuguese. See also Differences between Spanish and Portuguese.
Mirandese language, another West Iberian language spoken in Portugal.
Judeo-Portuguese and Ladino language, languages spoken by Sephardic Jews, which remained close to Portuguese and Spanish.

Latin and other Romance languages A distinctive feature of Portuguese is that it preserved the stressed vowels of Vulgar Latin, which other Romance languages diphthongized; cf. Fr. pierre, Sp. piedra, Port. pedra, from Lat. petra; or Sp. fuego, It. fuoco, Port. fogo, from Lat. focum. Another characteristic of early Portuguese was the loss of :wiktionary:intervocalic 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 elision consonant was n, it often nasalization the preceding vowel: cf. Lat. manum, rana, bonum, Port. mão, rãa (now rã), bõo (now 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 cães, irmãos, razões.

See Portuguese vocabulary#From Latin to Portuguese, for other sound changes.

Despite the obvious lexical and grammatical similarities between Portuguese and other Romance languages, it is not mutually intelligible with most of them. Apart from the Galician form of the language, 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):

Ela fecha sempre a janela antes de jantar/cear. (Portuguese) Ela pecha sempre a xanela/fiestra antes de xantar/cear. (Galician language) Ella pieslla siempre la ventana primero de cenar (Asturian language) Ella cierra siempre la ventana antes de cenar. (Spanish language) Ella tanca sempre la finestra abans de sopar. (Catalan language) Ella barra sempre la finestra abans de sopar. (Occitan language) Ella (or lei) chiude sempre la finestra prima di cenare. (Italian language) Ea închide întotdeauna fereastra înainte de a cina. (Romanian language) Elle ferme toujours la fenêtre avant de dîner/souper. (French language) Illa claudit semper fenestram ante quam cenat. (Latin language) She always shuts the window before dining/having supper.

Note that some of the lexical divergence above actually comes from different Romance languages using the same root word with different semantic values. Portuguese for example has the word fresta, which is a cognate of French fenêtre, Italian finestra, Romanian fereastra and so on, but now means "slit" as opposed to "window." Likewise, Portuguese also has the word cear, a cognate of Italian cenare and Spanish cenar, but uses it in the sense of "to have a late supper", while the most frequent word meaning "to dine" is actually jantar (related to archaic castilian yantar) because of semantic changes in the 19th century. Italian has the word ella, cognate of the other words for she, but is considered archaic in most dialects.

Galician has both fiestra (from medieval fẽestra which is the ultimate origin of standard Portuguese fresta), and the less frequently used xanela. Like the northern dialects of Portuguese, it still uses cear with its original meaning of "dining".

Galician and the Fala Galician is cloeser to Portuguese, it is spoken in the autonomous community of Galicia (northwestern Spain). The two branches 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 Castilian. In particular, 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) Ethnologue 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).

Derived languages Beginning 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 people ancestry.

Influence on other languages Many languages have loanword from Portuguese, such as Bahasa Indonesia, Sri Lankan Sri Lanka Tamils (native) and Sinhalese language (see Sri Lanka Indo-Portuguese language), Malay language, Bengali language, Konkani language, Marathi language, Tetum language, Tsonga language, Papiamentu, Japanese language, Barbadian (Spoken in Barbados), Lanc-Patuá (spoken in northern Brazil) and Sranan Tongo (spoken in Suriname). It left a strong influence on the Old Tupi, a Tupi-Guarani which was the most widely spoken in Brazil until the 18th century, and on the language spoken around Sikka in Flores, 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 Society of Jesus 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 Vietnamese alphabet, the modern orthography of Vietnamese language, which is based on the orthography of 17th-century Portuguese. The Romanization of Chinese language was also influenced by the Portuguese language (among others), particularly regarding List of common Chinese surnames; one example is "Mei".

See also List of English words of Portuguese origin, Loan words in Indonesian, Japanese words of Portuguese origin, Malay language#Borrowed words, Sinhala words of Portuguese origin, Loan words in Sri Lankan Tamil#Portuguese.

History Arriving in the Iberian Peninsula in 218 BC, the Romans brought with them the Latin language, from which all Romance languages descend. The occidental territories to the south of the Tagus River were only conquered after the victory of Licinius Crassus in the year 93 BC. Detailed map of the Pre-Roman Peoples of Iberia (around 200 BC) The language was spread by arriving Roman soldiers, settlers and merchants, who built Roman cities mostly near the settlements of previous civilizations.{]). The newcomers, mainly Suevi and Visigoths, quickly adopted late Roman culture and the Vulgar Latin dialects of the peninsula. After the Moors invasion of 711, Arabic language became the administrative language in the conquered regions, but most of the population continued to speak a form of Romance languages 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 century). Portugal was formally recognized as an independent kingdom by the Kingdom of Leon in 1143, with Afonso I of Portugal as king. In the first period of Old Portuguese - Galician-Portuguese (from the 12th to the 14th century) - the language gradually came into general use. Previously it had been the language of preference for lyric poetry in Christian Hispania, much like Occitan was the language of the Provençal literature#Poetry of the Troubadours. In 1290, king Denis of Portugal created the first Portuguese University in Coimbra (the Estudo Geral) and decreed that Portuguese, then simply called the "Vulgar 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 Age of discovery, 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 called Kristang language ("Christian") in many parts of Asia. 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 de 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 erudite words borrowed from Classical Latin and Classical Greek during the Renaissance, which greatly enriched the lexicon.

Vocabulary Most of the lexicon of Portuguese is derived from Latin. Nevertheless, because of the Moors occupation of the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages, and the participation of Portugal in the Age of Discovery, it has adopted loanwords from across the world.

Very few Portuguese words can be traced to the pre-Roman inhabitants of Portugal, which included the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Lusitanians, and Celts. Some notable examples are abóbora "pumpkin" and bezerro "year-old calf", from nearby celtiberian languages; cerveja "beer", from Celtic languages; saco "bag", from Phoenician language; and cachorro "dog, puppy", from Basque language.

In the 5th century the Iberian Peninsula (the former Roman region of Hispania) was conquered by the Suevi, Visigoths and Alans, Germanic peoples tribes who had been displaced from Central Europe by the Huns. 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 language *spaúra, *stakka, and *wirro, respectively.

Between the 9th and 15th centuries Portuguese acquired about 1000 words from Arabic language by influence of al-Andalus. They are often recognizable by the initial Arabic article a(l)-, and include many common words such as aldeia "village" from الضيعة aldaya, alface "lettuce" from الخس alkhass, armazém "warehouse" from المخزن almahazan, and azeite "olive oil" from زيت azzait. From Arabic came also the grammatically peculiar word Insha'Allah "God willing". The name of the Portuguese town of Fátima, Portugal, where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared, is originally the name of one of the daughters of Muhammad. Mozambique's Portuguese name, Moçambique, itself was from Arabic name, Muça Alebique (Musa Alibiki), a sultan. The Mozambican currency Mozambican Metical was derived from the word mitķāl, an Arabic unit of weight.

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 language Tea#The word tea.

From South America came batata "potato", from Taino language; ananás and abacaxi, from Tupi-Guarani naná and Tupi language ibá cati, respectively (two species of pineapple), and tucano "toucan" from Guarani language 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 indigenous peoples of Brazil 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 language, 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"); 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.

Writing system {| class="infobox bordered" style="width: 250px; font-size: 95%; float: right;" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" align="right"|+Written varieties! bgcolor=#DDDDDD | Portugal/Africa/Asia! bgcolor=#DDDDDD | Brazil! bgcolor=#DDDDDD | 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, and makes use of the acute accent, the circumflex accent, the grave accent, the tilde, and the cedilla, to denote stress, vowel height, nasalization, and other sound changes. Brazilian Portuguese also uses the diaeresis mark. Accented letters and digraphs are not counted as separate characters 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.

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 7 oral vowel phonemes). There are also five nasal vowels, which some linguists regard as allophones of the oral vowels, ten oral diphthongs, and five nasal diphthongs.Handbook of the International Phonetic Association pg. 126-130; the reference applies to the entire section

Vowels

To the seven vowels of Vulgar Latin, European Portuguese has added two Mid-centralized vowel, one of which tends to be elision in relaxed pronunciation, like the e caduc of French language (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 language, Portuguese uses vowel quality to contrast stressed syllables with unstressed syllables: isolated vowels tend to be Vowel#Height, and in some cases centralized, when unstressed. Nasal diphthongs occur mostly at the end of words.

Consonants {| border="2" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaa solid; border-collapse: collapse; font-family: Arial Unicode MS, Lucida Sans Unicode"|+caption | Consonant phonemes of Portuguese|-!! colspan="2" | Bilabial! colspan="2" ]-
labiodental! colspan="2" | Dental consonant! colspan="2" | Alveolar consonant! colspan="2" | Postalveolar-
Postalveolar! colspan="2" | Palatal! colspan="2" ]! colspan="2" | Uvulars| | | colspan="2" || | | colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" || | | colspan="2" ||- align=center|[Nasal consonant| colspan="2" | | colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" | | colspan="2" || colspan="2" | | colspan="2" || colspan="2" ||- align=center|Fricatives]s| colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" | | colspan="2" || colspan="2" | | colspan="2" || colspan="2" ||- align=center|Flap consonant| colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" | | colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" ||}

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 . (Quebec French has a similar phenomenon, with alveolar affricates instead of postalveolars.)

At the end of a syllable, the phoneme has the velarized allophone in European Portuguese, like in the Received Pronunciation of English. Brazilian Portuguese has the allophone instead (L-vocalization#L-vocalization).

In many parts of Brazil and Angola, is pronounced as a nasal glide that nasalizes the preceding vowel, so that for instance is pronounced .

There is considerable dialectal variation in the value of the Rhotic consonant phoneme . See Guttural R#Portuguese, for details.

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 at the end of syllables are postalveolar, before voiceless consonants, and before voiced consonants. (In Ladino language, is often replaced with at the end of syllables, too.)

Stress Primary stress (linguistics) may fall on any of the three final syllables of a word, but mostly on the last two. There is a partial correlation between the position of the stress and the final vowel; for example, the final syllable is usually stressed when it contains a nasal phoneme, a diphthong, or a close vowel. The orthography of Portuguese takes advantage of this correlation to minimize the number of diacritics.

Because of the phonetic changes that often affect unstressed vowels, pure lexical stress is less common in Portuguese than in related languages, but there is still a significant number of examples of it: dúvida "doubt" (noun) vs. duvida "he doubts" falaram "they spoke" vs. falarão "they will speak" (Brazilian pronunciation) ouve "he hears" vs. ouvi "I heard" (Brazilian pronunciation) túnel "tunnel" vs. tonel "wine cask" (European pronunciation)

Prosody tone (linguistics) is not lexically significant in Portuguese, but phrase- and sentence-level tone are important. There are of six dynamic tone patterns that affect entire phrases, which indicate the mood and intention of the speaker such as implication, emphasis, reservation, etc. As in most Romance languages, interrogation is expressed mainly by sharply raising the tone at the end of the sentence.

Grammar A particularly interesting aspect of the grammar of Portuguese are its verbs. Morphologically, it has preserved more verbal inflections from classical Latin than any other major Romance language. See Romance copula#Morphological comparison, for a detailed comparison.

There are also some innovative tenses or distinctions not found in other Romance languages:

The present perfect has an iterative sense unique among the Romance languages. It denotes an action or a series of actions which began in the past and are expected to keep repeating in the future. For instance, the sentence Tenho tentado falar com ela would be translated to "I have been trying to talk to her", not "I have tried to talk to her". On the other hand, the correct translation of the question "Have you heard the latest news?" is not *Tem ouvido a última notícia?, but Ouviu a última notícia?, since no repetition is implied.Squartini, Mario (1998) Verbal Periphrases in Romance -- Aspect, Actionality, and Grammaticalization ISBN 3-11-016160-5

The future subjunctive tense, which was developed by medieval West Iberian languages, but has now fallen into disuse in Castilian, is still used in vernacular Portuguese. It appears in dependent clauses that denote a condition which must be fulfilled in the future, so that the independent clause will occur. Other languages normally employ the present tense under the same circumstances:

Se for eleito presidente, mudarei a lei. subjunctive If I am elected president, I will change the law.

Quando fores mais velho, vais entender. subjunctive When you are older, you will understand.

The personal infinitive: it is possible for an infinitive verb to Agreement (linguistics) with its subject in person and number, often showing who is supposed to perform a certain act; cf. É melhor voltares "It is better you to go back.", É melhor voltarmos "It is better us to go back." Perhaps for this reason, infinitive clauses replace subjunctive clauses more often in Portuguese than in other Romance languages.

Examples Excerpt from the Portuguese national epic The Lusiads, by author Luís de Camões (I, 33) {| border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="1" style="font-family: Lucida Sans Unicode"|-!bgcolor=#EEEEEE|Original!bgcolor=#EEEEEE|International Phonetic Alphabet (European Portuguese pronunciation)!bgcolor=#EEEEEE|International Phonetic Alphabet (Brazilian Portuguese pronunciation)!bgcolor=#EEEEEE|Translation (by Landeg White)|-e&771|Sustentava contra ele Vénus bela,||||Against him spoke the lovely Venus|-|Afeiçoada à gente Lusitana,|||Favoring the people of Portugal,|-|Por quantas qualidades via nela|||For her love of Roman virtue|-|Da antiga tão amada sua Romana;|||She saw resurrected in them;|-|Nos fortes corações, na grande estrela,|||In their stout hearts, in the star|-|Que mostraram na terra Tingitana,|||Which shone bright above Ceuta,|-|E na língua, na qual quando imagina,|||In the language which an inventive mind|-|Com pouca corrupção crê que é a Latina.|||Could mistake for Latin, passably declined.White, Landeg. (1997). The Lusiads -- English translation. Oxford World's Classics. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-280151-1|}

See also

Notes

References General

A Língua Portuguesa in Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil

Literature

Poesia e Prosa Medievais, by Maria Ema Tarracha Ferreira, Ulisseia 1998, 3rd ed., ISBN 978-972-568-124-4.
Bases Temáticas - Língua Portuguesa in Instituto Camões
Portuguese Literature in The Catholic Encyclopedia

Phonology, orthography and grammar

International Phonetic Association (1999) Handbook of the International Phonetic Association ISBN 0-521-63751-1
Mateus, Maria Helena & d'Andrade, Ernesto (2000) The Phonology of Portuguese ISBN 0-19-823581-X (Excerpt available at Google Books)
Bergström, Magnus & Reis, Neves Prontuário Ortográfico Editorial Notícias, 2004.
Dialects of Portuguese at the Instituto Camões
Audio samples of the dialects of Portugal
Audio samples of the dialects from outside Europe

Reference dictionaries

Antônio Houaiss (2000), Dicionário Houaiss da Língua Portuguesa (228,500 entries).
Aurélio Buarque de Holanda Ferreira, Novo Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa (1809pp)

Linguistic studies

Lindley Cintra, Luís F. Nova Proposta de Classificação dos Dialectos Galego-Portugueses (PDF) Boletim de Filologia, Lisboa, Centro de Estudos Filológicos, 1971.

External links

Equatorial Guinea becomes since 07/13/2007, the 9th Portuguese-speaking country
The Portuguese Language - an Ocean of Cultures
Ethnologue report for Portuguese
IILP International Portuguese Language Institute
IILP - Ortographic Agreement of 1990 (PDF)
União de Escritores Angolanos Angolan authors
Academia Brasileira de Letras Brazilian authors
Sociedade Portuguesa de Autores Portuguese authors
Instituto Camões Portuguese language studies
Estação da Luz da Nossa Língua Portuguese language studies in Brazil
Instituto Português do Oriente - Portuguese language studies in Southeast Asia
Observatório da Língua Portuguesa Observatory of Portuguese language
Portuguese Language ::..
E-learning: Online Lessons in Brazilian Portuguese Language. Presential Lessons in Brazilian Portuguese Language. Ensino ` Distbncia: Curso Online de Portugujs para Estrangeiros.

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