| The Portuguese language is the fifth most spoken | | | | migration of Brazilians largely involved in commercial |
| language in the world. It is however often forgotten as | | | | activities. |
| the third most prominent Romance language. | | | | Portuguese speaking countries are members of the |
| There are over 200 million people who speak | | | | Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries, an |
| Portuguese in the world. It spread internationally during | | | | organization founded in 1996. The language spoken in |
| the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, with the creation of | | | | Portugal differs slightly from the Portuguese spoken in |
| Portugal's Empire. Portuguese, developed from the | | | | Brazil in areas of pronunciation, grammar, and |
| Vulgar Latin brought to the Iberian Peninsula by Roman | | | | vocabulary. |
| conquerors and was distinguishable from Latin by the | | | | A distinctive phonetic feature of the Portuguese |
| 11th cent. | | | | language is the nasalization of certain vowels and |
| The Standard Portuguese known today is derived | | | | diphthongs, which can be indicated by a tilde placed |
| from the language historically spoken in Lisbon and | | | | above the appropriate vowel. The acute and diacritic |
| Coimbra. Its vocabulary comes overwhelming from | | | | accents serve to clarify stress and pronunciation as |
| Latin, but a number of words have been absorbed | | | | well as to distinguish homonyms. |
| from Arabic, French, and Italian, and also from some of | | | | The grave accent guides the speaker in pronunciation. |
| the indigenous South American and African languages. | | | | It can also indicate a contraction, as in às, which |
| Portuguese is a member of the Italic subfamily which in | | | | is a combination of a "to" and as "the" (feminine plural). |
| turn is part of the Indo-European family of languages. It | | | | A c with a cedilla (ç) is pronounced like c in |
| is presently the main language spoken in Portugal, | | | | English place when used before the vowels a, o, and u. |
| Brasil, Angola, Guinea Bissau, Mozambique, Green | | | | Like Spanish, Portuguese has two forms of the verb |
| Cape, Santo Tomé and Príncipe, | | | | "to be" : ser, which denotes a comparatively |
| Oriental Timor, Ecuatorial Guinea, t is also spoken in | | | | permanent state and which also precedes a predicate |
| Macao and in some areas of India that former | | | | noun, and estar, which denotes a comparatively |
| Portuguese colonies including the regions of Goa, | | | | temporary condition. |
| Daman and Diu, Dadra and Nagar Haveli. | | | | Portuguese, like its Spanish counterpart, tends to use |
| Minority groups also speak it in neighboring regions | | | | reflexive verbs instead of the passive voice. |
| near Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay due to the | | | | |