The Portuguese Language: Fast Facts
Portuguese
is spoken by nearly 200 million people in the world and ranks eighth
among the most spoken languages in the world (third among the western
languages, after English and Castilian).
It is the official language of seven countries: Angola, Brazil, Cabo
Verde ,Guinea-Bissau ,Mozambique ,Portugal ,and São Tomé
and Príncipe islands and is also spoken in Indonesia, India,
Angola, the United States, the UK, Canada, France and Germany.
Portuguese is one of the Romance languages, evolved from Latin and
developed on the west coast of the Iberian Peninsula (now Portugal and
the Spanish province of Galicia).
It is very similar to Spanish, and also related to Italian, French,
Catalan, and Romanian.
There are two genders: masculine and feminine, but no neutral.
Although Portuguese grammar is much more complex than English, it is
similar to the other romance languages, such as Spanish, Italian and
French.
There are two main types of Portuguese spoken: European and Brazilian
Portuguese.
Also called Continental Portuguese, European Portuguese is spoken in
Portugal ,Macau, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé
& Príncipe, Cape Verde and East Timor.
Brazilian Portuguese is spoken in Brazil, developed from the influence
of African and indigenous languages in South America.
Although basically the same language, both of these Portuguese languages
differ in varying degrees from pronunciation and intonation, to grammar
and vocabulary.
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