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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