Portuguese

Introduction

Portugal Map brazil Map Portuguese belongs to the Romance branch of the Indo-European language family. It is spoken in Portugal, Brazil, and in the Portuguese colonial and formerly colonial territories of Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, São Tome e Principe, Goa, Macau, and East Timor. Ethnologue estimates the worldwide population of Portuguese speakers at 177.5 million people.

After the Roman conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, Vulgar Latin replaced the local languages. Along the Atlantic coast, it gradually evolved into Galician-Portuguese. After the incorporation of Galicia into Spain and the independent development of Portugal, it split into Galician and Portuguese.

Portugeuese Parliment Rio Statue In the 14th-6th centuries, Portuguese spread to many regions of Asia, Africa and America. By the 16th century. it had become a lingua franca in Asia and Africa, used for colonial administration, trade, and communication between locals and Europeans of all nationalities. Some Portuguese-speaking communities in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Indonesia preserved the language even after they were isolated from Portugal. Some of these languages eventually evolved into Portuguese-based creoles. At the same time, Portuguese words entered the vocabulary of widely spread languages, e.g., pan "bread" in Japanese borrowed from Portuguese pão, sepatu "shoe" in Indonesian borrowed from Portuguese sapato, and meza "table" in Swahili borrowed from Portuguese mesa.

Portugal Flag Portuguese is the national language of Portugal (10 million speakers), Brazil (158 million), Angola (58,000), Cape Verde Islands, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique (no census data available). It is spoken as a first language in different parts of the world by an estimated total of 177.6 million first-language and 15 million second-language speakers (Ethnologue).

Portuguese spread worldwide in the 15th and 16th centuries as Portugal created a far-reaching colonial and commercial empire, spanning from Brazil in the Americas to Macau in China. As a result, Portuguese is now the official Brazil Flag language of several independent countries and is widely spoken as a second language in many others.

In 1986, Portuguese became an official language of the European Union (EU). In 1996, the Community of Portuguese-speaking Countries (CPLP in Portuguese) was created to promote cooperation and cultural exchanges among the member countries and to create a Portuguese standard.

Click here on the MLA Interactive Language Map to find out where Portuguese is spoken in the U.S.

Dialects

There are two main groups of dialects: those of the Iberian peninsula and those of Brazil. The differences between Iberian and Brazilian Portuguese involve pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary. For historical reasons, Portuguese varieties spoken in Africa and Asia are generally closer to those of Portugal than of Brazil. The dialects of Iberian Portuguese are better studied than those of Brazilian Portuguese. Standard Portuguese of Portugal is based on Southern dialect as spoken in the Portuguese capital Lisbon.

In addition, Portuguese has given rise to Portuguese-based creoles in Africa, Asia, and the Americas.

Structure

Sound System

Men on a bench

headress

classroom

Vowels
Portuguese has one of the largest vowel inventories of all Romance languages and a relatively simple system of consonants.

Vowels

Consonants

There are seven to nine oral vowels, depending on the dialect; plus five nasal vowels, and several oral and nasal diphthongs.
The vowels /e, o/ and the low vowels are four separate phonemes, i.e., they all distinguish word meaning.
Like Catalan, Portuguese uses vowel height to contrast stressed with unstressed syllables.
The dialects of Portugal are characterized by reducing unstressed vowels to a greater extent than other varieties of Portuguese.

Click here for a detailed description of Portuguese vowels.

The voiceless stops /p/, /t/, /k/ are unaspirated.
At the end of a syllable, /m/ and /n/ are silent or voiceless, but they nasalize the preceding vowel.
/r/ is an alveolar trill.
There are few consonant clusters.

Click here for a detailed description of Portuguese consonants.

Stress
Primary stress may fall on any of the three final syllables of a word, but mostly on the last two. The final syllable is usually stressed when it contains a nasal phoneme, a diphthong, or a close vowel.

Click here to watch short videos and listen to Portuguese as spoken in Angola and in Brazil.

Grammar

Lisbon

Portugal

Rio

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

The grammar of Portuguese is Latin-based. As a result, it has many similarities to the grammar of other Romance languages.

Nouns

Verbs

Portuguese nouns are either masculine or feminine. Masculine nouns usually end in -o, -e, or a consonant, feminine nouns usually end in -a. There are some exceptions.
There are two numbers: singular and plural. Plural is formed by adding -s.
Adjectives and pronouns agree with the nouns they modify in gender and number.
Adjectives follow the nouns they modify, e.g., casa branca "white house."
Definite and indefinite articles agree with nouns in gender and number, e.g., o carro "the car" —os carros "the cars," a casa "the house" — as casas "the houses," um carro "a car" — uns carros "cars," uma casa "a house"—umas casas "houses."
Prepositions contract with articles, e.g., de + o = do, de +a = da, etc.

There are three regular conjugations that can be identified by the infinitive ending, e.g., cantar, "to sing,"comer, "to eat," rir, "to laugh." There are also many irregular verbs.
Verbs agree with their subjects in person (1st, 2nd, 3rd) and number (singular, plural).
There are three tenses (present, past, future). Compound tenses are formed with the auxiliary verbs ser, estar "to be" or haver "to have."
There are four moods: indicative, conditional, subjunctive, imperative.
Pronoun subjects are normally dropped since the verb endings carry information about person and number, e.g., canto "I sing."

Word order
The most common order in Portuguese is Subject- Verb-Object.

Click here to learn more about Portuguese grammar.

Vocabulary

Lisbon American Embassy

Lisbon

Portugal Vista

Lisbon

Clarice Lispector

Vocabulary
Portuguese vocabulary is for the most part derived from Latin with some borrowings from German, Arabic, as well as from Asian, Amerindian, and African languages with which Portuguese explorers came into contact. Today, English is the major source of borrowings, primarily in the area of science and technology. Below are some examples of loanwords in Portuguese.

Portuguese word	Borrowed from
roubar "to rob"	Germanic raubon
saga "saga"	Gothic saega
xerife "sheriff"	Arabic sharif "noble"
alcova "alcove	Arabic al-qobbah "the vaulted chamber"
manga "mango"	Malay mangga
cha "tea"	Mandarin Chinese cha
banana	possibly Wolof banana

Below are some basic phrases in Portuguese.

Olá	Hello
Tchau	Good bye
Por favor	Please
Obrigado (male speaker), obrigada (female speaker)	Thank you
Desculpa	Excuse me
Sim	Yes
Não	No
Homem	Man
Mulher	Woman

Click here to listen to the pronunciation of some common phrases in Portuguese.

Below are the numerals 1-10 in Portuguese.

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
um	dois	tres	quatro	cinco	seis	sete	oito	nove	dez

Writing

Written materials in Portuguese date back to the late 12th century. Literary works appeared in the 13th and 14th centuries. Today, Portuguese is written with a modified version of the Latin alphabet. Below are some notable features of Portuguese orthography:

Portuguese words in English
English has borrowed a number of words from Portuguese. A few of them are listed below.
Engligh Portuguese Words

Resources

Click here to find out where Portuguese is taught in the United States.
Click here to find learning materials for studying Portuguese.

Online resources for the study of Portuguese language and culture
Portuguese Language Resources
Portuguese Language Resources on the Net
Wikipedia article on Portuguese
Ethnologue report on Portuguese
Language Links Portuguese Resources
Yamada Language Center Guide for Portuguese
Brazilian Portuguese online grammar
The Portuguese language
Brazilian Portuguese grammar guide
LanguageLinks: Portuguese