Portuguese ( portuguĕs )

Bem vindo - Welcome

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.

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.

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 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.

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