Who speaks Portuguese. Official languages of Portugal. General information about the Portuguese language
Portugal is located in the very west of the Iberian Peninsula. Its official history goes back over 900 years. Portugal is considered one of the oldest countries in the world to have managed to keep its borders intact. She has the only neighbor - the borders with which are in the north and east. In other directions, Portugal is washed by the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. This country is annually visited by tourists who like all the possibilities provided for recreation. Many of them choose to go to Madeira to fully enjoy the constantly warm climate, or to the Azores. For most of those who travel to this country for the first time, it is very important to know what language is spoken in Portugal.
At the beginning of the 8th century, the Arabs and Berbers, who were called Moors, invaded the Iberian Peninsula. Part of the population went north, thereby keeping their language and dialect pure. And the rest obeyed the Arabs and changed official language into the language of the conquerors. Such people were bilingual and were called Mozarabs, that is, "subordinate to the Arabs." Thanks to them, not only Portuguese, but also Arabic was enriched with new words. The Arabic words that entered the Portuguese language mainly denoted new objects and concepts and were nouns.
From the 15th century, the country began to discover previously unknown lands. In world history, this time is known as the "Age of Discovery". Portugal laid a sea route in mysterious India, made part of the African states and regions, as well as Brazil in South America and other islands, even Macau, now a special administrative region China. Of course, such an active policy of seizing new territories was not complete without the spread of the Portuguese language as the main language for all colonies. Therefore, it is considered official for such states as Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Cape Verde and other small countries and certain regions.
Features of the Portuguese language
Portuguese belongs to the languages of the Romance group of the Indo-European family. To be even more precise, to the Ibero-Romance subgroup. Portugal has a script based on the Latin alphabet, which is currently one of the most common, and stably holds 6-8th place in the world in terms of the number of speakers. It is spoken by over 200 million people. All people who speak this language, consider it their native language or define it as official in their country and are able to communicate in it, are united by a single term - lusophones. The word comes from the name of the Roman province of Lusitania, located in ancient times on the territory of Portugal. All territories of the Portuguese-speaking countries and regions are called lusophonia.
Portuguese is considered pluricentric. It is spoken in several independent states and communities, and each of them individually develops its own norms. But Portugal and Brazil differ in their variants of Portuguese. Moreover, there is a noticeable tendency for the European version to approach the Brazilian one, there is a monocentrization of the Portuguese language. There are also creolized versions of Portuguese spoken in parts of Africa and Asia.
The closest language to Portuguese is the modern Galician language, from which it originated. Galicia is the most northwestern autonomous region of Spain. Another very close language is Spanish. However, the composition of vowel sounds, among which there are open and closed ones, brings it closer to French and Catalan (a variant of Spanish).
Interestingly, in 2008, the Portuguese parliament decided to change the spelling to approximate the Brazilian version of the Portuguese language, since its rules were closer to the real pronunciation of words and phraseological units.
It will be interesting for tourists and guests of the country to know that the inhabitants of Portugal, in addition to their native language, are fluent in English, French and, of course, Spanish. Moreover, often Spanish-speaking staff are involved in hotel maintenance, and in the capital and other major cities- English. In a number of areas neighboring Spain, many Portuguese can speak Spanish fluently, and almost everyone understands it. But it is much more difficult for Spaniards to learn the language of their western neighbor. The inhabitants of the Azores speak English at a good level, and its knowledge is typical for people of all ages. In addition to Portuguese, the country has another official language - Mirandese. It is commonly spoken in Miranda do Douro and nearby areas. In order to understand what language is spoken in Portugal, one must also remember that on January 1, 1986, the country joined the European Union, and in 2002, the euro was approved as the currency. All these factors significantly influenced the life of the Portuguese, the influx of tourists increased, and in connection with this, communication with people who came from all over the world.
The official language of Portugal is Portuguese. Today it is one of the main languages in the world, it ranks sixth in terms of the number of native speakers (about 240 million). This is the language of largest number speakers in South America, it is spoken by almost the entire population of Brazil. It is also the official language in Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Sao Tome and Principe, Guinea-Bissau, East Timor and Macau.
Portuguese is a Romance language. Despite the fact that it is very similar to Spanish, and the two languages have 90% in common (in vocabulary and grammar), it is still completely different languages. The Portuguese are a proud people and do not like it when foreigners from non-Spanish speaking countries speak the language in Portugal.
Given that many words can be spelled almost the same, the pronunciation differs significantly. This is because Portuguese has several nasal diphthongs that are not found in other languages. Spanish is well understood, but it's not always the best language to use unless you're from a Spanish speaking country yourself.
It should also be mentioned that the pronunciation in Portugal differs significantly from Brazilian. The differences are mainly in pronunciation. There are several vocabulary differences, so it is sometimes difficult for Brazilians to understand a European Portuguese accent.
But the Portuguese have no problem understanding the Brazilian dialect, because the pop culture of this country (soap operas and pop music, for example) is very popular in Portugal.
English is spoken in many tourist areas, but by no means everywhere. The Portuguese often watch American films with original English dubbing and Portuguese subtitles. Therefore, many people speak English quite well, and also due to the fact that English is taught in schools.
Main touristic languages of Portugal
In the major tourist areas, you will almost always find someone who speaks the main European languages. Hotel staff are required to speak English, albeit a little. French has almost disappeared as a second language.
German and Spanish speakers are rare. About 32% of Portuguese can speak and understand English language, while 24% understand and speak French. Despite the fact that Spanish is well understood, only 9% of people can speak it fluently.
Portuguese (Portugês or Lingua Portuguesa) is one of the most widely spoken languages on earth, second (after Spanish) in terms of the number of native speakers and speakers of Romance languages. Speakers of Portuguese are sometimes referred to as "Luzophones", and their countries are collectively referred to as Lusophonia (similar to Francophonie). His homeland - Portugal - is one of the small European countries, but Portuguese is spoken by Brazil (by the way, the largest country in the Catholic world), it is the official language for several African countries (Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Cape Verde Islands, Principe, Sao Tome) and other parts of the world (East Timor , Macau). There are two main varieties of the language - the so-called continental (Portugal) and Brazilian. In addition, there are several Creoles in African and Asian countries. The creolization of the language significantly decreases among the population with the growth of education and an increase in the general cultural level, a certain decreolization occurs.
The areas of Spanish and Portuguese are adjacent (Europe) and, in addition, even intersect (South America). Strange as it may sound, the author of these lines has the opinion that Portuguese speakers understand Spaniards better than Spanish speakers understand Portuguese.
The earliest records in Portuguese (often called Proto-Portuguese by scholars) date back to the 9th century. The subsequent period of development of the language, called Old Portuguese, ends with the publication of the collection Cancioneiro Geral ("General Songbook") by García Rezende. Portugal in the era of the great geographical discoveries becomes a powerful power of navigators, conquering colonies in the New World, Africa, Asia and in the oceans. At the same time, colonization often occurs in the form of assimilation with the local population. It is this part of the history of the Portuguese people that explains the fact that the language did not leave its positions and was not supplanted by others in the former colonies. Moreover, it is Portuguese, for example in Mozambique, that has become a language that unites a population consisting of several nationalities with different native languages: Makuakua, Shangan (Tsonga), Swahili, Sena, Ndau, Makonde, Chopi, Zulu, etc. - into a single nation .
Catholicism introduced a large number of Latinisms into the language, the language acquired borrowings from French and Italian, and the influence of Spanish, especially in South America, is quite an obvious fact. By the end of the last century, the influence of Anglicisms and Americanisms became noticeable (especially in professional slang - for example, computers and programming, mechanics, technology, etc.).
"Portuguese" Portuguese (PP, that is, continental Portuguese) is very beautiful in sound and is characterized by the reduction of the ends of words. In the language, the use of pronouns (I, you, we, he, they) is standardly omitted, because the conjugation of the verb clearly indicates person and number. The language is characterized by the exasperation of intervocalic consonants (for example, the word casa - house sounds rather like “kaza” with the reduction and muting of the last vowel and the soft and slightly open first a), a peculiar system in reading some consonants (for example, the Latin x can be read and like "h", and like "s", and like "w", and even like "g"). There are two genders in the language - masculine and feminine, while adjectives dependently acquire the same gender and number as those of the nouns that generate the corresponding pairs. I would like to note the presence of rather strict grammatical requirements and conditions for the composition of sentences.
“Brazilian” Portuguese (BP) is distinguished by the replacement of the pronunciation of the “sh” sound of the letter s at the end of the word with an explicit “c”, the special pronunciation of d and t before the vowels e and i (for example, the word dia is read almost like “jiya”). Not only some words also differ (a classic example: in PP "train" - comboio, while in BP - trem, most likely from the Anglo-American train) and the formation of the verb forms of the continuing present tense (estar a + verbo no infinitivo in PP and estando + verbo infinitivo in BP), but also (at least until the most recent language reforms) the pronunciation and spelling of a significant number of words (facto in PP and fato in BP).
Speaking about the Brazilian version of the Portuguese language and the influence of the social environment on it, one cannot fail to mention two obvious facts: samba and football, a kind of visiting cards of this wonderful country. Here is one small observation of the author. So, about 25 years ago, I happened to listen to several football matches on the radio in order to familiarize (and desirable mastery) with the speech stream of "Brazilian" Portuguese. The match was usually led by two commentators with a simply crazy rate of fire: one ran out of breath (that is, literally lost air in his lungs), and the other immediately picked it up. It was something unforgettable! Needless to say, when asked about the most famous football player in the world, the language involuntarily pronounces the name Pele ...
It is impossible to imagine Brazil and its history without samba and the huge contribution of Brazilians to the world standards of jazz (for example, bossa nova). Not wanting to burden the reader's attention with a list of a huge number of Brazilian performers, I would still like to note that without mastering the Brazilian musical culture, and especially samba tests, one cannot get a general idea about the country.
Good and fairly complete reviews of Portuguese and Brazilian literature can be found, for example, in the Russian part of Wikipedia.org. Speaking of modern literature in Portuguese, it is impossible to get around the name of the great Brazilian writer Jorge Amado. We should also mention Paulo Coelho (this is the more accurate transcription of Paulo Coelho in Russian), another famous writer from Brazil (and, note, the best-selling author in Portuguese now).
Additional Information:
For lovers of the Portuguese language and Brazilian TV series, carnivals and travel, it will be very interesting to know Which countries speak Portuguese .
“Captain obvious” - Portugal. The main country where this language was historically formed and, accordingly, it was from here that its spread around the world began. Portuguese is one of the most widely used European languages. Speakers of this language are often referred to as “ lusophones ”, but do not confuse this concept with “ losers”, because Portuguese-speaking people are very proud of this “title”. The name comes from the name of the Roman province of Lusitania, which roughly corresponded to the territory of modern Portugal.
Of course in Brazil also use this language and, in fact, the lion's share of Portuguese speakers live in this country, and this is more than 200 million people! Brazilian and European languages have their own differences
not so much in grammatical constructions, as in the pronunciation and spelling of words. Since in last years Since the process of globalization has accelerated, and Brazil occupies a key position in the South American market, and is gaining momentum in the world, it is the Brazilian version of Portuguese that is becoming increasingly popular. 
In what countries is Portuguese spoken other than these two widely known to the public? The inhabitants of Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, Equatorial Guinea, Sao Tome and Principe, Macau and East Timor also speak Portuguese. It so happened historically that Portuguese came to the territories of these states and took root for a long time since the time of colonization.
So we got acquainted with the information about the countries in which they speak Portuguese. But even if you live in Russia or other CIS countries, knowing the Portuguese language you can reach a completely different - better level of your life and career.
