History of the Portuguese language

After Spanish, Portuguese is the most widely spoken Romance language in the world, with about 260 million speakers including second-language users: it is among the ten most spoken languages on the planet and the most widespread in the southern hemisphere. In Portugal it is spoken by about 10 million people, in Brazil by more than 200 million. It is also an official language in Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé and Príncipe, East Timor and Equatorial Guinea, as well as Macau, and is spoken by large emigrant communities in France, Switzerland, the United States, Canada and Venezuela.

From Latin to Galician-Portuguese

Like the other Romance languages, Portuguese comes from the spoken Latin of the Romans, who occupied the Iberian Peninsula for about six centuries, from the late third century BC to the Germanic invasions of the fifth century AD. On this base came the influences of later peoples: the Germanic Suebi and Visigoths left a few words related to war and rural life, while the Arabs, present for centuries especially in the south, left hundreds, often recognisable by the article al-: azeite (olive oil), alface (lettuce), armazém (warehouse), aldeia (village), and even the expression oxalá, "I hope so", from "if God wills".

In the Middle Ages, in the north-west of the peninsula, Galician-Portuguese took shape, the shared language of Galicia and the County of Portugal, used even beyond its borders as the language of lyric poetry: even King Alfonso X the Wise of Castile wrote his Cantigas de Santa Maria in Galician-Portuguese. With the birth of the kingdom of Portugal and the Reconquista southwards, the language spread through the conquered lands, meeting the Mozarabic speech of Christians who had lived under Arab rule, and gradually drifted apart from Galician, which remained in Spain. At the end of the thirteenth century King Dinis, himself a poet, made it the official language of royal documents in place of Latin.

The golden age and expansion

In the sixteenth century Portuguese became established as a literary language thanks to authors such as Gil Vicente and above all Luís de Camões, whose epic Os Lusíadas (1572) is considered its monument. At the same time many writers were bilingual and also used Castilian, especially during the union with Spain (1580-1640). With the discoveries and the empire, Portuguese became the lingua franca of trade in the ports of Africa and Asia, leaving traces in many languages: Japanese pan (bread), for example, and several Portuguese-based creoles, such as Cape Verdean, were born.

Brazilian and African Portuguese

Brazilian Portuguese stems from the colonisation of Brazil, begun in the sixteenth century. For a long time the colony mainly spoke a língua geral, based on the indigenous Tupi language and spread by Jesuit missionaries; it was the Marquis of Pombal, in the mid-eighteenth century, who made Portuguese compulsory, while the Jesuits were expelled in 1759. The differences between European and Brazilian Portuguese are considerable in pronunciation, vocabulary and partly in grammar: Brazilian has more open vowels and a more musical rhythm, while in Portugal many unstressed vowels almost disappear. Indigenous languages, those of the millions of Africans taken to Brazil as slaves, and the independent evolution of the language on two sides of the ocean all contributed to these differences. In Africa Portuguese coexists with local languages and is increasingly spoken, especially in the cities of Angola and Mozambique.

To bring the two written varieties closer, the Portuguese-speaking countries signed a spelling agreement in 1990, in force in Portugal from 2009 and compulsory from 2015, not without controversy: the reform removed some silent consonants, so acção became ação, for example.

Tips for travellers

Written Portuguese is fairly easy to follow for speakers of other Romance languages, spoken European Portuguese much less so, being fast and full of "swallowed" vowels. The Portuguese appreciate visitors who try a few words of their language, but it is best not to speak Spanish assuming it will be understood. Some useful words:

Many Portuguese people, especially the young, speak good English.