Portuguese ( português (help·info) or língua portuguesa) is a Romance language extinct: Anatolian · Paleo-Balkan (Dacian, that grew from the Latin Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. With the Roman conquest, Latin was spread to countries around the Mediterranean, including a large part of Europe. Romance languages such as Aragonese, Corsican, Catalan, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Sardinian, Spanish and others, are descended from Latin, while descended Galician-Portuguese language Galician-Portuguese was a West Iberian Romance language spoken in the Middle Ages, in the northwest area of the Iberian Peninsula. It was first spoken in the area bounded in the north and west by the Atlantic Ocean and the Douro River in the south but it was later extended south of the Douro by the Reconquista. It is the common ancestor of modern that was spoken in the mediaeval Kingdom of Galicia The Kingdom of Galicia existed in some form from the time the conquered Roman diocese of Hispania was divided between the Alans, Suebi and Vandals in 411 until the 1833 territorial division of Spain during the regency of María Cristina. The region of Gallaecia had been a Roman province since the administrative reforms of the Tetrarchy (293), and, whose territory is now divided between northern Portugal Portugal /ˈpɔɹtʃʉɡəl/ (Portuguese: Portugal, Mirandese: Pertual), officially the Portuguese Republic (Portuguese: República Portuguesa; Mirandese: República Pertuesa), is a country located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west and, Galicia Galicia is an autonomous community and historic region in northwest Spain, with the status of a historic nationality, and descends from one of the first kingdoms of Europe, the Kingdom of Galicia. It is constituted under the Galician Statute of Autonomy of 1981. Its component provinces are A Coruña, Lugo, Ourense and Pontevedra. It borders and Asturias The Principality of Asturias is an autonomous community within the kingdom of Spain, former Kingdom of Asturias in the Middle Ages. It is situated on the Spanish north coast facing the Cantabrian Sea (Mar Cantábrico, the Spanish name for the Bay of Biscay). It also absorbed influences from the Romance and Arabic languages spoken in the areas that were conquered by the Portuguese reconquista The Reconquista was a period of nearly 800 years (600 years in Portugal) in the Middle Ages during which several Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula succeeded in retaking (and repopulating) the Iberian Peninsula from the Muslim Al-Andalus Province. The Islamic conquest of the Christian Visigothic kingdom in the 8th century (begun 710–12). It was spread worldwide in the 15th and 16th centuries as Portugal established a colonial empire It was also the longest-lived of the modern European colonial empires, spanning almost six centuries, from the capture of Ceuta in 1415 to the handover of Macau in 1999 (1415–1999) that included Brazil Brazil (pronounced /brəˈzɪl/ ; Portuguese: Brasil, IPA: [bɾaˈziw]), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: República Federativa do Brasil, listen (help·info)), is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population. It is the only Portuguese-speaking in South America South America is the southern continent of America, situated in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east by the Atlantic Ocean; North America and the Caribbean Sea lie to the northwest, Goa Goa (pronounced /ˈɡoʊ.ə/ ; Konkani: गोंय) is India's smallest state by area and the fourth smallest by population. Located in South West India in the region known as the Konkan, it is bounded by the state of Maharashtra to the north, and by Karnataka to the east and south, while the Arabian Sea forms its western coast. Goa is India's and other parts of India, Macau Macau , also known as Macao (pronounced /məˈkaʊ/) is one of the two special administrative regions of the People's Republic of China, the other being Hong Kong. Macau lies on the western side of the Pearl River Delta, bordering Guangdong province to the north and facing the South China Sea in the east and south in China, Timor Timor is an island at the southern end of Maritime Southeast Asia, north of the Timor Sea. It is divided between the independent state of East Timor, and West Timor, belonging to the Indonesian province of East Nusa Tenggara. The island's surface is 11,883 square miles . The name is a variant of timur, Malay for “east”; it is so called because in South-East Asia Southeast Asia is a subregion of Asia, consisting of the countries that are geographically south of China, east of India and north of Australia. The region lies on the intersection of geological plates, with heavy seismic and volcanic activity and the five African countries that make up the PALOP lusophone A Lusophone is someone who speaks the Portuguese language, either as a native, as an additional language, or as a learner. As an adjective, it means "Portuguese-speaking". The word itself is derived from the name of the ancient Roman province of Lusitania, which covered an area that is today Portugal. The notion reaches beyond the area: Cape Verde The Republic of Cape Verde (pronounced /ˌkeɪp ˈvɜrd/ ; Portuguese: Cabo Verde, pronounced [ˈkabu ˈveɾdɨ]; Kabuverdianu: Kabu Verdi) is an island country, spanning an archipelago of 10 islands located in the central Atlantic Ocean, 570 kilometres off the coast of Western Africa. The islands, covering a combined area of slightly over 4,000, Guiné-Bissau The Republic of Guinea-Bissau is located in West Africa. It is bordered by Senegal to the north, and Guinea to the south and east, with the Atlantic Ocean to its west, São Tomé e Príncipe, Angola Angola, officially the Republic of Angola , is a country in south-central Africa bordered by Namibia on the south, Democratic Republic of the Congo on the north, and Zambia on the east; its west coast is on the Atlantic Ocean with Luanda as its capital city. The exclave province of Cabinda has a border with the Republic of the Congo and the and Mozambique Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique , is a country in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west and Swaziland and South Africa to the southwest. It was used as the exclusive lingua franca A lingua franca is a language systematically used to communicate between persons not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both persons' mother tongues on the island of Sri Lanka As a result of its location in the path of major sea routes, Sri Lanka is a strategic naval link between West Asia and South East Asia.[citation needed] It has also been a center of the Buddhist religion and culture from ancient times and is one of the few remaining abodes of Buddhism in South Asia, including Ladakh, Bhutan and the Chittagong Hill for almost 350 years. During that time, many creole languages based on Portuguese Portuguese overseas exploration in the 15th and 16th century's led to the establishment of a Portuguese Empire with trading posts, forts and colonies in the Americas, Asia and Africa. Contact between the Portuguese language and native languages gave rise to many Portuguese-based pidgins, used as linguas francas throughout the Portuguese sphere of also appeared around the world, in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.
With over 260 million speakers, is the fifth most spoken language in the world, the most widely spoken in the southern hemisphere, and the third most spoken in the Western world. In addition to Brazil and Portugal, it is used in Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Macau, Mozambique, São Tome and Principe, East Timor and (since 2007) Equatorial Guinea, as well as in the former territories of Portuguese India (Goa, Daman, Isle of Angediva, Simbor, Gogol, Diu and Dadra and Nagar Haveli) and in small communities that were part of the Portuguese Empire in Asia as Malacca, Malaysia and East Africa as Zanzibar, Tanzania. It has official status in the European Union The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 member states which are located primarily in Europe. Committed to regional integration, the EU was established by the Treaty of Maastricht in 1993 upon the foundations of the European Communities. With over 500 million citizens, the EU combined generated an estimated 28% share (US$ 16.5 (EU), Mercosur Mercosur or Mercosul or Ñemby Ñemuha. is a Regional Trade Agreement (RTA) between Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay founded in 1991 by the Treaty of Asunción, which was later amended and updated by the 1994 Treaty of Ouro Preto. Its purpose is to promote free trade and the fluid movement of goods, people, and currency. The official (Mercosul in Portuguese), the African Union The African Union is an intergovernmental organization consisting of 53 African states. Established on 9 July 2002, the AU was formed as a successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU). The most important decisions of the AU are made by the Assembly of the African Union, a semi-annual meeting of the heads of state and government of its, the Organization of American States The Organization of American States is an international organization, headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States. Its members are the thirty-five independent states of the Americas, although Honduras was suspended as a result of the June 28, 2009 coup d’état that expelled President Manuel Zelaya from office (OAS), the Latin Union The Latin Union is an international organization of nations that use Romance languages, with the aim of protecting, projecting, and promoting the common cultural heritage and unifying identities of the Latin, and Latin-influenced, world. It was created in 1954 in Madrid, Spain, and has existed as a functional institution since 1983. Its membership, the Community of Portuguese Language Countries Community of Portuguese Language Countries (Portuguese: Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa, pronounced [kumuniˈdad duʃ pɐˈizɨʒ dɨ ˈlĩɡwɐ puɾtuˈɡezɐ] (EP), [komuniˈdadʒi dus paˈiziz dʒi ˈlĩɡwa poɾtuˈɡezɐ] (BP); abbreviated to CPLP) is the intergovernmental organization for friendship among lusophone (Portuguese- (CPLP) and the Association of National Olympic Committees of Portuguese Official Language (ACOLOP).
Like other languages, Portuguese has experienced a historical evolution, being influenced by many other languages and dialects, as it reached the form known today. Contemporary Portuguese comprises several dialects and sub-dialects (subfalares), often very distinct, and two internationally recognized standards (European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese). At present, Portuguese is the only language spoken in the Western world with over a hundred million people with two official orthographies (spelling differences between English as used in various countries are not isolated but divergent spellings[citation needed]). This situation must be resolved by agreement (Speller 1990).[citation needed]
Today it is one of the world's major languages, ranked seventh Since the definition of a single language is to some extent arbitrary, some mutually intelligible idioms with separate national standards or self-identification have been listed separately, depending on conventional use, including Scandinavian, Hindi/Urdu, Dutch and Afrikaans, Indonesian and Malay according to number of native speakers (between 205 and 230 million). It is the language of about half of South America's population, even though Brazil is the only Portuguese-speaking nation in the Americas. It is also a major lingua franca in Portugal's former colonial possessions in Africa. It is an official language in nine countries (see the table on the right), also being co-official with Cantonese Cantonese is a variety of the Chinese language spoken in and around the city of Guangzhou in Southern China, by the majority population of Hong Kong and Macau, and as a lingua franca of Guangdong province, eastern Guangxi province, and some neighbouring areas. It is used in Hong Kong and Macau as the de facto official spoken language of government Chinese in Macau Macau , also known as Macao (pronounced /məˈkaʊ/) is one of the two special administrative regions of the People's Republic of China, the other being Hong Kong. Macau lies on the western side of the Pearl River Delta, bordering Guangdong province to the north and facing the South China Sea in the east and south and Tetum Tetum is an Austronesian language, a national language and one of the two official languages of East Timor. Some of its dialects have been greatly influenced by Portuguese, the other official language of the country, especially in their vocabulary, but also in aspects of their grammar in East Timor Timor Leste, more commonly known as East Timor, is a state in Southeast Asia. It comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor, the nearby islands of Atauro and Jaco, and Oecusse, an exclave on the northwestern side of the island, within Indonesian West Timor. The small country of 15,410 km² (5,400 sq mi) is located about 640 km (400 mi). There are sizeable communities of Portuguese speakers in various regions of North America, notably in the United States (New Jersey The area was inhabited by Native Americans for more than 2,800 years, with historical tribes such as the Lenape along the coast. In the early 17th century, the Dutch and the Swedes made the first European settlements. The English later seized control of the region, naming it the Province of New Jersey. It was granted as a colony to Sir George, New England In one of the earliest European settlements in North America, Pilgrims from England first settled in New England in 1620, to form Plymouth Colony. Ten years later, the Puritans settled north of Plymouth Colony in Boston, thus forming Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630. In the late 18th century, the New England colonies would be among the first North, California California's geography ranges from the Pacific coast to the Sierra Nevada mountain range in the east, to Mojave desert areas in the southeast and the Redwood–Douglas fir forests of the northwest. The center of the state is dominated by the Central Valley, one of the most productive agricultural areas in the world. California is the most and south Florida With an area of 65,758 square miles , it is ranked 22nd in size among the 50 U.S. states. Florida has the longest coastline in the Contiguous United States encompassing approximately 1,350 miles (2,170 km). The state has four large urban areas, a number of smaller industrial cities, and many small towns) and in Ontario Ontario is bordered by Manitoba on its west, Hudson Bay on its north, and Quebec on its east, and by five states of the United States to its south : Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania (Lake Erie) and New York. All but a small portion of Ontario's 2,700 km (1,677 mi) border with the United States follow inland waterways: from the west at Lake, Canada (especially Toronto Toronto is the largest city in Canada and the provincial capital of Ontario. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. With over 2.5 million residents, it is the fifth most populous municipality in North America. Toronto is at the heart of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), and is part of a densely populated region).
In various aspects, the system of sounds in Portuguese The phonology of Portuguese can vary considerably between dialects, in extreme cases leading to difficulties in intelligibility. This article focuses on the pronunciations that are generally regarded as standard. Since Portuguese is a pluricentric language, and differences between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese (BP) can be is more similar to the phonologies Phonology is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use. Just as a language has syntax and vocabulary, it also has a phonology in the sense of a sound system. When describing the formal area of study, the term typically describes linguistic analysis either beneath the of Catalan The phonology of Catalan, a Romance language, has a certain degree of dialectal variation. Although there are two main dialects, one based on Eastern Catalan and one based on Valencian, this article deals with features of all or most dialects as well as regional pronunciation differences. Various studies have focused on different Catalan varieties; or French This article mainly discusses the phonological system of standard French based on the Parisian dialect. French is notable for its uvular r, nasal vowels, and two processes affecting word-final sounds: liaison, a certain type of sandhi, wherein word-final consonants are not pronounced unless followed by a word beginning with a vowel; and elision, than, say, those of Spanish This article is about the phonology of the Spanish language. It deals with current phonology and phonetics as well as with historical developments thereof. Unless otherwise noted, statements refer to Castilian Spanish, the standard dialect used on radio and television, in Spain or Italian This article is about the phonology of the Italian language. It deals with the phonology and phonetics of Standard Italian as well as with geographical variants. Nevertheless, the grammar, structure and vocabulary of the Portuguese and Spanish languages are so similar that phonetic differences do not impede intelligibility between them in any significant way. Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra[b] was a Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright. His magnum opus Don Quixote, often considered the first modern novel, is a classic of Western literature, and is regularly regarded among the best novels ever written.[citation needed] His work is considered among the most important in all of literature. His influence on once called Portuguese "the sweet language",[6] Lope de Vega Félix Arturo Lope de Vega y Carpio was one of the most important playwrights and poets of the Spanish Golden Century Baroque literature. His reputation in the world of Spanish letters is second only to that of Cervantes, while the sheer volume of his literary output is unequalled, making him one of the most prolific authors in the history of referred to it as "sweet" [7] while Brazilian writer Olavo Bilac Olavo Brás Martins dos Guimarães Bilac ( pronunciation born 16 December 1865, died 28 December 1918) was a Brazilian poet of the Parnassian school poetically described it as a última flor do Lácio, inculta e bela: "the last flower of Latium Latium is the region of central western Italy in which the city of Rome was founded and grew to be the capital city of the Roman Empire. Latium was originally a small triangle of fertile, volcanic soil on which resided the tribe of the Latins. It was located on the left bank of the Tiber river, northward to the Anio river (a left-bank tributary of, wild and beautiful". Portuguese is also termed "the language of Camões",[8] after one of Portugal's best known literary figures, Luís Vaz de Camões.
Portuguese is also the fourth most learned language in the world, since at least 30 million students study this language. The mandatory offering of Portuguese in school curricula is observed in Uruguay,[9] and Argentina,[10] and similar legislation is being considered in Venezuela,[11] Zambia,[12] Congo,[13] Senegal,[13] Namibia,[13] Swaziland,[13] Côte d'Ivoire,[13] and South Africa.[13]
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Wed, 08 Sep 2010 04:21:40 GMT+00:00
Bloomberg Europe's largest financial companies hold more than 134 billion euros in Greek, Portuguese and Spanish government bonds, according to a tally in May by ...
(Axel H Horns)
Mon, 06 Sep 2010 15:42:26 GM
Currently work is under way to provide subsequent . language. pairs for Swedish-English / English-Swedish and . Portuguese. -English / English-. Portuguese. . Further work is also planned for Dutch, Finnish, Greek and Romanian. ...
