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Portuguese language
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Portuguese language
White text on a blue textured background reading obigado or obrigada.
Thematic map of Europe showing the distribution of Romance languages, with different colors representing areas where Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, French, Occitan, Provencal, Franco-Provencal, Italian, Sardinian, Romanian, and Rhaetian are spoken. Striped areas indicate regions where bilingualism is common. The map highlights the primary Romance language regions in southwestern, southern, and eastern Europe, including the Iberian Peninsula, France, Italy, Switzerland, Romania, and parts of the B
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Portuguese language
Portuguese language A student writing on a blackboard in a Portuguese language class.

Portuguese language

Also known as: Português
Written by
Rebecca Posner
Professor of Romance Languages, University of Oxford. Author of The Romance Languages: A Linguistic Introduction and others; editor of Trends in Romance Linguistics and Philology (5 vol.).
Rebecca PosnerAll
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History

Portuguese language, Romance language that is spoken in Portugal, Brazil, and other Portuguese colonial and formerly colonial territories. Galician, spoken in northwestern Spain, is closely related to Portuguese. Portuguese owes its importance—as the second Romance language (after Spanish) in terms of numbers of speakers—largely to its position as the language of Brazil, where in the early 21st century some 187 million people spoke it. In Portugal, the language’s country of origin, there are more than...

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