Portuguese language

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{{Infobox Language |name=Portuguese |nativename=Português |pronunciation=[puɾtu'geʃ] (European), [poɾtu'gejs] (Brazilian) |states=Brazil, Portugal, Angola, Mozambique, and several other CPLP countries |speakers=213 Million people |rank=6 |familycolor=Indo-European |fam2=Italic |fam3=Romance |fam4=Italo-Western |fam5=Western |fam6=Gallo-Iberian |fam7=Ibero-Romance |fam8=West-Iberian |fam9=Portuguese-Galician |script=Latin alphabet (Portuguese variant) |nation=Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, European Union, Guinea Bissau, Macao S.A.R. of China, Mozambique, Portugal, São Tomé and Príncipe |agency=International Portuguese Language Institute; CPLP |iso1=pt|iso2=por|iso3=por}}

Portuguese (Template:Audio) is an Iberian Romance language that originated in Portugal, which is now the official language of Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Macao, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe and East Timor.

Portuguese is ranked sixth among the world's languages in number of native speakers (over 200 million), and first in South America (186 million, over 51% of the population). It is also a major lingua franca in Africa. It spread worldwide in the 15th and 16th century as Portugal set up a vast colonial and commercial empire (1415–1999), spanning from Brazil in the Americas to Macao in China. In that colonial period, many Portuguese creoles appeared all over the world, especially in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.

Portuguese is often nicknamed The language of Camões, after the author of the Portuguese national epic The Lusiads; The last flower of Latium (Olavo Bilac); and The sweet language by Cervantes.

Contents

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History

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Portuguese developed in the Western Iberian Peninsula from Latin brought there by Roman soldiers and colonists starting in the 3rd century BC. The language began to diverge from other Romance languages after the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the barbarian invasions in the 5th century, and started to be used in written documents around the 9th century. By the 15th century it had become a mature language with a rich literature. In all aspects — phonology, morphology, lexicon and syntax — Portuguese is essentially the result of an organic evolution of Vulgar Latin, with relatively minor influences from other languages.

Arriving on the Iberian Peninsula in 218 BC, the Romans brought with them the Roman people's language, Vulgar Latin, from which all Romance languages descend. Already in the 2nd century BC southern Lusitania was Romanized. Strabo, a 1st-century Greek geographer, comments in one of the books of his Geographia "encyclopedia": "they have adopted the Roman customs, and they no longer remember their own language." The language was spread by arriving Roman soldiers, settlers and merchants, who built Roman cities mostly near previous civilizations' settlements.

Between 409 A.D. and 711, as the Roman Empire was collapsing, the Iberian Peninsula was subjected to peoples of Germanic origin, known to the Romans as Barbarians. The Barbarians (mainly Suevi and Visigoths) largely absorbed the Roman culture and language of the peninsula; however, Lusitania's language and culture were free to evolve on their own during the Early Middle Ages, due to the lack of Roman schools and administration, Lusitania's relative isolation from the rest of Europe, and changes in the political boundaries of the Iberian peninsula. These changes led to the formation of what is now called "Lusitanian Romance". From 711, with the Moorish invasion of the Peninsula, Arabic was adopted as the administrative language in the conquered regions. However, the population continued to speak their Romance dialects so that when the Moors were overthrown, the influence that they had exerted on the language was small. Its main effect was in the lexicon.

The earliest surviving records of a distinctively Portuguese language are administrative documents from the ninth century, still interspersed with many phrases in Latin. Today this phase is known as "Proto-Portuguese" (spoken in the period between the 9th to the 12th century).

Extract of medieval
Portuguese poetry
Das que vejo
non desejo
outra senhor se vós non,
e desejo
tan sobejo,
mataria um leon,
senhor do meu coraçon:
fin roseta,
bela sobre toda fror,
fin roseta,
non me meta
en tal coita voss'amor!
João de Lobeira
(1270?–1330?)

Portugal was formally recognized by the Kingdom of Leon as an independent country in 1143, with King Afonso Henriques. In the first period of "Old Portuguese" - Portuguese-Galician Period (from the 12th to the 14th century) - the language gradually came into general use. Previously it had mostly been used on the Christian Iberian Peninsula as a language for poetry, just as Provençal was used out of Provence. In 1290, king Denis created the first Portuguese University in Lisbon (the Estudo Geral) and decreed that Portuguese, then simply called the "Vulgar language" should be known as the Portuguese language and should be officially used.

In the second period of "Old Portuguese", from the 14th to the 16th century, with the Portuguese discoveries, the Portuguese language spread to many regions of Asia, Africa and The Americas (nowadays, the great majority of Portuguese speakers live in Brazil, in South America). By the 16th century it had become a lingua franca in Asia and Africa, used not only for colonial administration and trade but also for communication between local officials and Europeans of all nationalities. The spreading of the language was helped by mixed marriages between Portuguese and local people (also very common in other areas of the world) and its association with the Catholic missionary efforts, which led to it being called Cristão ("Christian") in many places in Asia. The Nippo jisho, a Japanese-Portuguese dictionary written in 1603, was a product of Jesuit missionary activity in Japan. Alexandre de Rhodes' 1651 Dictionarium Anamiticum, Lusitanum et Latinum (Annamite-Portuguese-Latin dictionary), based off the work of earlier Portuguese missionaries, introduced the modern Vietnamese alphabet based on Portuguese orthography. The language continued to be popular in parts of Asia until the 19th century. Some Portuguese-speaking Christian communities in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Indonesia preserved their language even after they were isolated from Portugal.

Image:Estação da Luz.jpg The end of "Old Portuguese" was marked by the publication of the Cancioneiro Geral de Garcia de Resende, in 1516. The period of "Modern Portuguese" (spanning from the 16th century to present day) saw an increase in the number of words of Classical Latin origin and erudite words of Greek origin borrowed into Portuguese during the Renaissance, which augmented the complexity of the language.

In March of 2006, the Museum of the Portuguese Language, an interactive museum about the Portuguese language was founded in São Paulo, the city with the largest number of Portuguese speakers in the world.

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Derived languages

Template:Main Starting with the 16th century, the extensive contacts between Portuguese travelers and settlers, African slaves, and local populations led to the appearance of many pidgin languages with varying amounts of Portuguese influence. These pidgins remained in use in parts of Asia and Africa until the 18th century.

As these pidgins became the mother tongue of succeeding generations, they evolved into distinctive languages. Many of these Portuguese-based or Portuguese-influenced creole languages are still alive today, used by over 3 million people worldwide, especially by people of partial Portuguese ancestry.

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Influence on other languages

Portuguese also loaned words to many other languages, such as Japanese, Indonesian, Malay, Tetum, as well as in several creole languages, such as Lanc-Patuá (spoken in northern Brazil - now extinct) and Sranang Tongo (spoken in Suriname).

Portuguese had a strong influence on the language spoken around Sikka in Flores Island, Indonesia. In nearby Larantuka, Portuguese is used for prayers in the Tuan Ma ritual.

Portuguese also influenced the Tupi-Guarani-based Lingua Geral, a trade language widely used in Brazil until the 18th century.

Quốc ngữ, the modern orthography of Vietnamese, is based on 17th-century Portuguese orthography.

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Classification and related languages

Portuguese is a member of the Romance branch of the Indo-European language family. It is very similar to Galician, and somewhat less to Spanish. Its most distant relative among the Romance languages is Romanian.

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The West Iberian group

More specifically, Portuguese is a member of the West Iberian subset of Romance, which also includes Spanish (Castillan) and the regional languages Galician, Asturo-Leonese, Aragonese, Ladino, Extremaduran, and dialects thereof. By most linguistic criteria, these languages are significantly closer to each other than to any other living language — including Catalan, the other major language of the Iberian Peninsula.

Speakers of the West Iberian languages generally claim that they are all mutually intelligible to some extent. It is certainly true that a speaker of any of them can learn to read any other just by practicing, without formal study of the grammar. Bilingualism is quite common along the internal language boundaries of this group.

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Spanish

Portuguese differs somewhat from Spanish in orthography, and even more in phonology, grammar and vocabulary:

Ela fecha sempre a janela antes de jantar. (Portuguese)
Ella cierra siempre la ventana antes de cenar. (Spanish)
"She always closes the window before having dinner."

Actually, many of the most obvious discrepancies in the lexicon are only due to different usage preferences. For example, Portuguese has in fact both cear (rare) and jantar (common), whereas Spanish has both cenar (common) and yantar (rare), all meaning "to dine".

It is also claimed that a Portuguese speaker can understand spoken Spanish better than the other way around. This alleged asymmetry could be due to the general reduction of unstressed vowels in Portuguese, compared to Spanish.

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Galician

Galician, spoken mostly in Galicia (Northwest Spain), is actually closer to Portuguese (especially in its Medieval form) than to Spanish. The resemblance is masked in writing because Galician orthography follows the Spanish model.

Indeed, the question of whether Portuguese and Galician are separate languages or dialects of the same language has been hotly debated for decades, and is loaded with political and sociolinguistic implications. The controversy can be compared with that over Moldovan and Romanian or Occitan and Catalan . However, most Portuguese philologists claim nowadays Portuguese and Galician phonetics and syntax have diverged enough to consider them two separate languages altough they are mutually intelligible in favorable cases.

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Ladino

Ladino is a nearly-extinct language that was spoken by Sephardic Jews in the Iberian Peninsula. In many ways, Ladino is closer to Portuguese than to Spanish, because the Ladino-speaking community has roots in Portugal as well as in Spain. Compare for example Ladino ainda ("still") with Portuguese ainda and to Spanish aún. Ladino, like Portuguese, also conserved many of the initial [f] sounds that mutated to [h] (and were eventually lost) in Spanish. For example, Ladino fija ("daughter") and favlar ("to speak") match Portuguese filha and falar, whereas Spanish has hija and hablar.

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Asturo-Leonese

Another member of the West Iberian group is Asturo-Leonese, that comprises the dialects Asturian and Leonese (spoken in Northwest Spain, East of Galicia) and Mirandese (spoken in Northeast Portugal). It differs from Portuguese in several phonetic features, such as Template:IPA instead of Template:IPA in word-initial positions (e.g., Portuguese língua Template:IPA vs. Mirandese lhéngua Template:IPA); preservation of invervocalic Template:IPA and Template:IPA from Vulgar Latin; and use of diphthongs in tonic position where Portuguese has vowels (e.g. Portuguese castelo Template:IPA vs. Mirandese castiélho Template:IPA.

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Other Romance languages

Even though Portuguese has obvious lexical and grammatical similarities with all the other Romance languages outside of the West Iberian branch, it is not intelligible with them to any practical extent. Portuguese speakers will usually need some formal study of basic grammar and vocabulary, before being able to understand even the simplest sentences in those languages (and vice-versa):

Ela fecha sempre a janela antes de jantar. (Portuguese)
Elle ferme toujours la fenêtre avant de diner. (French)
Lei chiude sempre la finestra prima di cenare. (Italian)
Ea închide întodeauna fereastra înainte de a cina. (Romanian)

On the other hand, Portuguese is phonetically closer to French and Catalan than to Spanish in some respects; such as the occurrence of nasalization, palatalization, diphthongization of low-mid stressed vowels, aspiration of /f/, devoicing of sibilants, and change of intervocalic Template:IPA to Template:IPA — all features that are not shared by Spanish. The same can be said of the basic vocabularies: compare e.g. Portuguese bom ("good") with French or Catalan bon and Spanish bueno; or Portuguese filha with French fille, Catalan filla, and Spanish hija.

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Latin

Even though the Romance languages are all derived from Latin, they are arguably much closer to each other than to their common ancestor. The main difference is the noun declension system of Classical Latin, an essential feature which allows great freedom in its word order, and has no counterpart in any Romance language (except to some extent in Romanian, which preserved three of Latin's seven noun cases). In this regard, the distance between Portuguese and Latin is comparable to that between English and Anglo-Saxon. Indeed, while Portuguese speakers can quickly learn to see through the spelling changes and thus recognize many Latin words, they will often fail to understand the meaning of Latin sentences.

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Geographic distribution

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Image:Iilp.png

Portuguese is the first language in Angola, Brazil, Portugal and São Tomé and Príncipe, and the most widely used language in Mozambique. Portuguese is also one of the official languages of East Timor (with Tetum) and Macao S.A.R. of China (with Chinese). It is widely spoken, but not official, in Andorra, Luxembourg, Namibia and Paraguay. Portuguese Creoles are the mother tongue of Cape Verde and part of Guinea-Bissau's population. In Cape Verde most also speak standard Portuguese and have a native level language usage.

Large Portuguese-speaking immigrant communities exist in many cities around the world, including Montreal and Toronto in Canada; Paris in France; Asunción in Paraguay; and Boston, New Bedford, Cape Cod, Fall River, Honolulu, Houston, Newark, New York City, Orlando, Miami, Providence, Sacramento in the United States; Buenos Aires in Argentina, Uruguay, and in Japan. Other countries where speakers can be found include in Andorra, Belgium, Bermuda, Switzerland and some communities in India such as Goa. Portuguese is spoken by about 187 million people in South America, 17 million in Africa, 12 million in Europe, 2 million in North America and 610,000 in Asia.

Image:Map-Lusophone World-en.png The CPLP or Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries is an international organization consisting of the eight independent countries which have Portuguese as an official language. Portuguese is also an official language of the European Union, Mercosul and the African Union (one of the working languages) and one of the official languages of other organizations. The Portuguese language is gaining popularity in Africa, Asia, and South America as a second language for study.

Portuguese is with Spanish the fastest growing western language, and, following estimates by UNESCO it is the language with the higher potentiality of growth as an international communication language in Africa (south) and South America. The Portuguese speaking African countries are expected to have a combined population of 83 million by 2050. The language is also starting to gain popularity in Asia, mostly due to East Timor's boost in the number of speakers in the last five years, and Macau is becoming the Chinese center for learning Portuguese, where in early 21st century, the language use was in decline, today it is growing as it became a language for opportunity due to increased Chinese diplomatic and financial ties with the Portuguese speaking countries.

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Dialects

Template:Main Portuguese has two major standard dialects: Brazilian and European Portuguese (BP and EP). In addition there are several variants spoken in Africa and Asia, though these have not been subject to the same thorough research as the dialects of Brazil and Portugal. The differences between dialects both within and between the two spheres of influences are generally not too major, though the sheer number of BP speakers has lead to a very large amount of various sociolects and ideolects. There are several similarities in pronunciation, syntax and simplification in grammar use between vernacular BP and Angolan Portuguese (AP), but there are no differences between standard EP and AP.

Phrase- and sentence-level stress and tone patterns and differ significantly between dialects: south-central European Portuguese dialects are often described as a stress-timed dialects (consistent with the loss of pre-stress vowels), while most Brazilian Portuguese dialects are syllable-timed.

EP dialects are divided into two major groups: northern and south-central dialects. The northern are distinguished by a more conservative and complicated series of fricatives. The dialects of Azores and Madeira in one hand, Brazil, Angola and São Tomé and Príncipe in the other hand have developed separate unique features, but have much in common with the south-central group. BP dialects are divided into a northern and southern groups, where the northern dialects tend to slightly more open pre-stressed vowels.

Though geographically specific vocabulary are common, they are not always completely consistent. Examples of words that are different in Portuguese dialects from three different continents: Africa (Angola), Europe (Portugal) and South America (Brazil).

Bus

  • Angola & Mozambique: machimbombo
  • Brazil: ônibus
  • Portugal: autocarro

slum quarter

  • Angola: musseque
  • Brazil: favela
  • Portugal: bairro de lata or ilha

Go away

  • Angola: ir embora, (or bazar as a slang - from Kimbundu kubaza - to break, leave with rush);
  • Brazil: ir embora, (or vazar as a Slang - Portuguese "to leak");
  • Portugal: ir embora, (or bazar as a slang - from Kimbundu kubaza - to break, leave with rush);
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Brazil

There are some differences between the areas but these are the best approximations possible. For example, the dialect in Espírito Santo has some differences from Rio de Janeiro's, but in general it is very close. A good example of Brazilian Portuguese may be found in the capital city, Brasilia, due to the generalized population from all parts of the country. Image:Portugueselanguagedialects-Brazil.png

  1. Caipira — rural São Paulo and Minas Gerais
  2. Cearense — Ceará
  3. Baiano — Bahia
  4. Carioca — Rio de Janeiro
  5. Gaúcho — Rio Grande do Sul
  6. Mineiro — center of Minas Gerais
  7. Nordestino — northeastern states of Brazil, north of Minas Gerais
  8. Nortista — Amazon Basin
  9. Paranaense — Paraná - less palatalization
  10. Paulistano — metropolitan São Paulo
  11. Sertanejo — Goiás and Mato Grosso
  12. Sulista — southern Brazil
  13. Cuiabano — Cuiabá

Image:Portugueselanguagedialects-Portugal.png

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Portugal

  1. Image:Loudspeaker.png Açoreano — Azores
  2. Image:Loudspeaker.png Alentejano — Alentejo
  3. Image:Loudspeaker.png Algarvio — Algarve
  4. Image:Loudspeaker.png Alto-Minhoto — northern Braga (interior)
  5. Image:Loudspeaker.png Baixo-Beirão; Alto-Alentejano — central Portugal (interior)
  6. Image:Loudspeaker.png Beirão — central Portugal
  7. Image:Loudspeaker.png Estremenho — Coimbra and Lisbon
  8. Image:Loudspeaker.png Madeirense — Madeira
  9. Image:Loudspeaker.png Nortenho — parts of Braga and Porto
  10. Image:Loudspeaker.png Transmontano — Trás-os-Montes
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Angola

  1. Benguelense — Benguela province
  2. Image:Loudspeaker.png Luandense — Luanda province
  3. Sulista — southern Angola

Image:Portugueselanguagedialects-Angola.png

Other areas

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Sounds

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As with French, Portuguese is often noted for its contrastive use of nasal vowels and the large number of diphthongs. There are 7 simple oral vowel phonemes plus 2 more in European Portuguese, 5 simple nasal vowel phonemes, and 19 consonant phonemes.

European Portuguese differs from the dialects spoken in other Portuguese language countries by a marked velarization that affects vowels as well as consonants. Several of the oral vowels tend to be lowered and centralized (approaching a schwa) when unstressed, some of them completely reduced, giving the pronunciation a distinctly lax quality that is present in colloquial as well as formal speech.

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Consonants

Consonant phonemes of Portuguese
Bilabial Labio-</br>dental Dental Alveolar Post-</br>alveolar Palatal Velar Uvular
Plosives Template:IPA Template:IPA Template:IPA Template:IPA Template:IPA Template:IPA
Nasals Template:IPA Template:IPA Template:IPA
Fricatives Template:IPA Template:IPA Template:IPA Template:IPA Template:IPA Template:IPA Template:IPA
Flaps Template:IPA
Laterals Template:IPA Template:IPA
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Vowels

Image:Portuguese vowel chart.png

The European Portuguese Template:IPA is by tradition transcribed as a high central vowel Template:IPA, but is more accurately described as a somewhat centralized high back unrounded vowel, Template:IPA. Template:IPA for some /u/ occurs in the dialects of Portalegre, Castelo Branco, Algarve (Barlavento area) and São Miguel Island. [ø] occurs in São Miguel Island, for example in boi [bø] "ox".

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Lexical stress

Portuguese features lexical stress, which can be the sole distinguishing feature of minimal pairs:

falaram Template:IPA "they spoke" vs. falarão Template:IPA "they will speak" (BP)
dúvida Template:IPA "doubt (noun)" vs. duvida Template:IPA "he doubts" (EP and BP)
ouve Template:IPA "he hears" vs. ouvi Template:IPA "I heard" (only in BP)
túnel Template:IPA "tunnel" vs. tonel Template:IPA "wine cask" (only in EP)

Primary stress may vary between any of the three final syllables of the word, but mostly on the last two. In EP, a secondary stress falls on syllables with diphthongs when the primary stress is placed elsewhere in a word. There is a partial correlation between the position of the stress and the final vowel; for example, the final syllable is usually stressed when it contains a nasal phoneme or a diphthong, or an open vowel. Portuguese spelling rules take advantage of this correlation to minimize the number of diacritics.

A notable feature of EP is the historical erosion of vowel phonemes that precede the stressed syllable. This phenomenon, which has not occurred in BP, often leads to the replacement of two successive syllables by a single syllable with a consonant cluster. Because of this trend, 16th century Portuguese poems no longer scan when read in EP, but still do in BP.

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Prosody

Tone is not lexically significant in Portuguese, but phrase- and sentence-level stress are important. There are of six dynamic tone patterns that affect entire phrases, which indicate the mood and intention of the speaker such as implication, emphasis, reservation, etc. As in most Romance languages, interrogation is expressed mainly by sharply raising the tone at the end of the sentence.

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Grammar

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The Portuguese grammar is fairly similar to that of other Romance languages. Within that family, predictably, Galician and other Iberian languages are the most similar in grammar, and Rumanian is the most distant.

Like most Indo-European languages, Portuguese classifies most of its lexicon into four major word classes, namely verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs, which are the only classes open to new words. It also has smaller classes like pronouns, prepositions, articles, conjunctions, interjections, determiners and other particles.

Portuguese is basically a SVO language, although the subjects may follow the verb in a few special cases. Portuguese is a null subject language.

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Verbs

As in most Romance languages, the Portuguese verb is usually inflected to agree with the subject's grammatical person (with three values, 1=I/we, 2=you, 3=he/she/it/they) and grammatical number (singular or plural), and to express various attributes of the action, such as time (past, present, future); completed, frustrated, or continuing; subordination and conditionality; command; and more. As a consequence, a regular Portuguese verb stem can take over 50 distinct suffixes.

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Moods and tenses

Grammarians usually classify the verbal inflections (i.e. the synthetic verb forms) into the following moods, tenses, and non-finite forms:

  • indicative mood, used in the main clauses of declarative sentences:
    • present: ele canta, "he sings"
    • past tenses:
      • perfect: ele cantou, "he sang"
      • imperfect: ele cantava, "he was singing"
      • pluperfect: ele cantara, "he had sung"
    • future tense: ele cantará, "he will sing"
  • conditional mood: ele cantaria, "he would sing"
  • subjunctive mood (also called "conjunctive"), to express desire, possibility, or in subordinate clauses:
    • present: que ele cante, "that he sings"
    • past: que/se ele cantasse, "that/if he had sung/would sing"
    • future: se ele cantar, "if he sings/will sing"
  • imperative mood, used to express wish, command or advice: cante!, "sing!"
  • infinitive form
    • Impersonal: cantar, "to sing"
    • Personal: cantares, "you to sing" or "that you sing"
  • gerund form: cantando, "singing"
  • past (or passive) participle form: cantado, "sung"

There are also are many compound tenses expressed with inflected forms of the auxiliary verbs ser and estar (variants of "to be"), haver and ter (variants of "to have").

The gerund is never inflected for person or number, and is used in compound tenses, e.g. ele está cantando ("he is singing"), and as an adverb, e.g. ele trabalha cantando ("he works while singing"). In the European dialect, the gerund is usually replaced by a ("to") + infinitive, as in ele está a cantar ("he is singing"). The participle is used in compound verb tenses, as in ele havia cantado ("he had sung"). It is also used as an adjective, and in this case it is inflected to agree with the noun's gender and number: um hino cantado ("a sung anthem", masculine singular), três árias cantadas ("three sung arias", feminine plural). Some verbs have two distinct participle forms (one regular, one irregular), for these two uses.

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Conjugation classes

Verbs are divided into three conjugation classes according to the ending of their infinitive form, which may be one of "-ar", "-er", "-ir", and "-or". Verbs ending in "-or" are considered as pertaining to the same conjugation class as "-er" verbs; these verbs derive from the verb "pôr" (to put), which is inflected as the original verb "poner". Each conjugation class has its own distinctive set of 50 or so inflection suffixes: cant|ar → cant|ou ("he sung"), vend|er → vend|eu ("he sold"), part|ir → part|iu ("he left"), rep|or → rep|ôs ("he put back")

Some suffixes undergo various regular adjustments depending on the final consonant of the stem, either in pronunciation, in the spelling, or in both. Some verbal inflections also entail a shift in syllable stress: 'canto ("I sing"), can'tamos ("we sing"), canta'rei ("I will sing"). There are a couple hundred verbs that have a few irregular inflections, and about a dozen or so that are very irregular, including the auxiliaries ser ("to be"), haver ("there to be" or "to have"), ter ("to possess" or "to have"), ir ("to go"), and a few others.

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Peculiar verb forms

In addition to the compound forms for completed past actions, Portuguese also retains a synthetic pluperfect tense. Ele havia falado ("he had spoken") can also be expressed as ele falara. However, the pluperfect tense is losing ground to the compound forms. In Brazil, while pluperfect forms like falara are generally understood, they are regarded as archaic or literary and rarely used.

Portuguese subjunctive mood has three synthetic inflections, conventionally called present, past and future. They are used in certain subordinate clauses, generally to express conditions, wishes, intentions, or other "non-actual" actions. While the first two tenses are present in other Romance languages, the subjunctive future is rather uncommon, even within the Indo-European family as a whole.

A feature that is unique to Portuguese and Galician among the Indo-European languages is that they allow (or require, in some contexts) inflection of the infinitive verb form according to the person of the subject:

Está na hora de voltar. ("It is time (for me) to go back.")
Está na hora de voltarmos. ("It is time (for us) to go back.")
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Compound verb forms

Like all Romance languages, Portuguese has many compound verb tenses, consisting of an auxiliary verb (inflected in any of the above forms) combined with the gerund, participle or infinitive of the principal verb. The basic auxiliary verbs of Portuguese are haver ("to have", from Latin habere), estar ("to be", Latin stare), and ir ("to go", Latin ire), which have analogs in most other Romance tongues.

However, Portuguese often uses ter (originally "to possess", from Latin tenere, "to hold") instead of haver. Thus, for example, "he had spoken" can be translated as ele havia falado or ele tinha falado. While ter is used as auxiliary by other Iberian languages, it is much more pervasive in Portuguese, where it may replace haver even in its existential sense, as in tem muito peixe no mar ("there is plenty of fish in the sea"), although this latter use is not endorsed by the official grammar. The use of ter instead of haver is more prevalent in Brazil than in Portugal, and seems to be growing.

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Clitic pronouns

Besides the main pronouns that can be used as subject of a sentence, Portuguese has several weak pronouns that can only replace the grammatical object ("direct object" in Portuguese grammars) or certain prepositional phrases ("indirect objects"), or be the target of a preposition. The object pronouns can be placed before the verb as separate words, as in ela me ama ("she loves me"), or as clitics, i.e. appended to the verb after the tense/person inflection, as in ele amou-a ("he loved her") or ele deu-lhe o livro ("he gave her/him the book"). Note that Portuguese spelling rules (unlike those of Italian and Spanish) require a hyphen between the verb and a suffixed clitic.

Clitic placement may require some adjustments in the verb ending and/or in the pronoun, e.g. cantar + o = cantá-lo ("to sing it"). The direct and indirect object pronouns can be contracted, as in dei + lhe + os = dei-lhos ("I gave it to him"), although this feature seems to be falling into disuse, and is completely absent from Brazilian Portuguese.

A distinguishing feature of Portuguese among Romance languages is the occurrence of mesoclisis, the insertion of the weak pronouns between the verb stem and future or conditional verb ending:

comprá-lo-ei = comprarei + o ("I will buy it").
dar-to-ia = daria + te + o ("I would give it to you").
dar-lho-ia = daria + lhe + o ("I would give it to him").

Such forms are used in formal writing and in European Portuguese dialects, but hardly ever used in spoken Brazilian Portuguese.

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Nouns and adjectives

Every Portuguese noun, including inanimate objects and abstract concepts, has one of two grammatical genders, masculine and feminine, and one of the two grammatical numbers, singular or plural. Most adjectives and demonstratives, and all articles must be inflected according to the gender and number of the noun they reference:

esta linda casa branca ("this nice white house")
este lindo carro branco ("this nice white car")
estas lindas aves brancas ("these nice white birds")
estes lindos gatos brancos ("these nice white cats")

The concept of number is substantially the same as in English. The concept of gender is absolutely non-existent in English, but is retained in many other modern Indo-European languages. As in all Romance languages, the grammatical gender of inanimate entites is quite arbitrary, and often different from that used in sister languages. The gender of animate beings often matches the biological sex, but there are many exceptions: autoridade ("authority") and girafa ("giraffe"), for example, are always feminine; whereas peixe fêmea ("female fish") is strictly masculine.

The agreement rules apply also to adjectives used with copulas, e.g. o carro é branco ("the car is white") vs. a casa é branca ("the house is white"). The most common noun and adjective endings are "-o"/"-os" for masculine singular and plural, "-a"/"-as" for feminine; but there are many other patterns.

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Demonstratives

Portuguese demonstratives show a three-way distinction between close to the speaker, close to the listener, and far from both:

este lápis - "this pencil"
esse lápis - "that pencil" (near you)
aquele lápis - "that pencil" (over there, away from both of us)

In colloquial Brazilian Portuguese, esse is often used for este when there is no need to make a distinction. The basic adverbs of place also have a three-way distinction: aqui ("here"), aí, ("there", near you), and ali, lá, or acolá ("over there", far from both of us)

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Prepositions

Portuguese prepositions are somewhat similar to those of neighboring Romance languages; but there are some conspicuous differences. For example, the Italian prepositions di ("of") and da ("from") map to the same word in Portuguese, de. There is no simple correspondence between English and Portuguese prepositions.

The English possessive suffix "'s" has no systematic counterpart in Portuguese (or in any other Romance language except Rumanian), which generally makes the possessive with the preposition de.

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Vocabulary

Template:Main Almost 90% of the Portuguese vocabulary is derived from Latin; needless to say, with substantial phonological and morphological changes which accumulated throughout its history.

One conspicuous and distinctive change was the loss of intervocalic [l] in a very large set of words, such as SALIRE → sair ("to exit"), COLARE → coar ("to drip"). Another pervasive change, also fairly specific to Portuguese, was the voicing of [t] in [d], as in AMATVS → amado ("loved").

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Reintroduced Latin words

A few words remained virtually unchanged, like taberna ("tavern"); or even returned to a form close to the original, such as coxa ("thigh"). Many of these "retro" events happened in the late Middle Ages, due to the use of Church Latin by the Catholic Church, and during the Renaissance, when Classical antiquity in general, and Literary Latin in particular, enjoyed great prestige. Thus, for example, Latin AVRV, which had originally evolved to ouro ("gold") and dourado ("golden"), was re-introduced as the adjective áureo ("golden"). In the same way, LOCALE ("place"), which had evolved to lugar, was later re-introduced as the more erudite local. Many erudite Greek words and combining elements were also introduced or re-introduced in this way.

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Contributions from other languages

Very few Portuguese words can be traced to the native or pre-Roman inhabitants of Portugal, which included the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Iberians, Lusitanians, and Celts. Some notable examples are abóbora ("pumpkin") and bezerro ("year-old calf"), from Iberian languages; cerveja ("beer"), from Celtic; saco ("bag"), from Phoenician; and cachorro ("dog"), from Basque.

In the 5th century Portugal was conquered by the Suevi, Visigoths and Alans, Germanic tribes who had been displaced from Central Europe by the Huns. As they adopted the Roman civilization and language, however, these people contributed only a few words to the lexicon, mostly related to warfare — such as espora ("spur"), estaca ("stake"), and guerra ("war") from Gothic *spaúra, *stakka, and *wirro, respectively.

Between the 9th to the 15th centuries Portuguese adopted about 1000 words from Arabic, by influence of the Caliphate of Cordoba established by the Muslim Moors in the Iberian peninsula. Those words are often recognizable by the initial Arabic article a(l)-, and include many common words such as aldeia ("village") from التجارية aldaya, alface ("lettuce") from الخس alkhass, armazém ("warehouse") from المخزن almahazan, and azeite ("olive oil") from زيت azzait. From Arabic also came the grammatically peculiar word oxalá, meaning "may God will that".

Starting in the 15th century, the great expansion of Portuguese maritime exploration and trade introduced many loanwords from all over the world. Asia contributed, for instance, catana ("cutlass") from Japanese katana; corja ("rabble") from Malay kórchchu; and chá ("tea") from Cantonese chá.

From the 16th to the 19th century, the role of Portugal as intermediary of the slave trade from West and Southern Africa, as well as the establishment of large Portuguese colonies in Angola, Mozambique, and Brazil, led to the borrowing of many words of African and Amerind origin, especially names for most of the animals and plants found in those territories. While those terms are mostly used in the former colonies, many became current in European Portuguese as well. From Kimbundu, for example, came kifumate → cafuné ("head caress"), kusula → caçula ("youngest child"), marimbondo ("wasp"), bungular ("dance like a wizard") from kubungula. From South America came batata ("potato"), from Taino; ananás, from Tupi-Guarani naná and abacaxi from Tupi ibá cati (two species of "pineapple"), and tucano ("toucan") from Guarani tucan; and many more.

Finally, since the Middle Ages to the present day, the Portuguese lexicon received a steady influx of loanwords from languages of its European neighbors — often in spite of strenuous efforts by the national Literary Academies to preserve the "purity" of the language. Here are only a few examples:

Spanish: melena ("hair lock"), fiambre ("ham")
French: crochet → colchete ("crochet"), paletot → paletó ("jacket"), baton → batom ("lipstick"), filet → filé ("steak"), mayonnaise → maionese
Italian maccherone → macarrão ("pasta"), piloto ("pilot"), carrozza → carroça ("carriage"), barracca → barraca ("barrack")
Dutch: dijk → dique ("dam")
English: football → futebol, flirt → flerte, rifle, revolver → revólver, tank → tanque, stock → estoque , knock out → nocaute, folk lore → folclore
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Writing system

Template:Main Portuguese is written using the Latin alphabet with 26 letters. However, K, W and Y are used only for proper names and vernacular derivatives thereof, like darwinismo ("Darwinism"), or metric units and symbols, like watt and km. It uses ç and acute, grave, circumflex and tilde accents over vowels, and (in Brazil) diaeresis on U.

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Spelling reforms

As of 2005, Portuguese has two major written forms:

Written varieties
Portugal & Africa Brazil translation
Different pronunciation
António Antônio Anthony
Vénus Vênus Venus
Facto Fato Fact
Silent consonants
acção ação action
direcção direção direction
eléctrico elétrico electric
óptimo ótimo very good
Diacritics
Frequente Freqüente Frequent
ideia idéia idea

In Brazil most first 'c's in 'cc', 'cç' or 'ct'; and 'p's in 'pc', 'pç' or 'pt' were eliminated from the language, since they are not pronounced in the cultivated spoken language, but are remnants from the language's Latin origin (though some continue to exist in cultivated Brazilian Portuguese, others in European Portuguese). An example is "facto" (in Portugal) and "fato" (in Brazil), both meaning fact — one of the rare words that will continue to be accepted and is pronounced differently in both countries.

Also, there are differences in accent marks, due to:

  1. Different pronunciation: Brazil uses closed vowels in words such as "Antônio" (Anthony) or "anônimo" (anonymous), whereas Portugal and Africa use open ones, "António" or "anónimo", respectively.
  2. Easier reading: Because "qu" can be read in two different ways in Portuguese: "kw" or "k", Brazil uses the diaeresis (called 'trema' in Portuguese), instead of "cinquenta" they write "cinqüenta". Currently, some press in Brazil has stopped using this accent mark. It was part of an orthographic agreement but abolished in Portugal.

A 1990 Spelling Reform (Port. Reforma Ortográfica), intended to create an International Portuguese Standard, was ratified by Brazil, Cape Verde, and Portugal. East Timor, not an original subscriber, will ratify shortly along with Guinea-Bissau. Brazil and East Timor were the biggest supporters of the reform and pressured the CPLP for a fast implementation, but the implementation date has not yet been set. In East Timor, both orthographies are currently being taught to children. Galicia was also invited to take part in the reform but the Galician government ignored the invitation (note that this government states that Galician and Portuguese are different languages). However, an unofficial commission formed by Galician linguists (supporting the unity of the language) was sent and participated in the reform. 2

At first, the Agreement established that its entrance into practice would only occur when all the countries of the CPLP had ratified it. But the Portuguese-speaking African countries have not ratified, possibly due to problems in implementing it. In the CPLP’s summit of 26–27 July 2004, an adjustment will prompt implementation when just three countries ratify it. The agreement will eliminate most first 'c's in 'cc', 'cç' or 'ct'; and 'p's in 'pc', 'pç' or 'pt' from European/ African Portuguese, the dieresis and accent marks in words ending in "éia" in Brazil and add some new spelling rules. And it will allow either orthography for words like anónimo or anônimo, depending on the dialect of the author or person being transcribed. Late in October 2004, Brazil became the first to approve the adjustment and asked its ambassadors in Portugal and Cape Verde to promote the rapid implementation in those countries. The agreement will enter into practice in the first day of the next month when the third country ratifies it.

Even if today's orthographies do not harm intelligibility between native speakers, the orthography of one country is considered incorrect in the other, leading to two different translations of the same book written in another language and it can confuse foreigners that are learning the language. One endeavor of this reform is to promote the language internationally, just like the spelling reforms of Spanish by the Real Academia Española helped to promote the Spanish language. The language is not very popular internationally, even if it is the third-most-spoken Western language in the world, after English and Spanish. Another objective is Portugal and Brazil's aid to African countries in education of the Portuguese language to African and Amerindian populations, Brazil's educational aid to Africa and greater cultural and academic exchange.

Another agreement was made for the new words that will come into the language.

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Examples

Extract of «The Lusiads» (I, 33)
Translation Original IPA
Against him supported the beautiful Venus Sustentava contra ele Vénus bela, Template:IPA
She was attached to the Lusitanian people, Afeiçoada à gente Lusitana, Template:IPA
Due to so many qualities she saw in them Por quantas qualidades via nela Template:IPA
Of the ancient her beloved Roman; Da antiga tão amada sua Romana; Template:IPA
In the strong hearts, in the great star, Nos fortes corações, na grande estrela, Template:IPA
That they had shown in the Tingitana land, Que mostraram na terra Tingitana, Template:IPA
And in the language, in which when she imagines, E na língua, na qual quando imagina, Template:IPA
With little corruption she believes it is Latin. Com pouca corrupção crê que é a Latina. Template:IPA
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See also

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Notes

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References

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General

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Literature

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Phonology, orthography and grammar

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Reference dictionaries

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Linguistics studies

  • Lindley Cintra, Luís F. Nova Proposta de Classificação dos Dialectos Galego-Portugueses Boletim de Filologia, Lisboa, Centro de Estudos Filológicos, 1971.
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External links

Template:InterWiki Template:Wikibookspar

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English-language pages for beginners

Template:Official EU languages

Template:Featured articleTemplate:Link FA

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