Portuguese language
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Portuguese (endonym: português or, in full, língua portuguesa) is a Western Romance language of the Indo-European language family originating from the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. It is the official language of Portugal, Brazil, Cape Verde, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau and São Tomé and Príncipe,[6] and has co-official language status in East Timor, Equatorial Guinea, and Macau. Portuguese-speaking people or nations are known as "Lusophones" (lusófonos). As the result of expansion during colonial times, a cultural presence of Portuguese speakers is also found around the world. Portuguese is part of the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia and the County of Portugal, and has kept some Celtic phonology.[7][8]
| Portuguese | |
|---|---|
| português | |
| Pronunciation | [puɾtuˈɣeʃ], [poʁtuˈɡe(j)s] |
| Native to | Portugal, Brazil, Lusophone Africa, and other locations in the Lusosphere |
| Speakers | Native: 230 million (2012–2020)[1] L2: 25 million (2018–2020)[1] Total: 260 million[1] |
Early forms | |
| Manually coded Portuguese | |
| Official status | |
Official language in | |
Recognised minority language in | |
| Regulated by |
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | pt |
| ISO 639-2 | por |
| ISO 639-3 | por |
| Glottolog | port1283 |
| Linguasphere | 51-AAA-a |
 Countries or regions where Portuguese is the native language of the majority
Countries and territories where Portuguese is an official or administrative language but not a majority native language
Countries and territories where Portuguese is a cultural or secondary language | |
| This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. | |
With approximately 230 million native speakers and 25–30 million second language speakers, Portuguese has approximately 250 million total speakers. It is usually listed as the fifth-most spoken native language,[citation needed] the third-most spoken European language in the world in terms of native speakers[9] and the second-most spoken Romance language in the world, surpassed only by Spanish. Being the second most widely spoken language in South America[10] and the most-spoken language in the Southern Hemisphere,[11][12][13] it is also the second-most spoken language, after Spanish, in Latin America, one of the 10 most spoken languages in Africa,[14] and an official language of the European Union, Mercosul, the Organization of American States, the Economic Community of West African States, the African Union, and the Community of Portuguese Language Countries, an international organization made up of all of the world's officially Lusophone nations. In 1997, a comprehensive academic study ranked Portuguese as one of the 10 most influential languages in the world.[15][16]