Western Europe is the western region of Europe . The region's extent varies depending on context. The concept of "the West" appeared in Europe in juxtaposition to "the East" and originally applied to the ancient Mediterranean world, the Roman Empire (both Western and Eastern ), and medieval " Christendom ". Beginning with the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery , roughly from the 15th century, the concept of Europe as "the West " slowly became distinguished from and eventually replaced the dominant use of "Christendom" as the preferred endonym within the area. By the Age of Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution , the concepts of " Eastern Europe " and "Western Europe" were more regularly used. The distinctiveness of Western Europe became most apparent during the Cold War , when Europe was divided for 40 years by the Iron Curtain into the Western Bloc and Eastern Bloc , each characterised by distinct political and economical systems.
79-1029: Carlos Alberto is a common Portuguese and Spanish given name (in English Charles Albert , in Italian Carlo Alberto ). It is the name of several people: Portuguese Language Portuguese ( endonym : português or 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 Angola , Brazil , Cape Verde , Guinea-Bissau , Mozambique , Portugal and São Tomé and Príncipe , and has co-official language status in East Timor , Equatorial Guinea and Macau . Portuguese-speaking people or nations are known as Lusophone ( lusófono ). As
158-524: A form of Romance called Mozarabic which introduced a few hundred words from Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Berber. Like other Neo-Latin and European languages, Portuguese has adopted a significant number of loanwords from Greek , mainly in technical and scientific terminology. These borrowings occurred via Latin, and later during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Portuguese evolved from
237-625: A large part of the diaspora is a part of the already-counted population of the Portuguese-speaking countries and territories, such as the high number of Brazilian and PALOP emigrant citizens in Portugal or the high number of Portuguese emigrant citizens in the PALOP and Brazil. The Portuguese language therefore serves more than 250 million people daily, who have direct or indirect legal, juridical and social contact with it, varying from
316-835: A mild, generally humid climate, influenced by the North Atlantic Current . Western Europe is a heatwave hotspot, exhibiting upward trends that are three-to-four times faster compared to the rest of the northern midlatitudes. Western European languages mostly fall within two Indo-European language families: the Romance languages , descended from the Latin of the Roman Empire ; and the Germanic languages , whose ancestor language ( Proto-Germanic ) came from southern Scandinavia . Romance languages are spoken primarily in
395-632: A native language by vast majorities due to their Portuguese colonial past or as a lingua franca in bordering and multilingual regions, such as on the Brazilian borders of Uruguay and Paraguay and in regions of Angola and Namibia. In many other countries, Portuguese is spoken by majorities as a second language. There remain communities of thousands of Portuguese (or Creole ) first language speakers in Goa , Sri Lanka , Kuala Lumpur , Daman and Diu , and other areas due to Portuguese colonization . In East Timor,
474-530: A very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow. Although some countries were officially neutral , they were classified according to the nature of their political and economic systems. This division largely defines the popular perception and understanding of Western Europe and its borders with Eastern Europe . The world changed dramatically with the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989. West Germany peacefully absorbed East Germany , in
553-437: A wizard') (Angola). From South America came batata (' potato '), from Taino ; ananás and abacaxi , from Tupi–Guarani naná and Tupi ibá cati , respectively (two species of pineapple ), and pipoca (' popcorn ') from Tupi and tucano (' toucan ') from Guarani tucan . Finally, it has received a steady influx of loanwords from other European languages, especially French and English . These are by far
632-735: Is a multilingual thesaurus maintained by the Publications Office of the European Union . In this thesaurus, the countries of Europe are grouped into sub-regions. The following countries are included in the sub-group Western Europe: The Western European and Others Group is one of several unofficial Regional Groups in the United Nations that act as voting blocs and negotiation forums. Regional voting blocs were formed in 1961 to encourage voting to various UN bodies from different regional groups. The European members of
711-647: Is also termed "the language of Camões", after Luís Vaz de Camões , one of the greatest literary figures in the Portuguese language and author of the Portuguese epic poem The Lusiads . In March 2006, the Museum of the Portuguese Language , an interactive museum about the Portuguese language, was founded in São Paulo , Brazil, the city with the greatest number of Portuguese language speakers in
790-669: Is also the origin of the luso- prefix, seen in terms like " Lusophone ". Between AD 409 and AD 711, as the Roman Empire collapsed in Western Europe , the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by Germanic peoples of the Migration Period . The occupiers, mainly Suebi , Visigoths and Buri who originally spoke Germanic languages , quickly adopted late Roman culture and the Vulgar Latin dialects of
869-730: Is based on the Portuguese spoken in the area including and surrounding the cities of Coimbra and Lisbon , in central Portugal. Standard European Portuguese is also the preferred standard by the Portuguese-speaking African countries. As such, and despite the fact that its speakers are dispersed around the world, Portuguese has only two dialects used for learning: the European and the Brazilian. Some aspects and sounds found in many dialects of Brazil are exclusive to South America, and cannot be found in Europe. The same occur with
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#1732783392875948-412: Is considerably intelligible for lusophones, owing to their genealogical proximity and shared genealogical history as West Iberian ( Ibero-Romance languages ), historical contact between speakers and mutual influence, shared areal features as well as modern lexical, structural, and grammatical similarity (89%) between them. Portuñol /Portunhol, a form of code-switching , has a more lively use and
1027-508: Is either mandatory, or taught, in the schools of those South American countries. Although early in the 21st century, after Macau was returned to China and immigration of Brazilians of Japanese descent to Japan slowed down, the use of Portuguese was in decline in Asia , it is once again becoming a language of opportunity there, mostly because of increased diplomatic and financial ties with economically powerful Portuguese-speaking countries in
1106-559: Is more readily mentioned in popular culture in South America. Said code-switching is not to be confused with the Portuñol spoken on the borders of Brazil with Uruguay ( dialeto do pampa ) and Paraguay ( dialeto dos brasiguaios ), and of Portugal with Spain ( barranquenho ), that are Portuguese dialects spoken natively by thousands of people, which have been heavily influenced by Spanish. Western Europe Prior to
1185-758: Is the largest religion in Western Europe. According to a 2018 study by the Pew Research Center , 71.0% of Western Europeans identified as Christians. In 1054, the East–West Schism divided Christianity into Western Christianity and Eastern Christianity . This split Europe in two, with Western Europe primarily under the Catholic Church , and Eastern Europe primarily under the Eastern Orthodox Church . Ever since
1264-721: Is understood by all. Almost 50% of the East Timorese are fluent in Portuguese. No data is available for Cape Verde, but almost all the population is bilingual, and the monolingual population speaks the Portuguese-based Cape Verdean Creole . Portuguese is mentioned in the Constitution of South Africa as one of the languages spoken by communities within the country for which the Pan South African Language Board
1343-636: Is usually listed as the fifth-most spoken native language , the third-most spoken European language in the world in terms of native speakers and the second-most spoken Romance language in the world, surpassed only by Spanish . Being the most widely spoken language in South America and the most-spoken language in the Southern Hemisphere , it is also the second-most spoken language, after Spanish, in Latin America , one of
1422-676: The Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe . Warsaw , Berlin , Prague , Vienna , Budapest , Belgrade , Bucharest and Sofia ; all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to
1501-708: The Economic Community of West African States , the Southern African Development Community and the European Union . According to The World Factbook ' s country population estimates for 2018, the population of each of the ten jurisdictions is as follows (by descending order): The combined population of the entire Lusophone area was estimated at 300 million in January 2022. This number does not include
1580-880: The German reunification . Comecon and the Warsaw Pact were dissolved, and in 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Several countries which had been part of the Soviet Union regained full independence. In 1948 the Treaty of Brussels was signed between Belgium , France , Luxembourg , the Netherlands and the United Kingdom . It was further revisited in 1954 at the Paris Conference , when
1659-806: The Red Cross (alongside English, German, Spanish, French, Arabic and Russian), Amnesty International (alongside 32 other languages of which English is the most used, followed by Spanish, French, German, and Italian), and Médecins sans Frontières (used alongside English, Spanish, French and Arabic), in addition to being the official legal language in the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights , also in Community of Portuguese Language Countries , an international organization formed essentially by lusophone countries . Modern Standard European Portuguese ( português padrão or português continental )
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#17327833928751738-771: The Reformation in the 16th century, Protestantism has also been a major denomination in Europe, with Eastern Protestant and Eastern Catholic denominations also emerging in Central and Eastern Europe . During the four decades of the Cold War , the definition of East and West was simplified by the existence of the Eastern Bloc . A number of historians and social scientists view the Cold War definition of Western and Eastern Europe as outdated or relegating. During
1817-569: The Republic of the Congo , Senegal , Namibia , Eswatini , South Africa , Ivory Coast , and Mauritius . In 2017, a project was launched to introduce Portuguese as a school subject in Zimbabwe . Also, according to Portugal's Minister of Foreign Affairs, the language will be part of the school curriculum of a total of 32 countries by 2020. In such countries, Portuguese is spoken either as
1896-524: The Roman conquest, a large part of Western Europe had adopted the newly developed La Tène culture . As the Roman domain expanded, a cultural and linguistic division appeared between the mainly Greek -speaking eastern provinces, which had formed the highly urbanised Hellenistic civilisation , and the western territories, which in contrast largely adopted the Latin language. This cultural and linguistic division
1975-514: The Soviet Union . With the onset of the Cold War, Europe was divided by the Iron Curtain . This term had been used during World War II by German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and, later, Count Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk in the last days of the war; however, its use was hugely popularised by Winston Churchill, who used it in his famous "Sinews of Peace" address on 5 March 1946 at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri : From Stettin in
2054-532: The West Iberian branch of the Romance languages , and it has special ties with the following members of this group: Portuguese and other Romance languages (namely French and Italian ) share considerable similarities in both vocabulary and grammar. Portuguese speakers will usually need some formal study before attaining strong comprehension in those Romance languages, and vice versa. However, Portuguese and Galician are fully mutually intelligible, and Spanish
2133-740: The Western European Union was established. It was declared defunct in 2011 after the Treaty of Lisbon , and the Treaty of Brussels was terminated. When the Western European Union was dissolved, it had 10 member countries. Additionally, it had 6 associate member countries, 7 associate partner countries and 5 observer countries. The United Nations geoscheme is a system devised by the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) which divides
2212-776: The pre-Roman inhabitants of Portugal , which included the Gallaeci , Lusitanians , Celtici and Cynetes . Most of these words derived from the Hispano-Celtic Gallaecian language of northwestern Iberia, and are very often shared with Galician since both languages have the same origin in the medieval language of Galician-Portuguese. A few of these words existed in Latin as loanwords from other Celtic sources, often Gaulish . Altogether these are over 3,000 words, verbs, toponymic names of towns, rivers, surnames, tools, lexicon linked to rural life and natural world. In
2291-650: The " Far West ". The term Far West became synonymous with Western Europe in China during the Ming dynasty . The Italian Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci was one of the first writers in China to use the Far West as an Asian counterpart to the European concept of the Far East . In Ricci's writings, Ricci referred to himself as "Matteo of the Far West". The term was still in use in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Christianity
2370-510: The -s- form. Most of the lexicon of Portuguese is derived, directly or through other Romance languages, from Latin. Nevertheless, because of its original Lusitanian and Celtic Gallaecian heritage, and the later participation of Portugal in the Age of Discovery , it has a relevant number of words from the ancient Hispano-Celtic group and adopted loanwords from other languages around the world. A number of Portuguese words can still be traced to
2449-480: The 10 most influential languages in the world. When the Romans arrived in the Iberian Peninsula in 216 BC, they brought with them the Latin language , from which all Romance languages are descended. The language was spread by Roman soldiers, settlers, and merchants, who built Roman cities mostly near the settlements of previous Celtic civilizations established long before the Roman arrivals. For that reason,
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2528-601: The 10 most spoken languages in Africa , 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
2607-465: The 15th century, the Portuguese maritime explorations led to the introduction of many loanwords from Asian languages. For instance, catana (' cutlass ') from Japanese katana , chá ('tea') from Chinese chá , and canja ('chicken-soup, piece of cake') from Malay . From the 16th to the 19th centuries, because of the role of Portugal as intermediary in the Atlantic slave trade , and
2686-625: The 5th century, the Iberian Peninsula (the Roman Hispania ) was conquered by the Germanic , Suebi and Visigoths . As they adopted the Roman civilization and language, however, these people contributed with some 500 Germanic words to the lexicon. Many of these words are related to: The Germanic languages influence also exists in toponymic surnames and patronymic surnames borne by Visigoth sovereigns and their descendants, and it dwells on placenames such as Ermesinde , Esposende and Resende where sinde and sende are derived from
2765-440: The 9th and early 13th centuries, Portuguese acquired some 400 to 600 words from Arabic by influence of Moorish Iberia . They are often recognizable by the initial Arabic article a(l)- , and include common words such as aldeia ('village') from الضيعة aḍ-ḍayʿa , alface ('lettuce') from الخسة al-khassa , armazém ('warehouse') from المخزن al-makhzan , and azeite ('olive oil') from الزيت az-zayt . Starting in
2844-677: The 9th century until the 12th-century independence of the County of Portugal from the Kingdom of León , which had by then assumed reign over Galicia . In the first part of the Galician-Portuguese period (from the 12th to the 14th century), the language was increasingly used for documents and other written forms. For some time, it was the language of preference for lyric poetry in Christian Hispania , much as Occitan
2923-533: The Americas are independent languages. Portuguese, like Catalan , preserves the stressed vowels of Vulgar Latin which became diphthongs in most other Romance languages; cf. Port., Cat., Sard. pedra ; Fr. pierre , Sp. piedra , It. pietra , Ro. piatră , from Lat. petra ("stone"); or Port. fogo , Cat. foc , Sard. fogu ; Sp. fuego , It. fuoco , Fr. feu , Ro. foc , from Lat. focus ("fire"). Another characteristic of early Portuguese
3002-452: The CIA classification a little more liberally and including "South-Western Europe", would give the following calculation of Western Europe's population. The Hague is the seat of government The climate of Western Europe varies from Mediterranean in the coasts of Italy , Portugal and Spain to alpine in the Pyrenees and the Alps . The Mediterranean climate of the south is dry and warm. The western and northwestern parts have
3081-440: The Eastern Orthodox Church, by the Muslim Ottoman Empire in the 15th century, and the gradual fragmentation of the Holy Roman Empire (which had replaced the Carolingian Empire ), the division between Roman Catholic and Protestant became more important in Europe than that with Eastern Orthodoxy. In East Asia , Western Europe was historically known as taixi in China and taisei in Japan, which literally translates as
3160-410: The Eastern Roman Empire, mostly known as the Greek or Byzantine Empire , survived and even thrived for another 1000 years. The rise of the Carolingian Empire in the west, and in particular the Great Schism between Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism , enhanced the cultural and religious distinctiveness between Eastern and Western Europe. After the conquest of the Byzantine Empire , center of
3239-480: The Germanic sinths ('military expedition') and in the case of Resende, the prefix re comes from Germanic reths ('council'). Other examples of Portuguese names, surnames and town names of Germanic toponymic origin include Henrique, Henriques , Vermoim, Mandim, Calquim, Baguim, Gemunde, Guetim, Sermonde and many more, are quite common mainly in the old Suebi and later Visigothic dominated regions, covering today's Northern half of Portugal and Galicia . Between
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3318-407: The Lusophone diaspora , estimated at 10 million people (including 4.5 million Portuguese, 3 million Brazilians, although it is hard to obtain official accurate numbers of diasporic Portuguese speakers because a significant portion of these citizens are naturalized citizens born outside of Lusophone territory or are children of immigrants, and may have only a basic command of the language. Additionally,
3397-533: The Portuguese acronym CPLP) consists of the nine independent countries that have Portuguese as an official language : Angola , Brazil , Cape Verde , East Timor , Equatorial Guinea , Guinea-Bissau , Mozambique , Portugal and São Tomé and Príncipe . Equatorial Guinea made a formal application for full membership to the CPLP in June 2010, a status given only to states with Portuguese as an official language. Portuguese became its third official language (besides Spanish and French ) in 2011, and in July 2014,
3476-483: The Santomean, Mozambican, Bissau-Guinean, Angolan and Cape Verdean dialects, being exclusive to Africa. See Portuguese in Africa . Audio samples of some dialects and accents of Portuguese are available below. There are some differences between the areas but these are the best approximations possible. IPA transcriptions refer to the names in local pronunciation. Audio samples of some dialects and accents of Portuguese are available below. There are some differences between
3555-588: The areas but these are the best approximations possible. IPA transcriptions refer to the names in local pronunciation. Você , a pronoun meaning "you", is used for educated, formal, and colloquial respectful speech in most Portuguese-speaking regions. In a few Brazilian states such as Rio Grande do Sul , Pará, among others, você is virtually absent from the spoken language. Riograndense and European Portuguese normally distinguishes formal from informal speech by verbal conjugation. Informal speech employs tu followed by second person verbs, formal language retains
3634-508: The countries of the world into regional and subregional groups, based on the M49 coding classification . The partition is for statistical convenience and does not imply any assumption regarding political or other affiliation of countries or territories. In the UN geoscheme, the following countries are classified as Western Europe: The CIA classifies seven countries as belonging to "Western Europe": The CIA also classifies three countries as belonging to "Southwestern Europe": EuroVoc
3713-417: The country was accepted as a member of the CPLP. Portuguese is also one of the official languages of the Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China of Macau (alongside Chinese ) and of several international organizations, including Mercosul , the Organization of Ibero-American States , the Union of South American Nations , the Organization of American States , the African Union ,
3792-467: The end of the 20th century, being most frequent among youngsters, and a number of studies have also shown an increase in its use in a number of other Brazilian dialects. Differences between dialects are mostly of accent and vocabulary , but between the Brazilian dialects and other dialects, especially in their most colloquial forms, there can also be some grammatical differences. The Portuguese-based creoles spoken in various parts of Africa, Asia, and
3871-577: The establishment of large Portuguese colonies in Angola, Mozambique, and Brazil, Portuguese acquired several 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') (Brazil), kusula > caçula ('youngest child') (Brazil), marimbondo ('tropical wasp') (Brazil), and kubungula > bungular ('to dance like
3950-430: The final stages of World War II , the future of Europe was decided between the Allies in the 1945 Yalta Conference , between the British Prime Minister , Winston Churchill , the U.S. President , Franklin D. Roosevelt , and the Premier of the Soviet Union , Joseph Stalin . Post-war Europe was divided into two major spheres: the Western Bloc , influenced by the United States , and the Eastern Bloc , influenced by
4029-414: The first Portuguese university in Lisbon (the Estudos Gerais , which later moved to Coimbra ) and decreed for Portuguese, then simply called the "common language", to be known as the Portuguese language and used officially. In the second period of Old Portuguese, in the 15th and 16th centuries, with the Portuguese discoveries , the language was taken to many regions of Africa, Asia, and the Americas . By
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#17327833928754108-501: The form of Latin during that time), which greatly enriched the lexicon. Most literate Portuguese speakers were also literate in Latin; and thus they easily adopted Latin words into their writing, and eventually speech, in Portuguese. Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes once called Portuguese "the sweet and gracious language", while the Brazilian poet Olavo Bilac described it as a última flor do Lácio, inculta e bela ("the last flower of Latium , naïve and beautiful"). Portuguese
4187-413: The formal você , followed by the third person conjugation. Conjugation of verbs in tu has three different forms in Brazil (verb "to see": tu viste? , in the traditional second person, tu viu? , in the third person, and tu visse? , in the innovative second person), the conjugation used in the Brazilian states of Pará, Santa Catarina and Maranhão being generally traditional second person,
4266-415: The formation of creole languages such as that called Kristang in many parts of Asia (from the word cristão , "Christian"). 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. The end of the Old Portuguese period
4345-402: The group are: In addition, Australia , Canada , Israel and New Zealand are members of the group, with the United States as observer. Using the CIA classification strictly would give the following calculation of Western Europe's population. All figures based on the projections for 2018 by the Population Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs . Using
4424-406: The kind that is used in other Portuguese-speaking countries and learned in Brazilian schools. The predominance of Southeastern-based media products has established você as the pronoun of choice for the second person singular in both writing and multimedia communications. However, in the city of Rio de Janeiro, the country's main cultural center, the usage of tu has been expanding ever since
4503-435: The language has kept a relevant substratum of much older, Atlantic European Megalithic Culture and Celtic culture , part of the Hispano-Celtic group of ancient languages. In Latin, the Portuguese language is known as lusitana or (latina) lusitanica , after the Lusitanians , a pre-Celtic tribe that lived in the territory of present-day Portugal and Spain that adopted the Latin language as Roman settlers moved in. This
4582-436: The medieval language spoken in the northwestern medieval Kingdom of Galicia , which the County of Portugal once formed part of. This variety has been retrospectively named Galician-Portuguese , Old Portuguese, or Old Galician by linguists. It is in Latin administrative documents of the 9th century that written Galician-Portuguese words and phrases are first recorded. This phase is known as Proto-Portuguese, which lasted from
4661-496: The mid-16th century, Portuguese 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 Portuguese expanded across South America, across Africa to the Pacific Ocean, taking their language with them. Its spread was helped by mixed marriages between Portuguese and local people and by its association with Roman Catholic missionary efforts, which led to
4740-549: The minority Swiss Romansh language in many equivalent words such as maun ("hand"), bun ("good"), or chaun ("dog"). The Portuguese language is the only Romance language that preserves the clitic case mesoclisis : cf. dar-te-ei (I'll give thee), amar-te-ei (I'll love you), contactá-los-ei (I'll contact them). Like Galician , it also retains the Latin synthetic pluperfect tense: eu estivera (I had been), eu vivera (I had lived), vós vivêreis (you had lived). Romanian also has this tense, but uses
4819-1119: The most important languages when referring to loanwords. There are many examples such as: colchete / crochê ('bracket'/'crochet'), paletó ('jacket'), batom ('lipstick'), and filé / filete ('steak'/'slice'), rua ('street'), respectively, from French crochet , paletot , bâton , filet , rue ; and bife ('steak'), futebol , revólver , stock / estoque , folclore , from English "beef", "football", "revolver", "stock", "folklore." Examples from other European languages: macarrão ('pasta'), piloto ('pilot'), carroça ('carriage'), and barraca ('barrack'), from Italian maccherone , pilota , carrozza , and baracca ; melena ('hair lock'), fiambre ('wet-cured ham') (in Portugal, in contrast with presunto 'dry-cured ham' from Latin prae-exsuctus 'dehydrated') or ('canned ham') (in Brazil, in contrast with non-canned, wet-cured ( presunto cozido ) and dry-cured ( presunto cru )), or castelhano ('Castilian'), from Spanish melena ('mane'), fiambre and castellano. Portuguese belongs to
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#17327833928754898-462: The newspaper The Portugal News publishing data given from UNESCO, the highest potential for growth as an international language in southern Africa and South America . Portuguese is a globalized language spoken officially on five continents, and as a second language by millions worldwide. Since 1991, when Brazil signed into the economic community of Mercosul with other South American nations, namely Argentina , Uruguay and Paraguay , Portuguese
4977-498: The north of the country), Paraguay (10.7% or 636,000 people), Switzerland (550,000 in 2019, learning + mother tongue), Venezuela (554,000), and the United States (0.35% of the population or 1,228,126 speakers according to the 2007 American Community Survey ). In some parts of former Portuguese India , namely Goa and Daman and Diu , the language is still spoken by about 10,000 people. In 2014, an estimated 1,500 students were learning Portuguese in Goa. Approximately 2% of
5056-417: The number of Portuguese speakers is quickly increasing as Portuguese and Brazilian teachers are making great strides in teaching Portuguese in the schools all over the island. Additionally, there are many large Portuguese-speaking immigrant communities all over the world. According to estimates by UNESCO , Portuguese is the fastest-growing European language after English and the language has, according to
5135-432: The only language used in any contact, to only education, contact with local or international administration, commerce and services or the simple sight of road signs, public information and advertising in Portuguese. Portuguese is a mandatory subject in the school curriculum in Uruguay . Other countries where Portuguese is commonly taught in schools or where it has been introduced as an option include Venezuela , Zambia ,
5214-410: The peninsula and over the next 300 years totally integrated into the local populations. Some Germanic words from that period are part of the Portuguese lexicon, together with place names, surnames, and first names. With the Umayyad conquest beginning in 711, Arabic became the administrative and common language in the conquered regions, but most of the remaining Christian population continued to speak
5293-457: The people of Macau, China are fluent speakers of Portuguese. Additionally, the language is being very actively studied in the Chinese school system right up to the doctorate level. The Kristang people in Malaysia speak Kristang , a Portuguese-Malay creole; however, the Portuguese language itself is not widely spoken in the country. The Community of Portuguese Language Countries (in Portuguese Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa , with
5372-400: The population of urban Angola speaks Portuguese natively, with approximately 85% fluent; these rates are lower in the countryside. Just over 50% (and rapidly increasing) of the population of Mozambique are native speakers of Portuguese, and 70% are fluent, according to the 2007 census. Portuguese is also spoken natively by 30% of the population in Guinea-Bissau, and a Portuguese-based creole
5451-408: The protection of regional and minority languages are recognised political goals in Western Europe today. The Council of Europe Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and the Council of Europe's European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages set up a legal framework for language rights in Europe. Western Europe is one of the richest regions of the world. Germany has
5530-484: 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. With approximately 236 million native speakers and 27 million second language speakers, Portuguese has approximately 263.8 million total speakers. It
5609-430: The southern and central part of Western Europe, Germanic languages in the northern part (the British Isles and the Low Countries ), as well as a large part of Northern and Central Europe . Other Western European languages include the Celtic group (that is, Irish , Scottish Gaelic , Manx , Welsh , Cornish and Breton ) and Basque , the only currently living European language isolate . Multilingualism and
5688-515: The world. Portuguese, being a language spread on all continents, has official status in several international organizations. It is one of twenty official languages of the European Union , an official language of NATO, the Organization of American States (alongside Spanish, French and English), and one of eighteen official languages of the European Space Agency . Portuguese is a working language in nonprofit organisations such as
5767-637: The world. The museum is the first of its kind in the world. In 2015 the museum was partially destroyed in a fire, but restored and reopened in 2020. Portuguese is spoken by approximately 200 million people in South America, 30 million in Africa, 15 million in Europe, 5 million in North America and 0.33 million in Asia and Oceania. It is the native language of the vast majority of the people in Portugal, Brazil and São Tomé and Príncipe (95%). Around 75% of
5846-424: Was charged with promoting and ensuring respect. There are also significant Portuguese-speaking immigrant communities in many territories including Andorra (17.1%), Bermuda , Canada (400,275 people in the 2006 census), France (1,625,000 people), Japan (400,000 people), Jersey , Luxembourg (about 25% of the population as of 2021), Namibia (about 4–5% of the population, mainly refugees from Angola in
5925-621: Was eventually reinforced by the later political east–west division of the Roman Empire . The Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire controlled the two divergent regions between the 3rd and the 5th centuries. The division between these two was enhanced during late antiquity and the Middle Ages by a number of events. The Western Roman Empire collapsed , starting the Early Middle Ages . By contrast,
6004-537: Was marked by the publication of the Cancioneiro Geral by Garcia de Resende , in 1516. The early times of Modern Portuguese, which spans the period from the 16th century to the present day, were characterized by an increase in the number of learned words borrowed from Classical Latin and Classical Greek because of the Renaissance (learned words borrowed from Latin also came from Renaissance Latin ,
6083-554: Was the language of the poetry of the troubadours in France. The Occitan digraphs lh and nh , used in its classical orthography, were adopted by the orthography of Portuguese , presumably by Gerald of Braga , a monk from Moissac , who became bishop of Braga in Portugal in 1047, playing a major role in modernizing written Portuguese using classical Occitan norms. Portugal became an independent kingdom in 1139, under King Afonso I of Portugal . In 1290, King Denis of Portugal created
6162-585: Was the loss of intervocalic l and n , sometimes followed by the merger of the two surrounding vowels, or by the insertion of an epenthetic vowel between them: cf. Lat. salire ("to exit"), tenere ("to have"), catena ("jail"), Port. sair , ter , cadeia . When the elided consonant was n , it often nasalized the preceding vowel: cf. Lat. manum ("hand"), ranam ("frog"), bonum ("good"), Old Portuguese mão , rãa , bõo (Portuguese: mão , rã , bom ). This process
6241-462: Was the source of most of the language's distinctive nasal diphthongs. In particular, the Latin endings -anem , -anum and -onem became -ão in most cases, cf. Lat. canis ("dog"), germanus ("brother"), ratio ("reason") with Modern Port. cão , irmão , razão , and their plurals -anes , -anos , -ones normally became -ães , -ãos , -ões , cf. cães , irmãos , razões . This also occurs in
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