Portuguese language

Portuguese (português or, in full, língua portuguesa) is a Western Romance language of the Indo-European language family, originating in the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. It is an official language of Portugal, Brazil, Cape Verde, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau and São Tomé and Príncipe,[6] while having co-official language status in East Timor, Equatorial Guinea, and Macau. A Portuguese-speaking person or nation is referred to as "Lusophone" (lusófono). 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 in its lexicon.[7][8]

Quick facts: Portuguese, Pronunciation, Ethnicity, Speaker... ▼

Portuguese
português
Pronunciation	[puɾtuˈɣeʃ], [poʁtuˈɡe(j)s]
Ethnicity	Lusophones Portuguese Brazilians Luso-Asians Luso-Africans
Speakers	Native: 230 million (2012–2020)[1] L2: 25 million (2018–2020)[1] Total: 260 million[1]
Language family	Indo-European Italic Latino-Faliscan Romance Italo-Western Western Romance Ibero-Romance West Iberian Galician-Portuguese Portuguese
Early forms	Proto-Indo-European Proto-Italic Old Latin Classical Latin Vulgar Latin Galician-Portuguese
Writing system	Latin (Portuguese alphabet) Portuguese Braille
Signed forms	Manually coded Portuguese
Official status
Official language in	9 countries Angola Brazil Cape Verde East Timor Equatorial Guinea[2] Guinea-Bissau Mozambique Portugal São Tomé and Príncipe 1 dependency Macau (China)
Recognised minority language in	Cultural language Uruguay[3][4][5] Spain (Galician language) South Africa Numerous international organizations
Regulated by	Portugal: Lisbon Academy of Sciences (Lisbon Academy Class of Letters) Brazil: Academia Brasileira de Letras Mozambique: Escola Portuguesa de Moçambique (future) [citation needed]
Language codes
ISO 639-1	pt
ISO 639-2	por
ISO 639-3	por
Glottolog	port1283
Linguasphere	51-AAA-a
Countries and 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
Portuguese is not endangered according to the classification system of the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger
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 260 million total speakers. It is usually listed as the fifth-most spoken language, 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 most widely spoken language in South America[10][11] and all of the Southern Hemisphere,[12] it is also the second-most spoken language, after Spanish, in Latin America, one of the 10 most spoken languages in Africa,[13] and an official language of the European Union, Mercosur, 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.[14][15]