Portugal language used Portuguese
Portugal (Portuguese pronunciation: [puɾtuˈɣal]), officially the Portuguese Republic (Portuguese: República Portuguesa [ʁɛˈpuβlikɐ puɾtuˈɣezɐ]), is a country located on the Iberian Peninsula, in southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira. It features the westernmost point in continental Europe, and its Iberian portion is bordered to the west and south by the Atlantic Ocean and to the north and east by Spain, the sole country to have a land border with Portugal. Its two archipelagos form two autonomous regions with their own regional governments. Lisbon is the capital and largest city by population.
One of the oldest countries in Europe, its territory has been continuously settled, invaded and fought over since prehistoric times. The territory was first inhabited by pre-Roman and Celtic peoples (at the time of the first large-scale Roman invasions in Western Iberia, they preponderantly were the Lusitanians, the Gallaecians, the Celtici and, to some extent, the Conii). These peoples had commercial and some cultural contact with Phoenicians, ancient Greeks and Carthaginians. It was later ruled by the Romans, followed by the invasions of Germanic peoples (most prominently, the Suebi and the Visigoths) together with the Alans, and later the Moors, who were eventually expelled during the Reconquista. Founded first as a county within the Kingdom of León in 868, the country officially gained its independence as the Kingdom of Portugal with the Treaty of Zamora in 1143.In the 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal established one of the longest-lived maritime and commercial empires, becoming one of the main economic and political powers of the time. At the end of the 16th century, however, Portugal suffered a war for the crown succession which led to the incorporation of the country into the Spanish monarchy during the Iberian Union.
By the early 19th century, the accumulative crisis, events such as the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, the country's occupation during the Napoleonic Wars, and the resulting independence of Brazil in 1822 led to a marked decay of Portugal's prior opulence. This was followed by the civil war between liberal constitutionalists and conservative absolutists over royal succession, which lasted from 1828 to 1834. The 1910 revolution deposed Portugal's centuries-old monarchy, and established the democratic but unstable Portuguese First Republic, later being superseded by the Estado Novo (New State) authoritarian regime. Democracy was restored after the Carnation Revolution (1974), ending the Portuguese Colonial War and eventually losing its remaining colonial possessions.
Portugal has left a profound cultural, architectural and linguistic influence across the globe, with a legacy of around 250 million Portuguese speakers around the world. It is a developed country with an advanced economy which holds the 14th largest gold reserve at its national central bank representing the highest percentage share held in gold of total foreign reserves by any nation, the 8th largest proven reserves of lithium, with the weight of exports representing 49% of its GDP in 2022. A member of the United Nations, the European Union, the Schengen Area and the Council of Europe (CoE), Portugal was also one of the founding members of NATO, the eurozone, the OECD, and the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.Languages
Portuguese is the official language of Portugal. It is a Romance language that is derived from Galician-Portuguese, which was spoken in what is now Galicia and Northern Portugal. There are still strong similarities between the Galician and Portuguese cultures. Galicia is a consultative observer of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.
The Portuguese language is derived from the Latin spoken by the romanized pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula around 2000 years ago – particularly the Celts, Conii, Lusitanians and Turduli.
In the 15th and 16th centuries, the language spread worldwide as Portugal established a colonial and commercial empire between 1415 and 1999.
Portuguese is spoken as a native language in five different continents, with Brazil accounting for the largest number of native Portuguese speakers of any country.
In 2013 the Portuguese language is the official language spoken in Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, and East Timor. These countries, plus Macau Special Administrative Region (People's Republic of China) where Portuguese is co-official with Cantonese, make up the Lusosphere, a term derived from the ancient Roman province of "Lusitania", which currently matches the Portuguese territory south of the Douro river.Mirandese is also recognized as a co-official regional language in some municipalities of North-Eastern Portugal. It is part of the Astur-Leonese group of languages. An estimate of between 6,000 and 7,000 Mirandese speakers has been documented for Portugal. Furthermore, a particular dialect known as Barranquenho, spoken in Barrancos, is also officially recognized and protected in Portugal since 2021. Minderico, a sociolect of the Portuguese language, is spoken by around 500 people in the town of Minde.According to the International English Proficiency Index, Portugal has a high proficiency level in English, higher than those of other Romance-speaking European countries like Spain, Italy or France.
language spoken official language linguistic usage dialect spoken vernacular employed