Name used by its speakers (Endonym): Português
Native speakers (estimated): 236 million
Total speakers, including second-language (estimated): 264 million
Where it’s spoken: Portuguese is one of the few languages (like English and Spanish) that has gained more native speakers outside its country of origin than inside, and it is the third most natively-spoken language of European origin (after those two). Counting total number of speakers, it ranks third among Romance languages and between 5th and 7th among all world languages. In addition to being the official language of Portugal and Brazil (the most populous Portuguese-speaking country), it is also official in five other former Portuguese colonies: Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and São Tomé and Príncipe.
The language is co-official in East Timor, the former Spanish colony of Equatorial Guinea, and the Chinese ‘special administrative region’ of Macau (though practically no one speaks it there). Portuguese was spread during the Age of Discovery (15th – 16th centuries) to many parts of Africa, Asia, and the New World. Besides the above countries, there are also significant numbers of Portuguese-speakers in Andorra, France, Switzerland, Luxembourg (25% of the population), Paraguay (10%), Canada, and the United States (over 1.2 million speakers)1.
Language family: Indo-European, Romance branch. It is the third most widely spoken of the Romance languages.
Related languages: Spanish, French, Italian, and other regional Romance languages (especially Galician, based in the adjoining region of Northwest Spain; the language is called ‘galego’ in both Portuguese and Galician).
Writing and pronunciation tips: Like other Romance languages, Portuguese uses the letters of the Latin alphabet as well as additional accent (or diacritical) marks. Spelling and pronunciation generally follow consistent phonetic rules. Some vowels have “nasal” sounds, unlike Spanish or Italian (but like French): these are represented by the letters ã and õ. The letter ç functions as in French, as in the trendy Amazonian berry ‘açaí’ (pronounced “assa-ee” not “aka-ee”). The combination lh sounds like ll in ‘million’ (which in Portuguese is ‘milhão’); the combination nh sounds like the Spanish ñ—thus the famously carnivorous piranha is correctly pronounced “piran-ya”. Accent marks (á, é, í, ó, ú) indicate which syllable to stress, if not the one you would expect, or sometimes distinguish two words that would otherwise be spelled the same. Portuguese resembles its neighboring languages in other ways: the letter H is silent, as in Spanish, while the letter J is pronounced as in French. Thus the word ‘hoje’, meaning ‘today’, is pronounced “oh-zhey”. Portuguese varies in pronunciation and vocabulary between regional dialects, most notably European and Brazilian, but they are mutually intelligible (much like British and American English).
Words exported to English:
Because Portuguese neither shares close ties with English (like German), nor had a North American colonial presence (like French, Spanish or Dutch), there are few direct loanwords or place names adopted into the English language. However, during the Age of Discovery the Portuguese brought new vocabulary to many other languages, including Malay, Indian and African languages, and even Japanese. Portuguese merchants introduced sweet oranges to Europe, so the fruit was named for the country in several modern languages, including Greek (portokáli), Romanian (portocala), Turkish (portakal), Persian (portaghal), and Arabic (al-burtuqāl).
English words either derived from Portuguese, or which entered the language via Portuguese from other original sources (in particular, the Tupí-Guaraní languages of South America) include:
FOOD & DRINK: Açaí and tapioca come from Tupí–Guaraní. The Brazilian national dish feijoada comes from ‘feijão’ (‘beans’); the Brazilian national cocktail caipirinha comes from ‘caipira’, meaning ‘girl/woman from the countryside’. Marmalade comes from ‘marmelo’ (‘quince’, a fruit that was once commonly made into preserves). Molasses derives from ‘melaço’, in turn from a Latin root for ‘honey’. Even Japanese tempura has Portuguese roots: in the 16th century, Jesuit missionaries from Portugal introduced the European technique of batter-frying, and during fasting times (=Latin ‘tempora’), such as Lent, fried vegetables or fish were often eaten in place of meat. Likewise vindaloo, originating from the Portuguese Indian colony of Goa, comes from the dish ‘carne de vinha d’alhos’ (‘meat with wine and garlic’).
ANIMALS & NATURE: Cobra is the Portuguese word for ‘snake’; its narrower English meaning is shortened from ‘cobra-de-capelo’, meaning ‘snake with a hood’. Monsoon comes from ‘monção’, in turn from Arabic ‘mawsim’ meaning ‘season’. South American animal and plant names derived from Tupí-Guaraní include jacaranda (meaning ‘fragrant’), petunia, jaguar, and piranha (which translates loosely to ‘cutting fish’).
MUSIC & DANCE: Maraca (the percussion instrument) and capoeira (the Afro-Brazilian fusion of dance and martial art) derive their names from Tupí-Guaraní, while samba and marimba are both thought to have origins in the Bantu languages of Africa. Bossa nova, Brazil’s best-known legacy to popular music worldwide, translates as ‘new trend, fashion, or wave’.2
OTHER: Cuspidor comes from the verb cuspir, ‘to spit’, which is pretty straightforward. The origin of mandarin is more circuitous: from the Portuguese mandarim, from the Malay menteri, ultimately from the Sanskrit mantrin meaning ‘minister’. In 16th-century China, Ming dynasty officials communicated using a northern-based dialect which they called ‘language of the officials’. The Portuguese translated this to Mandarim, which led to the dual meanings of ‘a person in a position of power or influence’ and ‘the official Chinese language’.
Culture & pop culture:
Nuno Gonçalves was a 15th-century artist of the Portuguese Renaissance, appointed official painter for both the King of Portugal and the city of Lisbon. In contrast, Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso was a modernist painter of the early 20th century. In literature, 16th-century poet Luís Vaz de Camões, considered akin to Shakespeare, is best known for the epic poem “Os Lusíadas” about Portuguese voyages during the age of discovery.
Portuguese authors prominent in the early 20th century included poet and writer Fernando Pessoa, who wrote under dozens of different literary personas (and appeared on some of Portugal’s pre-euro bank notes), and his contemporaries Mário de Sá-Carneiro and Florbela Espanca. Other prominent 20th-century writers are José Saramago, best-selling novelist and Nobel Laureate in Literature (1998); poets Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen (known as Sophia) and Eugénio de Andrade; and novelists Miguel Torga, António Lobo Antunes and Lídia Jorge. Contemporary Portuguese writers include novelists Miguel Sousa Tavares (son of Sophia) and José Luís Peixoto.
Across the Atlantic, the novelist, poet and playwright Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (born 1839) is considered the greatest Brazilian writer, while countryman Paulo Coelho de Souza (born 1947) has achieved worldwide fame for the 1988 book “The Alchemist” and other works with spiritual and philosophical themes.
SCIENCE: In the 16th century, mathematician Pedro Nunes gained recognition for his contributions to the fields of navigation and cartography, while physician Amato Lusitano (also Latinized as Amatus Lusitanus) is credited with the discovery of how valves function in blood circulation. (Notably, he spent his entire adult life outside Portugal due to the Inquisition’s persecution of Jews.) The Portuguese founded the oldest engineering school in Latin America (in Rio de Janeiro, 1792) and one of the oldest medical schools in Asia (in Goa, 1842). In the 20th century, neurologist António Egas Moniz was a pioneer in both cerebral angiography (visualizing blood vessels in the brain) as well as lobotomy for treatment of psychoses, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Neuroscientist António Damasio (born 1944) is a prominent researcher, professor, and author of multiple books exploring the brain, consciousness, and emotion (though he has long worked in the United States and writes in English.)
MUSIC: Both Portugal and Brazil have rich and unique musical traditions. In Portugal, fado (literally meaning ‘fate’) is a traditional genre characterized by soulful, melancholic lyrics and accompanied by the 12-string Portuguese guitar. Amália Rodrigues (born 1920), known as the “Queen of Fado”, was one of its most popular practitioners in Portugal and worldwide. Carlos Paredes (born 1925) was a composer and virtuoso player of the Portuguese guitar; though he briefly performed with Amália Rodrigues, his career focused on instrumental music. More recent fado singers include Mariza, born 1973 in Mozambique, and singer-songwriter Dulce Pontes (born 1969) whose work encompasses folk and pop in addition to fado. The Cape Verdean singer Cesária Évora achieved international fame for morna, a genre that shares thematic similarities to fado, but sung in the Portuguese-based Cape Verdean Creole.
Brazilian musical culture is recognized as one of the world’s most distinct. Composer, cellist, and guitarist Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) is the most influential classical composer not only in Brazil, but arguably all of Latin America. In contrast, singer/dancer/actress Carmen Miranda became famous for Hollywood musicals in the 1940s and 50s—in which she wore trademark fruit-covered hats. But the most iconic figures in Brazilian popular music were Antônio Carlos Jobim and João Gilberto, who more than anyone else shaped bossa nova in the 1950s and 60s. Jobim is best known as a composer and Gilberto as a guitarist, though Jobim also played piano and guitar. Astrud Gilberto rose to fame with her recording of Jobim’s “The Girl from Ipanema”. Other prominent musicians of the latter 20th century include bandleader Sérgio Mendes, singer Gal Costa, and singer-songwriters Jorge Ben Jor, Milton Nascimento, Caetano Veloso, and Gilberto Gil. The latter two have long been politically active and both were arrested as young men by the Brazilian dictatorship; Gil later went on to serve as Brazil’s Minister of Culture.
Influential rock band Os Mutantes formed in the 1960s but remain active today. The song “Lambada” by Brazilian-French group Kaoma became an international pop hit (and briefly dance craze) in 1989; though sung in Portuguese it is a cover of a song originally written in Spanish. Brazilian music has also inspired musicians abroad: In 1990 Paul Simon released the album “The Rhythm of the Saints”, featuring and inspired by Brazilian musicians, though in English. David Byrne’s Luaka Bop label has released multiple compilation albums in the Brazil Classics series since 1989. International influence goes both ways: Hip-hop is popular in both Brazil and Portugal, where it is called ‘hip hop tuga’ and mixes influences from Africa, the Caribbean, and Portuguese fado.
FILM: “Black Orpheus (Orfeu Negro)”, a 1959 retelling of the Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice set in Rio de Janeiro, has both been acclaimed internationally and criticized in Brazil for some of its stereotypic portrayals. While based on a play by Brazilian poet Vinicius de Moraes and featuring music by Jobim and others, the film was an international co-production with a French director. It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. “Orfeu”, a fully Brazilian film adaptation of the same play, was released in 1999 to mixed reviews.
Other notable Portuguese-language films include “Central Station” (1998), by acclaimed Brazilian director Walter Salles; “Zona J” (1998), an interracial teen romance set in Lisbon; and “City of God” (2002), which portrays the rise of organized crime in a suburb of Rio de Janeiro. Portuguese action movie “Os Imortais” (2003) centers around a bank heist. Genre-bending horror film “Bacurau” (2019) is set in a fictional Brazilian frontier town. The documentary “Democracia em Vertigem” (“The Edge of Democracy”, 2019) chronicles the turbulent recent history of Brazilian politics. The 2024 drama “I’m Still Here”, also directed by Salles, unfolds during the military dictatorship of the 1970s and was the first Brazilian film to win an Academy Award (Best International Feature). “Vitória” (2025) tells the true-life story of a Brazilian octogenarian who takes on neighborhood drug traffickers.
TELEVISION: The 1960s Cold War spy thriller “Glória” (2021) is the first Portuguese Netflix original, but as with film, Brazil’s industry holds a larger presence in Portuguese-language media. The dystopian sci-fi series “3%” (“Três Por Cento”, 2016), reminiscent of “The Hunger Games”, was the first Brazilian Netflix original series. Another Brazilian sci-fi series is “Omniscient” (2020), set in a near-future dystopia without privacy. Other recent Brazilian shows include “Invisible City”, a detective fantasy with roots in Brazilian folklore, and police drama “Criminal Code” set along the Brazil-Paraguay border. On the lighter side, “Girls from Ipanema” is about a 1950s housewife opening a bossa nova club; coming-of-age dramedy “Back to 15” centers on a 30-year-old magically sent back to her teen years; and the comedy “Samantha!” follows a former 80s child star scheming to return to the spotlight. (All currently available on Netflix.)
Other fun facts:
NOTES
1 Carvalho, Ana Maria (2010). “Portuguese in the USA”. In Potowski, Kim (ed.). Language Diversity in the USA. Cambridge University Press. p. 346. ISBN 978-0-521-74533-8.
2 Castro, Ruy (2000). “Bossa Nova: The Story of the Brazilian Music That Seduced the World.” (first published in Brazil 1990)