 |
|
| VOCABULARY DATABASE > PORTUGUESE > INFORMATION |
|
||||
|
Portuguese is a Romance language spoken as a first language by some 200 million people, of which about 174 million live in Brazil. It may be regarded as the same language as Galician.
There are two major standards for Portuguese. In Portugal, the standard is based on the Lisbon speech, and in Brazil the standard is based on the variety spoken in the region around São Paulo. In spite of repeated attempts to create a unified spelling system, there are two slightly different sets of rules for Brazil and Portugal. Anyway, differences are almost comparable to those between the American and the British standard for English.
The first literary works in Portuguese date back to the 13th c. A considerable amount of literature developed in subsequent centuries and reached its peak during the Renaissance period with the work of Camões. Portuguese literature has maintained a high level of quality ever since.
The language features the traits common to all Romance languages. In particular, it lost noun declension but kept a rich verb system, featuring a variety of tenses. Portuguese evolved from Vulgar Latin, and it was largely influenced by the Suevi, a Germanic tribe living in the North-Western part of the Iberian peninsula. Vocabulary used in Brazil contains many loanwords from the American Indian Tupi language and other words imported by people of African origin. The Portuguese sound system includes nasalized vowels, and Brazilian speech tends to be more in line with spelling than the variety spoken in Portugal.
Legal notice.
Our homepage is http://www.vtrain.net