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	Volume 63, January 2008

Featured Language: Portuguese
Portuguese At-a-Glance

Portuguese is the fifth most spoken language on the planet. With nearly 200 million native speakers, Portuguese is one of the few languages spoken on several continents of the world. Because Brazil, with 184 million inhabitants, constitutes about 51 percent of South America's population, Portuguese is the most widely spoken language in South America. But, it is also one of the key languages in Africa, and, of course, Portugal.

A look at the origins
Portugal became an independent country in 1143. In the first period of "Old Portuguese" - Portuguese-Galician Period (from 12th to the 14th century), the language came gradually into general use in the following centuries, after gaining popularity in the Christian Iberian Peninsula as a language for poetry. In 1290, King Diniz created the first Portuguese University in Lisbon (the Estudo Geral) and decreed that Portuguese, then simply called the "Vulgar language" (i.e. Vulgar Latin) should be known as the "Portuguese language" and be officially used.

In the second period of Old Portuguese, between the 14th and the 16th centuries, with the Portuguese discoveries, the Portuguese language spread to many regions of Asia, Africa and The Americas. Today most of the Portuguese speakers live in Brazil in South America. By the 16th century it had become a lingua franca in Asia and Africa.

Some Portuguese-speaking Christian communities in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Indonesia preserved their language even after they were isolated from Portugal. The language has largely changed in these communities and has evolved through the centuries into several Portuguese creoles; some still exist today, after hundreds of years in isolation.

SOURCES:
Languages of the World
Encyclopedia Britannica
Ethnologue
PortugueseLanguage.net

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