Portuguese language is the official language of Portugal, as well as of Angola, Brazil, Cabo Verde (also called Cape Verde), East Timor, Guinea-Bissau, Macau, Mozambique, Sao Tome & Principe, and other former colonial territories. It is one of the official languages of the European Union. The language is also spoken by hundreds of thousands of people in the United States. Many people in Spain, mostly in northwestern Spain, speak a Portuguese dialect called Galego or Galician. There are four principal dialects of Portuguese spoken today. The Northern, Central, and Southern, dialects are used in Portugal, and the Brasileiro dialect is spoken in Brazil. Portuguese is a Romance language similar to Spanish (see Romance languages ).
Portuguese and Spanish were essentially the same language until about A.D. 1143, when Portugal broke away from Spanish control. As Portuguese evolved, it developed distinctive phonetic and grammatical characteristics. Portuguese colonizers carried the language to Brazil during the 1500’s. The Brazilians added words from the Tupi Indians and from African slaves. Brazilian Portuguese came to have the same relation to the language that American English has to British English.
Since the early 1900’s, many persons in Portugal and Brazil have wanted to simplify and standardize Portuguese spelling. Scholars wished to take out many double consonants and other old-fashioned letter combinations. In 1943, the governments of Portugal and Brazil approved a new system, in which f is substituted for ph, t for th, and i for y.
