How well do you know the Portuguese language?

Portuguese is a Romance language spoken by approximately 260 million people worldwide, with approximately 230 million native speakers and 25-30 million second language speakers. It is an official language of Portugal, Brazil, Cape Verde, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau and São Tomé and Príncipe, and has co-official language status in East Timor, Equatorial Guinea, and Macau. Portuguese is the second-most spoken Romance language in the world, surpassed only by Spanish. It is part of the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia and the County of Portugal, and has kept some Celtic phonology in its lexicon. Portuguese has a significant presence in South America, Africa, and Europe, and is an official language of various international organizations, including the European Union and the African Union. Portuguese is also one of the official languages of the Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China of Macau. Portuguese is part of the curriculum in many schools worldwide, and is a mandatory subject in the school curriculum in Uruguay. UNESCO predicts that Portuguese has the highest potential for growth as an international language in southern Africa and South America, and is the fastest-growing European language after English.Overview of the Portuguese language

• Portuguese is a language spoken on all continents and is official in several international organizations, including the European Union, NATO, and the Organization of American States.

• Portuguese is a working language in non-profit organizations such as the Red Cross, Amnesty International, and Médecins sans Frontières.

• There are dialectal differences in Portuguese, with the use of the pronoun "tu" being more common in some regions of Brazil and Portugal than in others.

• Standard European Portuguese is based on the Portuguese spoken in central Portugal and is the preferred standard for Portuguese-speaking African countries.

• Portuguese has borrowed words from various languages, including Arabic, Asian languages, and African and Amerindian languages.

• Portuguese and Galician are fully mutually intelligible, and Spanish is considerably intelligible for lusophones.

• Portuñol/Portunhol is a form of code-switching between Portuguese and Spanish, while dialects such as barranquenho and galego-português baixo-limiao are Portuguese dialects spoken natively by thousands of people but influenced by Spanish.

• The closest relative of Portuguese is Galician, which is spoken in the autonomous community and historical nationality of Galicia in Spain.

• Portuguese preserves stressed vowels of Vulgar Latin which became diphthongs in most other Romance languages.

• Portuguese has a relevant number of words from the ancient Hispano-Celtic group and adopted loanwords from other languages around the world.

• Portuguese has distinctive nasal diphthongs, and the language is the only Romance language that preserves the clitic case mesoclisis.

• Portuguese is becoming a language of opportunity in Asia due to increased diplomatic and financial ties with economically powerful Portuguese-speaking countries in the world.

• Portuguese is an official legal language in the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights and in the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.The Portuguese Language: A Living Vestige of Medieval Galician; Diverse Dialects and Descendants

• Galician is a living vestige of the medieval language that ranged from Cantabria to Mondego.

• Due to centuries-old Hispanization and Spanish pressure on the official version of Galician, the language was nearly lost, but it has been preserved by its proximity to Portuguese and its core vocabulary and grammar's similarities to Portuguese.

• Galician is often considered the same language as Portuguese within the EU context, and mutual intelligibility is estimated to be around 85%.

• Eonaviego or gallego-asturiano is another Galician-Portuguese dialect spoken in a western strip in Asturias and the westernmost parts of the provinces of León and Zamora, along the frontier with Galicia.

• The Fala language, known by its speakers as xalimés, is another descendant of Galician-Portuguese spoken by a small number of people in Spanish towns in the autonomous community of Extremadura, near the border with Portugal.

• Portuguese has provided loanwords to many languages, including Indonesian, Malayalam, Sinhala, Bengali, Hindi, Swahili, Amharic, and more.

• Portuguese left a strong influence on the língua brasílica, a Tupi–Guarani language spoken in Brazil until the 18th century, and on the language spoken around Sikka in Flores Island, Indonesia.

• Beginning in the 16th century, contacts between Portuguese travelers and settlers, African and Asian slaves, and local populations led to the appearance of many pidgins with varying amounts of Portuguese influence, which evolved into fully fledged creole languages.

• Portuguese phonology is similar to those of Catalan and Franco-Provençal, while Spanish's phonology is similar to those of Sardinian and Southern Italian dialects.

• Galician-Portuguese developed in the region of the former Roman province of Gallaecia, from the Vulgar Latin (common Latin) that had been introduced by Roman soldiers, colonists, and magistrates during the time of the Roman Empire.

• Portuguese and Spanish share very similar grammar, but Portuguese has some grammatical innovations not found in other Romance languages.

• Portuguese uses the Latin alphabet and has a maximum of nine oral vowels, two semivowels, and 21 consonants, though some varieties of the language have fewer phonemes.

• Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Portuguese is "Todos os seres humanos nascem livres e iguais em dignidade e em direitos." and in English is "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights."