Portuguese is the national language of both Portugal and Brazil. With about
10 million speakers in the former and some 160 million in the latter, coupled
with speakers in Portuguese colonies in Africa, in the Atlantic, and in Asia,
its total number of speakers is over 170 million. in northwesternmost Spain
about 3 million people speak a dialect of Portuguese known as Galician.
Portuguese is a Romance language, closely related to, and yet distinctly
different from, Spanish. It is softer and less emphatic than Spanish, with a
greater variety of vowel sounds, and contains a number of nasal sounds that
are completely unknown in Spanish. Words beginning with h in Spanish
frequently begin with f in Portuguese (e.g., hijo/filho—son),
while words ending in -ción in Spanish generally end in -ção in
Portuguese (nación/naऑã—nation). There are a number of words from
Arabic in both languages (algodón/algodão—cotton) plus a few peculiar
to Portuguese (alfaiate—tailor). Many words are identical in the two
languages (mesa—table, flor—flower, lago—lake), but
others are completely different (perro/cão—dog, gracias/obrigado—thank
you).
The Portuguese of Brazil is slower and more measured than that of Portugal,
but the Brazilians and Portuguese communicate with each other without the
slightest difficulty. As in British and American English there are occasional
differences in vocabulary. The word for "boy" is rapaz in Portugal but
moço in Brazil; "girl" is rapariga in Portugal and moça
in Brazil. Some Brazilian words are of Indian origin (e.g., abacaxi—pineapp{e).
The Portuguese nasal vowels are indicated by the letters ã and õ
. The ç functions as in French, while the combinations lh
and nh correspond to the Spanish ll and ñ respectively. The
letter j is pronounced as in French (not as in Spanish), as is the letter g
before e and i. The h is always silent. Words ending in a (but not ã), e, o,
m, or s generally stress the next to last syllable, while those ending in
other letters stress the final syllable. Exceptions to this rule are indicated
by an acute accent if the vowel has an open sound (açúcar—sugar), and by a
circumflex if the vowel has a closed sound (relâmpago— lightning). The accent
marks are also used to distinguish between words that would otherwise have the
same spelling, as for example e, meaning "and," but é, meaning "is," and por,
meaning "by," but pôr, meaning "to put."