Territory 02
Geography
Where Portuguese is spoken: nine countries, four continents, ~260 million.
01 · Where to begin
Where to begin
Three entry points that build context before you go deeper.
Reference
The geography of Portuguese
Portuguese is the official language of nine states across four continents and the native or everyday tongue of some 260 million people — one of the world's most spoken languages.
Reference
Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP)
The organisation that brings together the states with Portuguese as an official language around three goals: political concertation, cooperation, and promotion of the shared language.
Reference
Portugal
Portuguese in its homeland — the mainland, the Azores and Madeira — where the standard norm took shape, along with most of the features that define the European variety.
02 · Explore every article
Explore every article
13 Portuguese–English article pairs
Brazil
Brazil is home to the overwhelming majority of the world's Portuguese speakers. How the language arrived, spread, and reshaped itself in the largest Lusophone country.
Angola
In Angola, Portuguese is the sole official language and — rare in Africa — the mother tongue of a growing share of the population, above all in the cities, with Luanda at the forefront.
Mozambique
An official language inherited at independence and a second language for a largely Bantu-speaking population, Mozambican Portuguese is taking shape through contact with dozens of Bantu languages.
Cape Verde
The Atlantic archipelago gave birth to the oldest Portuguese-based creole. Portuguese and Cape Verdean Creole share daily life in a diglossia that defines the country's identity.
Guinea-Bissau
In Guinea-Bissau Portuguese is the official language but has a small native base; the country's linguistic cohesion rests on Kriol, a Portuguese-lexified creole spoken by nearly everyone.
São Tomé and Príncipe
The Gulf of Guinea archipelago where Portuguese coexists with three Portuguese-based creoles — Forro, Angolar and Lung'Ie — born of the first Atlantic plantation society.
Timor-Leste
The only Asian territory where Portuguese is official, alongside Tetum. Banned during the Indonesian occupation, it was reintroduced as a language of identity after 1999.
Macau and Asia
Portuguese in Asia — from Goa, Daman and Diu to the Macau enclave —, the creoles born there, and the lexical legacy of five centuries of an Eastern presence.
The Portuguese Diaspora
The emigrant communities scattered across France, the United States, Luxembourg, Venezuela, South Africa and many other countries, and the fate of the Portuguese language beyond its homeland.
The Dialect Geography of Portugal
A map of the dialects of Portugal — from the Minho to the Algarve, from the Azores to Madeira — organised by the classic isoglosses that divide the North from the Centre-South.