異 Section 03
Variants
Standards, dialects and creoles of a pluricentric language.
14 articles
The varieties of Portuguese — an overview
How and why Portuguese varies, from standard to variety, and what it means to be a pluricentric language spoken across four continents.
European Portuguese
The variety spoken in Portugal and the reference norm of this site: its compressed, stress-timed phonology, its grammar, and its place among the varieties of Portuguese.
Brazilian Portuguese
The variety spoken and written in Brazil — the largest in the Portuguese-speaking world — with its own standard norm and phonetic, grammatical and lexical traits that set it apart from European Portuguese.
Differences between European and Brazilian Portuguese
The major contrast between the two great norms of Portuguese — sound, grammar, vocabulary and spelling — seen from the European standard.
Angolan Portuguese
The variety spoken in Angola — increasingly a mother tongue and not merely a vehicle of national unity — with its own phonetics, lexicon and grammar, and a norm still taking shape.
Mozambican Portuguese
The emerging variety of Portuguese in Mozambique — the sole official language of a mostly Bantu-speaking country, shaped by contact with Emakhuwa, Xichangana and other local tongues.
The Dialects of Portugal
The mainland dialects of European Portuguese, from the northern group to the central-southern one, and the transitional belt between them — after Lindley Cintra's classification.
The Dialects of the Azores and Madeira
The island varieties of European Portuguese — São Miguel, the rest of the Azores, and Madeira — with their unmistakable vowels and a vocabulary of their own.
Mirandese
The Astur-Leonese language spoken in the Land of Miranda, in Portugal's far north-east, and the country's second official language since 1999 — not a dialect of Portuguese, but a sister tongue.
Barranquenho
The speech of Barrancos, in the far south-east of the Alentejo: a Portuguese dialect deeply reshaped by southern Spanish, the product of centuries of contact on the border.
Portuguese-based creoles
The creole languages born from the contact of Portuguese with African and Asian languages from the 15th century on — the oldest European-lexified creolisations, from the Atlantic to Asia.
Cape Verdean Creole
Kriolu, the most widely spoken Portuguese-based creole: a million speakers, roots in the fifteenth century, and a grammar of its own born from the meeting of Portuguese and the languages of West Africa.
Creoles of Guinea-Bissau and São Tomé and Príncipe
Four Portuguese-based creoles — Guinea-Bissau Kriol and the Forro, Angolar and Principense of São Tomé and Príncipe — autonomous languages born of Atlantic colonial contact.
Portuñol and the Border Varieties
The contact between Portuguese and Spanish along South America's borders — from improvised portuñol to the Portuguese dialects of Uruguay, spoken for generations and now slowly being reclaimed.