Territory 03
Variants
Standards, dialects and creoles of a pluricentric language.
01 · Where to begin
Where to begin
Three entry points that build context before you go deeper.
Reference
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.
Reference
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.
Reference
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.
02 · Explore every article
Explore every article
14 Portuguese–English article pairs
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.