One of the Romance languages, Portuguese is most closely related to the other Ibero-Romance languages: Spanish, Galician and Catalan.
The 10-million population of Portugal speak Portuguese as their official language.
Portuguese is spoken in Europe in continental Portugal, the Islands of Madeira and the Azores and by large communities in the UK, France and Germany. It is one of the official languages of the European Union. It is also spoken in former colonial territories: Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau, Cape Verde and East Timor amongst others.
Portuguese is based on the Latin alphabet, though the letters 'k', 'w' and 'y' are only used in foreign or archaic words. It uses ç and acute, grave and circumflex accents over vowels. Most distinctively, it uses the tilde over ã õ to indicate a nasal pronunciation of these vowels.
The first full text in Portuguese is a 13th century lawyer's record of a legal complaint, and King Alfonso II's 1214 will.
The main varieties of continental Portuguese are either side of a linguistic border that crosses Portugal from the northeast to the southeast. Some Portuguese regions also have their own peculiarities. Brazilian is the overseas dialect that presents the most differences.
BBC World Service in Portuguese for Africa and for Brazil.
