Portuguese is an ancient language that developed in Portugal after Roman settlers brought Latin with themselves in third century BCE. Though the language is drawn up in Portugal, only a small fraction of Portuguese population speaks it. You may find it surprising that there are more Portuguese speakers in Brazil than all other countries combined where Portuguese is spoken! In addition, hundreds of Portuguese words have been derived from Arabic!
Let us explore the rich history of this ancient language.
Portuguese speaking countries
The community of Portuguese speaking countries includes eight members – Portugal, Angola, Cape Verde, Brazil, Sao Tome, East Timor, Mozambique, The Republic of Guinea-Bissau. It also shares the status of official language of Macau with Mandarin Chinese as the region is a former Portuguese territory which was handed over to China in 1999.
How tough is it to learn Portuguese?
If you are acquainted with Spanish, Italian or French, you may find many similarities with Portuguese. For example, each tense form has six different endings. Some sounds of the language are harder to pronounce; still, pronunciation mistakes won’t change the sense you want to convey.
Some interesting facts about Portuguese
Portuguese has loaned many words from Arabic, French and English. In addition, the language has also lent many words to English.
Tongue twisters
Portuguese contains some of the most difficult tongue twisters, for example, O rato roeu a roupa do rei de Roma, which in English means – the rat gnawed the king of Rome’s clothes.
Alphabets
Until recent times, some alphabets like K, Y and W were absent from Portuguese alphabets, however, due to strong influence of English, they were added to write foreign names.
Brazilian Portuguese
After Brazil became independent from Portugal, both regions adopted separate writing systems. However, the Portuguese spoken in Brazil is more close to European variety than the Brazilian one.
To organise and unify the language in a better way, both countries signed an agreement which is known as Orthographic Agreement of 1990.
Conclusion – Being a full-time translation agency, we are aware of many such interesting facts about various languages. We provide translation services in 30+ languages, and our translators are well-versed in different types of translations, be it legal translation or Portuguese translation services. If you are looking for an impeccable translation of any document, contact us at – 888-670-3369. Muito Obrigado!