The Portuguese Language
History
Portuguese is a Romance language, as its origins date back to the 3rd century BC, when the Romans conquered Portugal and brought the Latin language to the region. With the fall of the Roman Empire, vulgar Latin evolved freely in what was called "Lusitanian Romance" and later, with the Arab domination of Portugal, the language was influenced by Arab, especially in vocabulary. In 1290 it was opened the first University of Portugal and the Portuguese language began to be officially used.Despite Portugal being so small, Portuguese is the mother tongue of about 170 million people. This is due to Portugal long maritime tradition which had its Golden Age in the 16th century with the conquest of Brazil (where nowadays 154 million people speak Portuguese) and of some regions in Africa and Asia (5 million speakers). This great adventure resulted in an extremely rich travel literature and was responsible for the expansion of the national language.
Dialects
There are many varieties of the language, so that people coming from different Portuguese small villages may not understand one another's speech. This is what happens with the Northern dialect, which uses some regional words unknown to the rest of the population. Outside Europe, the main variety is the Portuguese of Brazil, which differs from standard language as for intonation, vocabulary and grammar. Beware with the use of pronouns: "voce" in Portugal is a quite formal way of addressing someone, while in Brazil it substitutes "tu" (you), which it is never used in informal situations. What is more, different from what many people think, Portuguese is not a dialect of Spanish. Just think that Portuguese and Spanish people don't understand each other speech and sometimes words can be misleading: in Portugal, "carro" is "car", while in Spain it is the trolley you use at the supermarket. Imagine the mess if a Portuguese goes to a Spanish car dealer and asks for the latest model of "Seat's carro!!" This small example only shows a minimum part of the deeper differences affecting grammar, syntax and vocabulary of Spanish and Portuguese, but it can give you an idea of the distance between the two languages.Slang
Brazil is known all over the world for the variety of tropical fruits and vegetables which are produced in its lands. But be careful with using the names of food. "Uva" (grape) is a sweet autumnal fruit but in Portuguese slang it refers to an attractive woman; a "doce-de-coco" (coconut sweet) is the term used to address a loved one; if you are a person that never fails, you are a "batata" (a potato), while if you tell a friend "enchemos lingüiça" (filling up sausages) you are not about to start eating, but it means you have nothing to do or to speak about.- Study Portuguese Amerispan offers Portuguese classes and Portuguese schools worldwide