Brazil

Brazil - as the biggest country of the Lusophonie (Portuguese-speaking countries) - counts according to census from May, 2007 just 190 million inhabitants from what the prevailing part has Portuguese as a mother tongue. Brazilians are proud of the fact that her officialese shows the most-spoken language on the continent with the help of a small trick, namely in geographically defined South America (up to the canal of Panama) has more native speakers than the Spanish, although latter more native speakers have in linguistic-culturally defined Latin America which encloses completely Central America and might reach at least up to the Mexican north border.

In any case, both ibero Romanesque languages decrease in the essentials to the Vulgärlatein (Sermo plebejis) of the mercenary's troops of the Roman empire on the Iberian peninsula (= Spain + Portugal), and they are similar enough to each other, that to itself (from which together less than 1.5 million inhabitants of Guyana, Surinam and French Guyana seen) all Lateinamerikaner can inform by means of Semi communication with each other and all her in each case own language speak and understand each other more or less. Besides, in practice it often comes too jokingly Portuñol (português + español) to called Code-Switching, comparably to the Spanglish (Spanish + English) above all in the southern US federal states. Spanish is still since signing the common South American market Mercosur (<Mercado Común del Sur; port. Mercosul <Mercado Comum do Sul) between Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil in May, 1991 bit by bit at all general schools of the country biggest geographically and demographically completely of Latin America as a compulsory subject been introduced.

The country name is derived, by the way, according to the most current etymological theory from pau brasil (brazilwood), as an adjective education too brasa (glow) literally the glow-red wood, one of the first popular export goods of Brazil. While the Portuguese of Angola and Mosambique orientates itself to a great extent by the European norm, the Portuguese of Brazil in all linguistic (linguistic) aspects more or less clearly from Portugal, in the following BP (= differs Brazilian Portuguese) and EP (European Portuguese) shortened.