The Portuguese language

The Portuguese language (in Portuguese: português) is a language from the Romanesque branch of the indogermanischen family of languages and forms with the Spanish, Catalan and other languages of the Iberian peninsula the narrower unity of the Iberoromanischen. Together with the Galician in northwest Spain it decreases to a common Ursprungssprache, the Galician-Portuguese which developed between late antiquity and early Middle Ages. After the formation of the stateness of Portugal both today's languages developed from it. Today Portuguese is valid as a Weltsprache.

One speaks from more than 210 million native speakers; including the Zweitsprachler the number of the speakers amounts to about 240 millions.

The Portuguese language spread worldwide in the 15th and 16th century, as Portugal his colonial empire was based which outlasted largely till 1975 and enclosed Brazil, parts of Africa and Macau (till 1999) in China. From it arose that Portuguese is today the officialese of several independent states and is learnt, in addition, by many as a Zweitsprache and is spoken. Beside the real Portuguese there are about twenty Kreolsprachen on predominantly Portuguese base. By the emigration from Portugal in last decades Portuguese has become in several states of Western Europe and in North America an important minority language.