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 "Portuguese
(..... or
língua portuguesa)
is a
Romance language.
It is the official language of
Portugal, the
former South American Portuguese colony of
Brazil and
former colonies in Africa:
Mozambique,
Angola,
Cape Verde,
Guiné-Bissau
and
São Tomé e Príncipe.
Portuguese has co-official status (alongside the indigenous language) in
Macao, and in
East Timor in
South East Asia; Portuguese speakers are also found in
Goa in India.
Spanish author
Miguel de Cervantes
once called Portuguese "the sweet language" and Spanish playwright
Lope de Vega
referred to it as "sweet", while the Brazilian writer
Olavo Bilac
poetically described it as a
última flor do Lácio, inculta e bela
(the last flower of
Latium,
uncultured and beautiful). Portuguese is also termed "the language of Camões",
after one of Portugal's greatest literary figures,
Luís Vaz de Camões.
In March 2006, the
Museum of the Portuguese Language,
an interactive museum about the Portuguese language, was founded in
São Paulo,
Brazil, the city with the greatest number of Portuguese-language speakers in the
world. With a total of 236 million speakers, Portuguese is the 6th most spoken
language in the world, the 3rd most spoken language in the
western hemisphere,
and the most spoken language in the
southern hemisphere."
Source:
wikipedi |
