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Introduction to European Portuguese

TagsCulture Language Linguistic Influences
UnitStart Here!
4 min read

🌍 Countries that Speak Portuguese


Did you know that Portuguese is the 6th most spoken language in the world? 🗣
Portuguese is spoken in Portugal (including Madeira and the Azores), of course, but there are also many other countries and regions that speak the language.
For example: Brazil, Mozambique, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, East Timor, the Special Administrative Region of Macau (Macao), Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Goa (a state in western India)

💬 Portuguese Roots

Just like English, Portuguese has strong Latin roots. Portuguese is considered a “Romance” or “Vulgar Latin” language (just like Spanish, French, Italian, and Romanian). If you have studied any of these other languages, you may notice similarities, not only in vocabulary, but also in grammar structure. Not to mention, the alphabet is very similar: 🔤  The European Portuguese Alphabet
This is why you may be able to easily translate certain Portuguese words, like these:
deliciosodelicious
positivopositive
estaçãostation
Aside from Latin, Portuguese has also been influenced by other languages, such as Arabic, French, Italian, and indigenous South American, as well as African languages.

🤔 Portuguese Portuguese!?

The 2 main dialects of the Portuguese language are:

  • Brazilian Portuguese (Primarily spoken in Brazil 🇧🇷 )
  • European Portuguese (Spoken in Portugal 🇵🇹 . Also includes the Portuguese dialects spoken in the former Portuguese colonies in Africa and Asia, because they are much more similar to the European dialect.)

However, as you may have figured out by now (in your desperate Google searches for non-Brazilian Portuguese resources!), “European Portuguese” is also referred to as:

  • Continental Portuguese
  • Lusitanian Portuguese
  • Portuguese of Portugal
  • …or sometimes even informally as Portuguese Portuguese! 😉

With only 11 million European Portuguese speakers vs. 200 million Brazilian Portuguese speakers, there’s no wonder why it’s so hard to find quality resources!

🇵🇹 🇧🇷 European Portuguese vs. Brazilian

european portuguese vs. brazilian portugueseAlthough Brazilian and European Portuguese are technically the same language, the differences are so great that even Brazilian Portuguese natives can have a hard time understanding European Portuguese when spoken quickly. Here are just a few of these differences:

  • Pronunciation: The European accent is much more closed, especially in the varying degrees of open and closed vowels.
  • Informal vs. formal: In most of Brazil, the word for you is você. In Portugal, we use tu in informal situations, and a variety of different forms of você in formal situations. For example, it’s common to address someone using the third person. To ask Rui the question Do you want coffee? in a more formal way, you would say: O Rui quer café?Do you (Rui) want coffee?, Does Rui want coffee?
  • Vocabulary: There are many common words that are completely different. For example, the word for dog in Brazil is cachorro and in Portugal it’s cãodog

For a more detailed comparison of these two primary dialects, check out this guide we put together here: European Portuguese vs Brazilian Portuguese

📖 Let’s Start Learning European Portuguese!


We’ll start with a warm-up lesson, just to give you an introduction to how the European Portuguese language sounds and how our Lessons work. If you speak English or other Latin-influenced languages, you may notice some of the warm-up words are quite similar in Portuguese. 😉
After that, the Greetings unit will teach you some useful phrases you can start using right away. Don’t worry about understanding all the grammar just yet. We’ll start exploring those details, little by little, in the Basic Grammar unit.
Estão prontos?Are you(pl.) ready?
If you’re already a Practice Portuguese member, click Mark as Complete below and then continue to the first Lesson.

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