13 facts about Portuguese

Portuguese is a wonderful language to learn. You could attend language schools in another country or in your hometown or you could look for a language partner to improve your language skills. But what do we really know about the Portuguese language?

13 facts about Portuguese

1) It is the official language of nine countries: Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Equatorial Guinea, Cape Verde, Timor-Leste and São Tomé and Principe.

2) Portuguese is a Romance language which is evolved from Vulgar Latin and Medieval Galician.

3) Each verb tense has six different endings, for example “to write”: eu escrevo, tu escreves, ele/ela/você escreve, nós escrevemos, vós escreveis, elas/eles/vocês escrevem.

4) The Portuguese language is influenced by Arabic.

5) The European Portuguese and the Brazilian Portuguese are quite different. In Portugal, for example, they use tu and vós. But these two words are rarely heard in Brazil; they use você and vocês.

6) Until 1990, Brazil and Portugal had different spelling conventions.

7) Portuguese is spoken by 260 million people worldwide.

8) Portuguese was officially declared a language in 1290.

9) You can find two “to be” in Portuguese: ser for permant and estar for temporary situations.

10) In 2009, three new letters were added to its alphabet: K, Y and W.

11) Not only German has long words. The longest word in Portuguese has 29 letters: anticonstitucionalíssimamente, which means “in a very unconstitutional way”.

12) It is the fastest-growing European language in the world – behind English.

13) In Portugal, there are only 5% of Portuguese speakers.

If you want to learn Portuguese, you could check our language schools in Portugal, Brazil or in another country. You’ll find the perfect one to improve your language skills as fast as possible!

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