Portuguese Language Guide

Official language in
Angola, Brazil, Mozambique, Portugal, Timor-Leste
Script
Latin

Where it's spoken

Portuguese is an official language on several continents. Portugal's Constitution names it directly: "the official language shall be Portuguese." Brazil's Constitution likewise names Portuguese as the official language of the Federative Republic of Brazil. In Africa, the constitutions of Angola and of Mozambique each name Portuguese as that country's official language. In Timor-Leste, in Southeast Asia, the Constitution names Tetum and Portuguese together as the country's official languages, rather than naming Portuguese alone.

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Script & pronunciation

Portuguese is written with the Latin alphabet. The Portuguese Language Orthographic Agreement, signed by Portugal, Brazil, and the African Portuguese-speaking states in the last decade of the twentieth century, sets the alphabet at twenty-six letters, and adds to it the letter ç (c with a cedilla) and the digraphs rr, ss, ch, lh, nh, gu, and qu. The digraphs lh and nh each write a single consonant sound with two letters, as in bacalhau ("salt cod") and banho ("bath") in this app's cards — the second appears in the card for casa de banho ("restroom"). Nasal vowels and diphthongs are marked with a tilde; the same agreement gives não ("no") as an example of the nasal diphthong written ão, and this app has a basics card whose entire text is that word.

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Grammar essentials

Portuguese word order is subject–verb–object, the unmarked order for declarative sentences in both European and Brazilian Portuguese. Negation places não directly before the verb, as in this app's card "Não tenho reserva" ("I don't have a reservation"), whose own grammar note makes the same point. A yes/no question does not reorder the subject and verb: in both varieties, the surface difference between a statement and a question is mainly a matter of intonation — a falling pitch for a statement, a rising one for a question — as in this app's card "Tem mesa para dois?" ("Do you have a table for two?"), which keeps the same word order as the corresponding statement.

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Politeness & etiquette

Portuguese has three main ways of saying "you": the informal tu, the noun-derived você, and the more formal o senhor / a senhora, literally "the gentleman" / "the lady." Você and o senhor / a senhora both take a verb form historically borrowed from the third person, which is why this app's card for complimenting someone's Portuguese conjugates the verb as if the subject were "he" or "she," even though it means "you": "Fala português muito bem" ("You speak Portuguese very well"). In Portugal, the tu form is used for a tone of intimacy with close family, friends, and children, as in this app's card "Tens planos para o fim de semana?" ("Do you have plans for the weekend?"), whose own grammar note says Portugal commonly uses tu while Brazil uses você in casual speech. In Brazil, você covers that same informal ground — close family, friends, and children — in most regions. This app's card for the word "você" notes that, while it is standard in Brazil, using "você" with a stranger in Portugal can sound abrupt, where "o senhor" / "a senhora" is used instead; this matches a linguistic description of "você" in Portugal as, by contrast with the polite "o senhor / a senhora," the form felt not to merit a complimentary form of address.

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