11 Jul /16

Portuguese Language – Past and Future

Portuguese Language
Portuguese Language – Past and Future – EVS Translations

It is official, Portugal are Euro 2016 champions, but then thinking of truly international languages, Portuguese, somehow seems to get lost in the mix. Even when people think of the Iberian Peninsula, the most obvious linguistic association is with Spanish.

Many know that Portuguese is the language or Portugal and Brazil, which have a combined population of about 215 million, but it goes much further than this. Thanks to Portugal’s maritime ability during the Age of Exploration, Portuguese is understood in pockets of Asia, parts of Portuguese India, and in large parts of coastal Southern Africa.
Furthermore, the Portuguese language has the additional distinction of being an official language of the European Union, the African Union, the Organization of American States, Mercosur, and the Union of South American Nations.
Considering that it is a BRIC language, the most spoken language in South America and the fastest growing European language after English, there is strong evidence to suggest that Portuguese is about to come into its own. Still, as with any topic, before looking at future, it is important to understand the past.

Like other Romance languages, such as Spanish, Italian, Romanian, and French, Portuguese has its origin in Latin, but its varied path has made it somewhat less Latin than most others. When the Germanic tribes resettled the area while the Western Roman Empire was collapsing, they adapted to the Latin language, but added a measure of their Celto-Germanic roots. Though Moorish invasion in the early 700s made Arabic the common and administrative language, the Romance speakers simply blended some Arabic elements into their dialect, becoming Andalusi Romance, or the Romance spoken by the people of Al-Andalus (the Muslim name for Iberia.) So, when the Reconquista occurred and the area of Galicia and Portugal were brought back into the Romance fold, Portuguese language had developed and grown accustomed to variations which set it apart and make it more tricky to master from sister languages.

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