Modern Standard
European Portuguese ( or ) is based on the Portuguese spoken in the area including and surrounding the cities of
Coimbra and
Lisbon, in central Portugal. Standard European Portuguese is also the preferred standard by the Portuguese-speaking African countries. As such, and despite the fact that its speakers are dispersed around the world, Portuguese has only two dialects used for learning: the European and the Brazilian. Some aspects and sounds found in many dialects of Brazil are exclusive to South America, and cannot be found in Europe. The same occur with the Santomean, Mozambican, Bissau-Guinean, Angolan and Cape Verdean dialects, being exclusive to Africa. See
Portuguese in Africa. Audio samples of some dialects and accents of Portuguese are available below. There are some differences between the areas but these are the best approximations possible. IPA transcriptions refer to the names in local pronunciation.
Portugal building of
Macau •
Micaelense (Açores) (São Miguel) –
Azores. •
Alentejano –
Alentejo (
Alentejan Portuguese), with the
Oliventine subdialect. •
Algarvio –
Algarve (there is a particular dialect in a small part of western Algarve). •
Minhoto – Districts of
Braga and Viana do Castelo (hinterland). •
Beirão;
Alto-Alentejano – Central Portugal (hinterland). •
Beirão – Central Portugal. •
Estremenho – Regions of
Coimbra and
Lisbon (this is a disputed denomination, as Coimbra and is not part of "Estremadura", and the Lisbon dialect has some peculiar features that are not only not shared with that of Coimbra, but also significantly distinct and recognizable to most native speakers from elsewhere in Portugal). •
Madeirense (Madeiran) –
Madeira. •
Portuense – Regions of the district of
Porto and parts of
Aveiro. •
Transmontano –
Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro. of the Portuguese poet
Luís de Camões at the entrance of the
Royal Portuguese Cabinet of Reading in
Rio de Janeiro in
São Paulo Audio samples of some dialects and accents of Portuguese are available below. There are some differences between the areas but these are the best approximations possible. IPA transcriptions refer to the names in local pronunciation.
Brazil •
Caipira – Spoken in the states of
São Paulo (most markedly on the countryside and rural areas); southern
Minas Gerais, northern
Paraná and southeastern
Mato Grosso do Sul. Depending on the vision of what constitutes
caipira,
Triângulo Mineiro, border areas of
Goiás and the remaining parts of Mato Grosso do Sul are included, and the frontier of
caipira in Minas Gerais is expanded further northerly, though not reaching metropolitan
Belo Horizonte. It is often said that
caipira appeared by
decreolization of the
língua brasílica and the related
língua geral paulista, then spoken in almost all of what is now São Paulo, a former
lingua franca in most of the contemporary
Centro-Sul of Brazil before the 18th century, brought by the
bandeirantes, interior pioneers of
Colonial Brazil, closely related to its northern counterpart
Nheengatu, and that is why the dialect shows many general differences from other variants of the language. It has striking remarkable differences in comparison to other Brazilian dialects in phonology, prosody and grammar, often
stigmatized as being strongly associated with a
substandard variant, now mostly rural. •
Cearense or Costa norte – is a dialect spoken more sharply in the states of Ceará and Piauí. The variant of Ceará includes fairly distinctive traits it shares with the one spoken in Piauí, though, such as distinctive regional phonology and vocabulary (for example, a debuccalization process stronger than that of Portuguese, a different system of the vowel harmony that spans Brazil from
fluminense and
mineiro to
amazofonia but is especially prevalent in
nordestino, a very coherent coda sibilant palatalization as those of Portugal and Rio de Janeiro but allowed in fewer environments than in other accents of
nordestino, a greater presence of dental stop palatalization to palato-alveolar in comparison to other accents of
nordestino, among others, as well as a great number of archaic Portuguese words). •
Baiano – Found in
Bahia and border regions with
Goiás and
Tocantins. Similar to
nordestino, it has a very characteristic
syllable-timed rhythm and the greatest tendency to pronounce unstressed vowels as open-mid and . •
Fluminense – A broad dialect with many variants spoken in the states of
Rio de Janeiro,
Espírito Santo and neighboring eastern regions of
Minas Gerais.
Fluminense formed in these previously
caipira-speaking areas due to the gradual influence of European migrants, causing many people to distance their speech from their original dialect and incorporate new terms.
Fluminense is sometimes referred to as
carioca, however
carioca is a more specific term referring to the accent of the
Greater Rio de Janeiro area by speakers with a
fluminense dialect. •
Gaúcho – in
Rio Grande do Sul, similar to
sulista. There are many distinct accents in Rio Grande do Sul, mainly due to the heavy influx of European immigrants of diverse origins who have settled in colonies throughout the state, and to the proximity to
Spanish-speaking nations. The word
gaúcho itself is a Spanish
loanword into Portuguese, of obscure
Indigenous Amerindian origins. •
Mineiro –
Minas Gerais (but not prevalent in the
Triângulo Mineiro). As with the
fluminense area, its associated region was formerly a sparsely populated land where
caipira was spoken, but
the discovery of gold and gems made it the most prosperous Brazilian region, attracting Portuguese colonists, commoners from other parts of Brazil, and their African slaves. The south-southwestern,
southeastern, and northern areas of the state each have fairly distinctive speech, actually approximating to
caipira,
fluminense (popularly and often pejoratively called
carioca do brejo, "marsh carioca"), and
baiano respectively.
Belo Horizonte and the area surrounding it have a distinctive accent. •
Nordestino – more marked in the
Sertão (7), where, in the 19th and 20th centuries and especially in the area including and surrounding the
sertão (the dry land after
Agreste) of Pernambuco and southern Ceará, it could sound less comprehensible to speakers of other Portuguese dialects than Galician or
Rioplatense Spanish, and nowadays less distinctive from other variants in the metropolitan cities
along the coasts. It can be divided in two regional variants, one that includes the northern
Maranhão and southern of
Piauí, and other that goes from
Ceará to
Alagoas. •
Nortista or
amazofonia – Most of
Amazon Basin states, i.e.
Northern Brazil. Before the 20th century, most people from the
nordestino area fleeing the droughts and their associated poverty settled here, so it has some similarities with the Portuguese dialect there spoken. The speech in and around the cities of
Belém and
Manaus has a more European flavor in phonology, prosody and grammar. •
Paulistano – Variants spoken around
Greater São Paulo in its maximum definition and more easterly areas of São Paulo state, as well as perhaps "educated speech" from anywhere in
the state of São Paulo (where it coexists with
caipira).
Caipira is the hinterland sociolect of much of the
Central-Southern half of Brazil, nowadays conservative only in the rural areas and associated with them, that has a historically
low prestige in cities as Rio de Janeiro, Curitiba, Belo Horizonte, and until some years ago, in São Paulo itself.
Sociolinguistics, or what by times is described as "
linguistic prejudice", often correlated with
classism, is a polemic topic in the entirety of the country since the times of
Adoniran Barbosa. Also, the "Paulistano" accent was heavily influenced by the presence of immigrants in the city of São Paulo, especially the Italians. •
Sertanejo –
Center-Western states, and also much of
Tocantins and
Rondônia. It is closer to
mineiro,
caipira,
nordestino or
nortista depending on the location. •
Sulista – The variants spoken in the areas between the northern regions of
Rio Grande do Sul and southern regions of São Paulo state, encompassing most of
southern Brazil. The city of
Curitiba does have a fairly distinct accent as well, and a relative majority of speakers around and in
Florianópolis also speak this variant (many speak
florianopolitano or
manezinho da ilha instead, related to the European Portuguese dialects spoken in
Azores and
Madeira). Speech of northern Paraná is closer to that of inland São Paulo. •
Florianopolitano – Variants heavily influenced by European Portuguese spoken in
Florianópolis city (due to a heavy immigration movement from Portugal, mainly its
insular regions) and much of its metropolitan area,
Grande Florianópolis, said to be a continuum between those whose speech most resemble
sulista dialects and those whose speech most resemble
fluminense and European ones, called
manezinho da ilha. •
Carioca – Not a dialect, but
sociolects of the
fluminense variant spoken in an area roughly corresponding to
Greater Rio de Janeiro. It appeared after locals came in contact with the Portuguese aristocracy amidst the
Portuguese royal family fled in the early 19th century. There is actually a continuum between Vernacular countryside accents and the
carioca sociolect, and the educated speech (in Portuguese
norma culta, which most closely resembles other Brazilian Portuguese standards but with marked recent Portuguese influences, the nearest ones among the country's dialects along
florianopolitano), so that not all people native to the state of Rio de Janeiro speak the said sociolect, but most
carioca speakers will use the standard variant not influenced by it that is rather uniform around Brazil depending on context (emphasis or formality, for example). •
Brasiliense – used in
Brasília and its metropolitan area. It is not considered a dialect, but more of a regional variant – often deemed to be closer to
fluminense than the dialect commonly spoken in most of Goiás,
sertanejo. •
Arco do desflorestamento or
serra amazônica – Known in its region as the "accent of the migrants", it has similarities with
caipira,
sertanejo and often
sulista that make it differing from
amazofonia (in the opposite group of Brazilian dialects, in which it is placed along
nordestino,
baiano,
mineiro and
fluminense). It is the most recent dialect, which appeared by the settlement of families from various other Brazilian regions attracted by the cheap land offer in recently
deforested areas. •
Recifense – used in
Recife and its metropolitan area. •
Amazônico Ocidental — used in the extreme
Western Amazon region, namely: Southwestern
Amazonas, including the region of
Boca do Acre and throughout the State of
Acre, which share important historical-cultural aspects, such as, once belonging to
Peru-Bolivian Confederation, the First
Amazon rubber cycle and
Acre Time Zone, sociologically, is considered a homogenous region. Differing from the traditional Northern dialect, in which the phonetic realization of the "s" always has the sound of
ch, in the Brazilian Western Amazon region, there will only be the sound of
ch whose words the "s" are in the middle of the word, as examples;
costa,
festa or
destino, as well as the one observed in
dialect of the north coast. Within the
Brazilian countryside, it is one of the few areas where the phonetic realization of "r" resembles those observed in the Carioca dialect (open), other examples where this phenomenon is observed: Brasília dialect and
Belo Horizonte dialect. , a pronoun meaning "you", is used for educated, formal, and colloquial respectful speech in most Portuguese-speaking regions. In a few Brazilian states such as
Rio Grande do Sul, Pará, among others, is virtually absent from the spoken language. Riograndense and European Portuguese normally distinguishes formal from informal speech by verbal conjugation. Informal speech employs followed by second person verbs, formal language retains the formal , followed by the third person conjugation. Conjugation of verbs in has three different forms in Brazil (verb "to see": , in the traditional second person; , in the third person; and , in the innovative second person), the conjugation used in the Brazilian states of Pará, Santa Catarina and Maranhão being generally traditional second person, the kind that is used in other Portuguese-speaking countries and learned in Brazilian schools. The predominance of Southeastern-based media products has established as the pronoun of choice for the second person singular in both writing and multimedia communications. However, in the city of Rio de Janeiro, the country's main cultural center, the usage of has been expanding ever since the end of the 20th century, being most frequent among youngsters, and a number of studies have also shown an increase in its use in a number of other Brazilian dialects.
Other countries and dependencies • –
Angolano (
Angolan Portuguese) • –
Cabo-verdiano (
Cape Verdean Portuguese) • –
Damaense (Damanese Portuguese) and
Goês (
Goan Portuguese) • –
Guineense (
Guinean Portuguese) • –
Macaense (
Macanese Portuguese) • –
Moçambicano (
Mozambican Portuguese) • –
Santomense (
São Tomean Portuguese) • –
Timorense (
East Timorese Portuguese) • –
Dialetos Portugueses do Uruguai (DPU) Differences between dialects are mostly of
accent and
vocabulary, but between the Brazilian dialects and other dialects, especially in their most colloquial forms, there can also be some grammatical differences. The
Portuguese-based creoles spoken in various parts of Africa, Asia, and the Americas are independent languages.
Characterization and peculiarities Portuguese, like
Catalan, preserves the stressed vowels of
Vulgar Latin which became diphthongs in most other Romance languages; cf. Port., Cat., Sard.
pedra; Fr. '
, Sp. ', It. '
, Ro. ', from Lat. '
("stone"); or Port. ', Cat. '
, Sard. '; Sp. '
, It. ', Fr. '
, Ro. ', from Lat. ''
("fire"). Another characteristic of early Portuguese was the loss of intervocalic l
and n'', sometimes followed by the merger of the two surrounding vowels, or by the insertion of an
epenthetic vowel between them: cf. Lat. '
("to exit"), ' ("to have"), '
("jail"), Port. ', '
, '. When the
elided consonant was
n, it often
nasalized the preceding vowel: cf. Lat. '
("hand"), ' ("frog"), '
("good"), Old Portuguese ', '
, ' (Portuguese: '
, ', ''''). This process was the source of most of the language's distinctive nasal diphthongs. In particular, the Latin endings
-anem, '
and ' became '
in most cases, cf. Lat. ' ("dog"), '
("brother"), ' ("reason") with Modern Port. '
, ', ''
, and their plurals -anes
, -anos
, -ones
normally became -ães
, -ãos
, -ões
, cf. cães
, irmãos
, razões
. This also occurs in the minority Swiss Romansh language in many equivalent words such as maun
("hand"), bun
("good"), or chaun'' ("dog"). The Portuguese language is the only
Romance language that preserves the clitic case
mesoclisis: cf. (I'll give thee), (I'll love you), (I'll contact them). Like
Galician, it also retains the Latin synthetic
pluperfect tense: (I had been), (I had lived), (you had lived).
Romanian also has this tense, but uses the -s- form. == Sample text ==