Category Archives: Learn Portuguese

13 amazing facts about Portuguese

1. With more than 230 million speakers, Portuguese is the 6th most spoken language in the world.

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2. Of the five main Romance languages (French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian), Portuguese is the second most widely spoken after Spanish.

3. Portuguese is the official language of  Brazil, Cape Verde, Macau, Mozambique, Portugal, Angola, East Timor, Guinea-Bissau, Sao Tome, and Principe.

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4. Despite superficial similarities to Spanish, Portuguese is actually more closely related to Galician, a language spoken in northwestern Spain.

5. The earliest occurrences of a distinctive Portuguese language are found in ninth century administrative documents.

6. The longest Portuguese word is otorrinolaringologista, meaning an ear, nose, and throat doctor.

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7.  Most difficult word or tongue twister in Portuguese:-
O rato roeu a roupa do rei de Roma
(The rat gnawed the king of Rome’s clothes)

8. Famous Portuguese quote to impress the locals
Se podes olhar, vê. Se podes ver, repara
(If you can look, see. If you can see, notice )

9. In Portuguese K, W and Y were not part of the alphabet before 2009 and are only used for foreign words.

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10. Portuguese people can understand Spanish quite easily, but the opposite is not true.

11. Although the greater part of the Portuguese vocabulary comes from Latin, a number of words have also been absorbed from Arabic, French, and Italian, and also from some of the indigenous South American and African languages.

12. It is a language that uses a system of manual, facial, and other body movements as the means of communication, especially among deaf people.

13. In 1986, Portuguese became one of the official languages of the European Union (EU) when Portugal was admitted to the organization.

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