Portuguese language

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Portuguese (endonym: português) is a Western Romance language of the Indo-European language family, written in the Latin script. With approximately 267 million native speakers, it is the fifth-most spoken native language in the world, and the most widely spoken language in the Southern Hemisphere. It is the official language of eight countries — Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Timor-Leste — and is co-official with other languages in Macau and Equatorial Guinea. Portuguese-speaking people or nations are known as Lusophone (lusófono). As a result of expansion during colonial times, a cultural presence of Portuguese speakers is also found around the world. Portuguese is part of the Ibero-Romance group, which evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia and the County of Portugal, and has retained some Celtic phonology. Portuguese language structure reflects both its Latin roots and centuries of...

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