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|name=Portuguese |nativename=Português |pronunciation= [poɾtu'gejs (Brazilian) |states= Brazil , Portugal , Angola , Mozambique , and several other CPLP countries |speakers=213 Million people |rank=6 |familycolor=Indo-European |fam2= Italic |fam3= Romance |fam4= Italo-Western |fam5=Western |fam6= Gallo-Iberian |fam7= Ibero-Romance |fam8= West-Iberian |fam9= Portuguese-Galician |script= Latin Alphabet ( Portuguese Variant ) |nation= Angola , Brazil , Cape Verde , East Timor , European Union , Guinea Bissau , Chinese S.A.R. Of Macau , Mozambique , Portugal , São Tomé And Príncipe |agency= International Portuguese Language Institute ; CPLP |iso1=pt|iso2=por|iso3=por}} Portuguese () is an Iberian Romance Language that originated in what is today Galicia (in Spain ) and Northern Portugal . It is the official language of Angola , Brazil , Cape Verde , Guinea-Bissau , Mozambique , Portugal and São Tomé And Príncipe , co-official with Chinese in the Chinese S.A.R. of Macau , and co-official with Tetum in East Timor . Portuguese is Ranked sixth among the world's languages in number of native speakers (over 200 million), and first in South America (186 million, over 51% of the population). It is also a major Lingua Franca in Africa. It spread worldwide in the 15th and 16th Century as Portugal set up a vast Colonial And Commercial Empire ( 1415 – 1999 ), spanning from Brazil in the Americas to Macau in China . In that colonial period, many Portuguese Creoles appeared around the world, especially in Africa , Asia and the Caribbean . Portuguese is often nicknamed ''The language of Camões '', after the author of the Portuguese National Epic '' The Lusiads ''; ''The last flower of Latium '' ( Olavo Bilac ); and ''The sweet language'' by Cervantes . Geographic distribution See Also: Geographic distribution of Portuguese Portuguese is the first Language in Angola , Brazil , Portugal and São Tomé And Príncipe , and the most widely used language in Mozambique . Portuguese is also one of the official languages of East Timor (with Tetum ) and of the Chinese S.A.R. Of Macau (with Chinese ). It is widely spoken, but not official, in Andorra , Luxembourg , Namibia and Paraguay . Portuguese Creole s are the mother tongue of Cape Verde and part of Guinea-Bissau 's population. In Cape Verde most also speak standard Portuguese and have a native level language usage. Large Portuguese-speaking immigrant communities exist in many cities around the world, including Montreal and Toronto in Canada; Paris in France ; Asunción in Paraguay ; and Boston , New Bedford , Cape Cod , Fall River , Honolulu , Houston , Newark , New York City , Orlando , Miami , Providence , Sacramento in the United States ; Buenos Aires in Argentina , Uruguay , and in Japan . Other countries where speakers can be found include in Andorra , Belgium , Bermuda , Switzerland and some communities in India such as Goa . Portuguese is spoken by about 187 million people in South America, 17 million in Africa, 12 million in Europe, 2 million in North America and 610,000 in Asia. The CPLP or Community Of Portuguese-Speaking Countries is an international organization consisting of the eight independent countries which have Portuguese as an official language. Portuguese is also an official language of the European Union , Mercosul and the African Union (one of the working languages) and one of the official languages of other organizations. The Portuguese language is gaining popularity in Africa, Asia, and South America as a second language for study. Portuguese is with Spanish the fastest growing western language, and, following estimates by UNESCO it is the language with the higher potentiality of growth as an international communication language in Africa (south) and South America. The Portuguese speaking African countries are expected to have a combined population of 83 million by 2050. The language is also starting to gain popularity in Asia, mostly due to East Timor's boost in the number of speakers in the last five years, and Macau is becoming the Chinese center for learning Portuguese, where in early 21st century, the language use was in decline, today it is growing as it became a language for opportunity due to increased Chinese diplomatic and financial ties with the Portuguese speaking countries. Dialects See Also: Portuguese dialects Portuguese has two major standard dialects: Brazilian and European Portuguese (BP and EP). In addition there are several variants spoken in Africa and Asia, though these have not been subject to the same thorough research as the dialects of Brazil and Portugal. The differences between dialects both within and between the two spheres of influences are generally not too major, though the sheer number of BP speakers has lead to a very large amount of various Sociolect s and Ideolect s. There are several similarities in pronunciation, syntax and simplification in grammar use between vernacular BP and Angolan Portuguese (AP), but there are no differences between standard EP and AP. Though geographically specific vocabulary are common, they are not always completely consistent. Examples of words that are different in Portuguese dialects from three different continents: Africa (Angola), Europe (Portugal) and South America (Brazil). ''Bus''
, Brazil .]] ''slum quarter''
''Go away''
In March of 2006 , the Museum Of The Portuguese Language , an interactive museum about the Portuguese language was founded in São Paulo , Brazil, the city with the largest number of Portuguese speakers in the world. Classification and related languages Portuguese is a member of the Romance branch of the Indo-European Language Family . It is very similar to Galician , and somewhat less to Spanish . Its most distant relative among the Romance languages is Romanian . The West Iberian group More specifically, Portuguese is a member of the West Iberian branch of Romance, which also includes Spanish , Galician , Asturo-Leonese , Aragonese , Ladino , and their dialects or codialects. By most linguistic criteria, these languages are significantly closer to each other than to any other living language — including Catalan , the other major language of the Iberian Peninsula . Speakers of the West Iberian languages generally claim that they are all mutually intelligible to some extent. It is certainly true that a speaker of any of them can learn to read any other just by practicing, without formal study of the grammar. Bilingualism is quite common along the internal language boundaries of this group. Spanish Portuguese differs somewhat from Spanish in orthography, and even more in Phonology , Grammar and Vocabulary : Ela fecha sempre a janela antes de jantar. Ella cierra siempre la ventana antes de cenar. :"She always closes the window before having dinner." Many of the most obvious discrepancies in the lexicon are only due to different usage preferences. For example, Portuguese has in fact both ''cear'' (rare) and ''jantar'' (common), whereas Spanish has both ''cenar'' (common) and ''yantar'' (rare), all meaning "to dine". It is also claimed that a Portuguese speaker can understand spoken Spanish better than the other way around. Galician The closest language to Portuguese is Galician , spoken in the autonomous community of Galicia (Northwest Spain). It has a conservative vowel phonology, comprising only the seven vowels of medieval Galician-Portuguese , without central vowels or nasal vowels. On the other hand, its consonants have gone through significant changes which closely parallel the evolution of the Spanish consonants; several fricatives that remain separate phonemes in Portuguese have merged in Galician in much the same way as they did in Spanish. After many centuries of close contact between the two languages, Galician has also adopted many loan words from Spanish, and some calques of Spanish syntax. Nevertheless, the Morphology , general Syntax , Inflectional Patterns , and core Vocabulary of Galician are still noticeably closer to Portuguese than to Spanish. Mutual intelligibility is good between Galicians and northern Portuguese, but lower between Galicians and speakers of central European Portuguese. The linguistic status of Galician with respect to Portuguese is controversial. Some authors, especially Portuguese authors such as Lindley Cintra, consider that they are still dialects of a common language, in spite of superficial differences in phonology and vocabulary. Other authors, especially Spaniards such as Vázquez Cuesta, argue that they have become separate languages. The official position of the Galician Language Academy is that Galician is an independent language. The standard orthography takes advantage of the divergent features of the phonology of Galician to emphasize its differences from Portuguese, insisting on strictly phonetic spelling, and rejecting Portuguese graphic conventions such as circumflex and grave accents, tildes on vowels, or graphemes like ''nh'', ''lh'', ''j'', in favour of ''ñ'', ''ll'', ''x'', etc. Attempts are made to prune Galician of so-called ''lusismos'', words deemed too close to Portuguese, replacing them with Spanish-inspired vocabulary. The Sociolinguistic situation is reminiscent of the relations between Romanian and Moldovan , or between Catalan and Occitan . In spite of the increase in literacy which followed the democratization of Spain (regional languages were outlawed during Franco 's regime), the younger generations show a tendency to prefer Spanish to Galician in their everyday life. Ladino Ladino is a seriously endangered Romance language which was spoken by Sephardic Jews in the Iberian Peninsula until they were expelled in the late 15th century, and afterwards in various diasporic communities around the Mediterranean and in the Americas. Its endangered status is due mostly to the Nazi Holocaust , and to the adoption of the revived Hebrew Language by many Jews during the 20th century. The phonology of Ladino and some of its vocabulary are closer to Portuguese than to Spanish, because both retained characteristics of medieval Ibero-Romance which Spanish later lost. Compare for example Ladino ''ainda'' ("still") with Portuguese ''ainda'' and to Spanish ''aún'', or the initial consonants in Ladino ''fija'', ''favla'' ("daughter", "speech"), Portuguese ''filha'', ''fala'', Spanish ''hija'', ''habla''; in Spanish, initial mutated to [h , and then became silent. However, the grammar of Ladino is closer to Spanish grammar. Asturo-Leonese Another member of the West Iberian group is Asturo-Leonese , that comprises the dialects Asturian and Leonese (spoken in Northwest Spain, East of Galicia) and Mirandese (spoken in Northeast Portugal). It differs from Portuguese in several phonetic features, such as instead of in word-initial positions (e.g., Portuguese ''língua'' vs. Mirandese ''lhéngua'' ); preservation of invervocalic and from Vulgar Latin; and use of diphthongs in tonic position where Portuguese has vowels (e.g. Portuguese ''castelo'' vs. Mirandese ''castiélho'' . Other Romance languages Even though Portuguese has obvious lexical and grammatical similarities with all the other Romance languages outside of the West Iberian branch, it is not intelligible with them to any practical extent. Portuguese speakers will usually need some formal study of basic grammar and vocabulary, before being able to understand even the simplest sentences in those languages (and vice-versa): Ela fecha sempre a janela antes de jantar. Elle ferme toujours la fenêtre avant de diner. Lei chiude sempre la finestra prima di cenare. Ea închide întodeauna fereastra înainte de a cina. On the other hand, Portuguese is phonetically closer to French and Catalan than to Spanish in some respects; such as the occurrence of nasalization, palatalization, diphthongization of low-mid stressed vowels, aspiration of /f/, and devoicing of sibilants — all features that are not shared by Spanish. The same can be said of the basic vocabularies: compare e.g. Portuguese ''bom'' ("good") with French or Catalan ''bon'' and Spanish ''bueno''; or Portuguese ''filha'' with French ''fille'', Catalan ''filla'', and Spanish ''hija''. Latin Even though the Romance languages are all derived from Latin, they are arguably much closer to each other than to their common ancestor. The main difference is the noun Declension system of Classical Latin, an essential feature which allows great freedom in its word order, and has no counterpart in any Romance language (except to some extent in Romanian, which preserved three of Latin's seven noun cases). In this regard, the distance between Portuguese and Latin is comparable to that between English and Anglo-Saxon. Indeed, while Portuguese speakers can quickly learn to see through the spelling changes and thus recognize many Latin words, they will often fail to understand the meaning of Latin sentences. Derived languages See Also: Portuguese creole Starting with the 16th century, the extensive contacts between Portuguese travelers and settlers, African slaves, and local populations led to the appearance of many Pidgin languages with varying amounts of Portuguese influence. These pidgins remained in use in parts of Asia and Africa until the 18th Century . As these pidgins became the mother tongue of succeeding generations, they evolved into distinctive languages. Many of these Portuguese-based or Portuguese-influenced Creole Languages are still alive today, used by over 3 million people worldwide, especially by people of partial Portuguese ancestry. Influence on other languages Portuguese has Lent Words to many other languages, such as Japanese , Indonesian , Malay , Tetum , as well as in several creole languages, such as Lanc-Patuá (spoken in northern Brazil - now extinct) and Sranang Tongo (spoken in Suriname). Portuguese had a strong influence on the language spoken around Sikka in Flores Island , Indonesia . In nearby Larantuka , Portuguese is used for prayers in the '' Tuan Ma Ritual ''. Portuguese also influenced the Lingua Geral , a language based on Tupinambá which was the ''lingua Franca'' of Brazil until the 18th century. '' Quốc Ngữ '', the modern orthography of Vietnamese , is based on 17th-century Portuguese orthography. Sounds See Also: Portuguese phonology There is a maximum of 9 oral vowels and 19 consonants, though some varieties of the language have less phonemes (Brazilian Portuguese has only 7 oral vowels). Five of the vowels have nasal allophones. Vowels A distinctive feature of Portuguese is that the stressed vowels of Latin were not diphthongized as in other Romance languages; cf. Fr. ''pierre'', Sp. ''piedra'', Port. ''pedra'', from Latin ''petra''; It. ''fuoco'', Sp. ''fuego'', Port. ''fogo'', from Latin ''focum''. To the seven vowels of Vulgar Latin , European Portuguese has added two Near Central Vowels , one of which tends to be Elided in Relaxed Pronunciation , like the ''e caduc'' of French . The five nasal vowels can be regarded as allophones of oral vowels, found in special environments. The high vowels and the low vowels are four distinct phonemes, and they alternate in various forms of , and in some cases centralized, when unstressed. Nasal diphthongs exist, occurring mostly at the end of words. Consonants Whereas its vowel phonology can be considered innovative, the consonant inventory of Portuguese is fairly conservative. The medieval affricates , , , have merged with the fricatives , , , , respectively, but not with each other, and there were no other significant changes to the consonant phonemes. However, some remarkable allophones and dialectal variants have appeared, among which:
Lexical stress Portuguese features lexical Stress , which can be the sole distinguishing feature of Minimal Pair s: : ''dúvida'' "doubt (noun)" vs. ''duvida'' "he doubts" falaram ouve túnel Primary stress may vary between any of the three final syllables of the word, but mostly on the last two. There is a partial correlation between the position of the stress and the final vowel; for example, the final syllable is usually stressed when it contains a nasal phoneme, a diphthong, or a high vowel. Portuguese spelling rules take advantage of this correlation to minimize the number of diacritics. Prosody Tone is not lexically significant in Portuguese, but phrase- and sentence-level stress are important. There are of six dynamic tone patterns that affect entire Phrase s, which indicate the mood and intention of the speaker such as implication, emphasis, reservation, etc. As in most Romance languages, interrogation is expressed mainly by sharply raising the tone at the end of the sentence. Grammar See Also: Portuguese grammar Like most Indo-European languages, Portuguese classifies most of its lexicon into four major Word Classes , namely Verb s, Noun s, Adjective s, and Adverb s, which are the only classes open to new words. It also has smaller classes like Pronoun s, Preposition s, Articles , Conjunction s, Interjection s, Determiner s and other Particle s. It is basically a SVO Language , although some object pronouns precede the verb in special cases, and word order is generally not as rigid as in English. It is a Null Subject Language . Vocabulary See Also: Portuguese vocabulary Almost 90% of the Portuguese vocabulary is derived from Latin; needless to say, with substantial phonological and morphological changes which accumulated throughout its history. One conspicuous and distinctive change was the loss of intervocalic in a very large set of words, such as ''SALIRE'' → ''sair'' ("to exit"), ''COLARE'' → ''coar'' ("to drip"). Another pervasive change was the voicing of [t in [d], as in ''AMATVS'' → ''amado'' ("loved"). Reintroduced Latin words A few words remained virtually unchanged, like ''taberna'' ("tavern"); or even returned to a form close to the original, such as ''coxa'' ("thigh"). Many of these "retro" events happened in the late Middle Ages, due to the use of Church Latin by the Catholic Church , and during the Renaissance , when Classical Antiquity in general, and Literary Latin in particular, enjoyed great prestige. Thus, for example, Latin ''AVRV'', which had originally evolved to ''ouro'' ("gold") and ''dourado'' ("golden"), was re-introduced as the adjective ''áureo'' ("golden"). In the same way, ''LOCALE'' ("place"), which had evolved to ''lugar'', was later re-introduced as the more erudite ''local''. Many erudite Greek words and combining elements were also introduced or re-introduced in this way. Contributions from other languages Very few Portuguese words can be traced to the native or pre-Roman inhabitants of Portugal, which included the Phoenicians , Carthaginians , Iberians , Lusitanians , and Celts . Some notable examples are ''abóbora'' ("pumpkin") and ''bezerro'' ("year-old calf"), from Iberian Languages ; ''cerveja'' ("beer"), from Celtic ; ''saco'' ("bag"), from Phoenician ; and ''cachorro'' ("dog"), from Basque .
Between the 9th and the 15th centuries Portuguese acquired many words from Arabic by influence of the Caliphate Of Cordoba , established by the Moors in the peninsula, of which about 1000 are still in use today. Those words are often recognizable by the initial Arabic article ''a''(''l'')''-'', and include many common words such as ''aldeia'' ("village") from ''التجارية'' ''aldaya'', ''alface'' ("lettuce") from ''الخس'' ''alkhass'', ''armazém'' ("warehouse") from ''المخزن'' ''almahazan'', and ''azeite'' ("olive oil") from ''زيت'' ''azzait''. From Arabic came also the grammatically peculiar word ''oxalá'' "God willing". Starting in the 15th century, the great expansion of Portuguese maritime exploration and trade introduced many loanwords from all over the world. Asia contributed, for instance, ''catana'' ("cutlass") from Japanese ''katana''; ''corja'' ("rabble") from Malay ''kórchchu''; and ''chá'' ("tea") from Cantonese '' Cha ''. From the 16th to the 19th century, the role of Portugal as intermediary in the Atlantic Slave Trade , as well as the establishment of large Portuguese colonies in Angola, Mozambique, and Brazil, led to the borrowing of many words of African and Amerind origin, especially names for most of the animals and plants found in those territories. While those terms are mostly used in the former colonies, many became current in European Portuguese as well. From Kimbundu , for example, came ''kifumate'' → ''cafuné'' ("head caress"), ''kusula'' → ''caçula'' ("youngest child"), ''marimbondo'' ("wasp"), ''bungular'' ("dance like a wizard") from ''kubungula''. From South America came ''batata'' (" Potato "), from Taino ; ''ananás'', from Tupi-Guarani ''naná'' and ''abacaxi'' from Tupi ''ibá cati'' (two species of " Pineapple "), and ''tucano'' (" Toucan ") from Guarani ''tucan''; and many more. Finally, since the Middle Ages to the present day, the Portuguese lexicon received a steady influx of loanwords from languages of its European neighbors — often in spite of strenuous efforts by the national Literary Academies to preserve the "purity" of the language. Here are only a few examples: :Spanish: ''melena'' ("hair lock"), ''fiambre'' ("ham") :French: ''crochet'' → ''colchete'' ("crochet"), ''paletot'' → ''paletó'' ("jacket"), ''baton'' → ''batom'' ("lipstick"), ''filet'' → ''filé'' ("steak"), ''mayonnaise'' → ''maionese'' :Italian ''maccherone'' → ''macarrão'' ("pasta"), ''piloto'' ("pilot"), ''carrozza'' → ''carroça'' ("carriage"), ''barracca'' → ''barraca'' ("barrack") :Dutch: ''dijk'' → ''dique'' ("dam") :English: ''football'' → ''futebol'', ''flirt'' → ''flerte'', ''rifle'', ''revolver'' → ''revólver'', ''stock'' → ''estoque'' , ''knock out'' → ''nocaute'', ''folklore'' → ''folclore'' History See Also: History of Portuguese Portuguese developed in the Western Iberian Peninsula from Latin brought there by Roman soldiers and colonists starting in the 3rd Century BC . The language began to diverge from other Romance Languages after the Fall Of The Western Roman Empire and the barbarian invasions in the 5th Century , and started to be used in written documents around the 9th Century . By the 15th Century it had become a mature language with a rich literature. In all aspects — Phonology , Morphology , Lexicon and Syntax — Portuguese is essentially the result of an organic evolution of Vulgar Latin, with relatively minor influences from other languages. Arriving on the Iberian Peninsula in 218 BC , the Romans brought with them the Roman people's language, Vulgar Latin , from which all Romance languages descend. Already in the 2nd Century BC southern Lusitania was Romanized. Strabo , a 1st-century Greek Geographer , comments in one of the books of his '' Geographia '' "encyclopedia": "they have adopted the Roman customs, and they no longer remember their own language." The language was spread by arriving Roman soldiers, settlers and merchants, who built Roman cities mostly near previous civilizations' settlements. Between 409 A.D. and 711 , as the Roman Empire was collapsing, the Iberian Peninsula was Subjected To Peoples Of Germanic Origin , known to the Romans as Barbarians . The Barbarians (mainly Suevi and Visigoths ) largely absorbed the Roman culture and language of the peninsula; however, Lusitania's language and culture were free to evolve on their own during the Early Middle Ages , due to the lack of Roman schools and administration, Lusitania's relative isolation from the rest of Europe, and changes in the political boundaries of the Iberian peninsula. These changes led to the formation of what is now called "Lusitanian Romance". From 711 , with the Moorish invasion of the Peninsula, Arabic was adopted as the administrative language in the conquered regions. However, the population continued to speak Their Romance Dialects so that when the Moors were overthrown, the influence that they had exerted on the language was small. Its main effect was in the lexicon. The earliest surviving records of a distinctively Portuguese language are administrative documents from the Ninth Century , still interspersed with many phrases in Latin. Today this phase is known as "Proto-Portuguese" (spoken in the period between the 9th to the 12th Century ). Portugal was formally recognized by the Kingdom Of Leon as an independent country in 1143 , with King Afonso Henriques . In the first period of "Old Portuguese" - Portuguese-Galician Period (from the 12th to the 14th Century ) - the language gradually came into general use. Previously it had mostly been used on the Christian Iberian Peninsula as a language for poetry, just as Provençal was used out of Provence. In 1290 , king Denis created the first Portuguese University in Lisbon (the ''Estudo Geral'') and decreed that Portuguese, then simply called the "Vulgar language" should be known as the Portuguese language and should be officially used. In the second period of "Old Portuguese", from the 14th to the 16th Century , with the Portuguese discoveries, the Portuguese language spread to many regions of Asia , Africa and The Americas (nowadays, the great majority of Portuguese speakers live in Brazil, in South America). By the 16th Century it had become a '' Lingua Franca '' in Asia and Africa, used not only for colonial administration and trade but also for communication between local officials and Europeans of all nationalities. The spreading of the language was helped by mixed marriages between Portuguese and local people (also very common in other areas of the world) and its association with the Catholic Missionary efforts, which led to it being called ''Cristão'' (" Christian ") in many places in Asia. The Nippo Jisho , a Japanese-Portuguese dictionary written in 1603, was a product of Jesuit missionary activity in Japan . Alexandre De Rhodes ' 1651 ''Dictionarium Anamiticum, Lusitanum et Latinum'' (Annamite-Portuguese-Latin dictionary), based off the work of earlier Portuguese missionaries, introduced the modern Vietnamese Alphabet based on Portuguese orthography. The language continued to be popular in parts of Asia until the 19th Century . Some Portuguese-speaking Christian communities in India , Sri Lanka , Malaysia , and Indonesia preserved their language even after they were isolated from Portugal. The end of "Old Portuguese" was marked by the publication of the ''Cancioneiro Geral de Garcia de Resende'', in 1516 . The period of "Modern Portuguese" (spanning from the 16th Century to present day) saw an increase in the number of words of Classical Latin origin and erudite words of Greek origin borrowed into Portuguese during the Renaissance, enriching the lexicon of the language. Writing system See Also: Portuguese alphabet Portuguese is written using the Latin Alphabet with 26 letters. The letters K, W and Y are used only for proper names and vernacular derivatives thereof, like ''darwinismo'' (" Darwinism "), or metric units and symbols, like ''watt'' and ''km''. It uses ç and Acute , Grave , Circumflex and Tilde accents over vowels, and (in Brazil) Diaeresis on U. Spelling reform As Of 2005 , Portuguese has two orthographic standards:
In East Timor, both orthographies are currently being taught in schools. The table to the right illustrates some typical differences between the two Orthographies . Some are due to different pronunciations, but others are purely orthographic. The main ones are: # ''Presence or absence of certain consonants'': The letters ''c'' and ''p'' appear in some words before ''c'', ''ç'' or ''t'' in one orthography, but are absent from the other. Typically, the letter is written in the European spelling, but not in the Brazilian spelling. In the majority of cases, the consonant in question is not pronounced in any variety of the language. # ''Different use of diacritics'': the Brazilian spelling has stressed ''ê'' or ''ô'' before ''m'' or ''n'' followed by a vowel, in several words where the European orthography has ''é'' or ''ó'', due to different pronunciation. In the Brazilian spelling, the diaeresis mark is employed on the digraphs ''gü'' and ''qü'' when they are followed by ''e'' or ''i'', but the ''u'' is pronounced, while the European spelling omits it. The Brazilian orthography distinguishes between stressed ''éi'' and stressed ''ei'', which are pronounced differently in Brazilian Portuguese ; in European Portuguese, both diphthongs are pronounced the same way, and ''éi'' appears only in some Oxytone plural nouns and adjectives, by convention. In 1990, a Spelling Reform was signed between the Portuguese language countries (except East Timor, which was under Indonesian occupation at the time), with the intent of creating a single common orthography for Portuguese. The orthographic agreement was meant to go into effect after all signatary countries had ratified it, but at the end of the decade only Brazil, Cape Verde and Portugal had done so. In the July 2004 Summit of the Portuguese Language Countries, São Tomé and Príncipe also ratified the agreement in 2004, and a modification was made to the text, allowing the reform to be implemented in those signatary countries which have already ratified it. This is to happen after a transition period which remains to be defined, however. The orthographic agreement eliminates of the letters ''c'' and ''p'' from the European/African spelling whenever they are silent, eliminates the diaeresis mark from the Brazilian spelling, and eliminates the acute accent from the diphthongs ''éi'' and ''ói'' in Paroxytone words. As for divergent spellings such as ''anónimo'' and ''anônimo'', ''facto'' and ''fato'', both will be considered legitimate, according to the dialect of the author or person being transcribed. The spelling reform also establishes some common guidelines for the use of hyphens. Examples ;''Extract of « The Lusiad s» (I, 33)'' See also
Notes
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