Portuguese in Portugal

There are five main dialectal groups in Portugal: North or Galician, Central or Beira, South or estremenho and Insular (spoken in Madeira and in the Azores). Besides this dialectal differentiation, Portuguese is notable by its uniformity throughout the territory. This is one of the reasons why it helped motivate and strengthen a powerful national identity. This identity is particularly stated in all the popular festivities (as those celebrated by the popular calendar). Standard Portuguese language is the same literary and administrative Portuguese that originated in Oporto and then spread into Coimbra and Lisbon. From there it spread to the entire territory. The dialects that are most far away from the literary language are settled in Northern Portugal, in the bordering area with Galicia, and South of Algarve.

Portuguese in Brazil.

Brazilian Portuguese has some vocabulary, pronunciation and syntax differences with the Portuguese language spoken in the Iberian Peninsula. But this doesn't preclude understanding among both speaking groups. Particularly, Brazilian Portuguese has received the influence of many languages, indigenous and Asian-European, that have impressed their particular character on it. For about 300 years, the only European people who lived and immigrated to Brazil where Portuguese themselves; but, after Brazil's independence, floods of immigrants started to arrive, mainly Italians. These immigrants exerted a huge influence in the political, commercial and cultural life of the country as well as on its language. German and Japanese immigrants didn't adapt well to Brazilian society at first, but afterwards they became an important part of it.

Brazilian Portuguese developed itself during the XVI Century from dialects coming from the Lisbon and Coimbra areas. It differs from Peninsular Portuguese in several aspects. For example, the second person in verb conjugation is almost never used. Pronunciation is also different ("r", for example), and the order of words is more flexible than in Portugal. There are some writing differences; however, writers still use a metropolis standard Portuguese. On the other hand, the Creole language, which once was very extended in all the Brazilian territory, is now starting to disappear.

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