This article provides details regarding the geographical distribution of all Portuguese-speakers, a.k.a.Lusophones, regardless of legislative status. The Portuguese language is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world and is an official language of countries on four continents.
This table depicts the native speakers of the language, which means that the table includes people who have been exposed to the Portuguese language from birth and, thus, excludes people who use the language as a L2.
| Country | Absolute | % | Year | Reference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Brazil | 203,000,000 | 97% | 2022 | [1] |
 Portugal | 10,022,070 | 95% | 2012 | [2] [note 1] |
 São Tomé and Principe | 214,000 | 66% | 2022 | [3] |
 Angola | 23,800,000 | 70% | 2023 | [4] [5] [ better source needed ] |
 Mozambique | 5,000,000 | 17% | 2020 | [6] |
 Luxembourg | 74,636 | 16% | 2011 | [7] |
 Switzerland | 309,270 | 3.7% | 2016 | [8] [note 2] |
 Cape Verde | 11,800 | 2.2% | 2016 | [9] |
 France | 1,089,497 | 1.7% | 2007 | [10] [note 1] |
 Belgium | 72,715 | 0.7% | 2012 | [2] [note 1] |
 Canada | 221,540 | 0.7% | 2016 | [11] |
 Macau | 3,779 | 0.6% | 2016 | [12] [note 2] |
 Ireland | 20,833 | 0.4% | 2016 | [13] |
 Netherlands | 47,848 | 0.3% | 2012 | [2] [note 1] |
 United States | 746,018 | 0.2% | 2016 | [14] [15] [note 2] |
 United Kingdom | 142,622 | 0.2% | 2011 | [16] |
 Australia | 52,222 | 0.2% | 2016 | [17] [note 2] |
 Mexico | 15,300 | 0.2% | 2019 | [18] [19] |
 Germany | 105,116 | 0.1% | 2010 | [20] [note 1] |
| Total | 240,661,428 | [21] |
| Region | Country or territory | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Europe | Portugal | Official |
 Andorra | Minority | |
| France | Minority | |
| Germany | Minority | |
| Luxembourg | Minority | |
 Spain | Minority in Olivenza | |
| Switzerland | Minority | |
| Africa | Angola | Official |
| Cape Verde | Official | |
 Equatorial Guinea | Co-official with Spanish and French | |
 Guinea-Bissau | Official | |
| Mozambique | Official | |
| São Tomé and Príncipe | Official | |
 South Africa | Minority | |
 Namibia | Minority | |
| Asia |  East Timor | Co-official with Tetum |
| Macau | Co-official with Chinese | |
 India | Minority in Goa State | |
 Japan | Minority; see Brazilians in Japan | |
 Malaysia | Minority in Malacca; see Kristang language | |
| North America | Canada | Minority |
| United States | Minority | |
| South America | Brazil | Official; see Brazilian Portuguese |
 Paraguay | Minority | |
 Uruguay | Minority | |
 Venezuela | Minority | |
| Oceania | Australia | Minority |
During a period of Portuguese discoveries and through a large colonial empire, the language was spread to areas in Africa, Asia and the Americas, beyond Macau and East Timor in the Pacific Ocean. Portuguese-based creole languages also developed during this era.
Today, Portuguese continues to thrive outside the Lusophone world through the presence of large expat communities of Brazilians, Portuguese, Cape Verdeans, Angolans and Timorese found throughout the world.
Portuguese is spoken as a first language in Portugal (the language's namesake) by nearly all of the nation's 10.6 million people. [22] The ancestor of modern Portuguese, Galician-Portuguese,[ clarification needed ] began developing in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula, in an area encompassing present-day northern-Portugal and Galicia, at around the 9th century. Modern Portuguese started developing in the early 16th century[ clarification needed ].
The region of Galicia in Spain is not exactly classified as Lusophone, but holds close ties to the Lusophony. The Galician language used to form a common dialect continuum with Portuguese during the Middle Ages, denominated as Galician-Portuguese by historians. Thus, efforts have been made by the Xunta de Galicia to promote cultural and linguistical interchange between Galicia and the Lusophone world, [23] such as the Euroregion between Galicia and Northern Portugal. The Consello da Cultura Galega (Council of Galician Culture) has been considered an observer member of the CPLP since 2016. [24]
Portuguese-speaking immigrants from Portugal, Brazil, Portuguese-speaking Africa and Macau have also settled in Andorra (around 15,000 speakers), Belgium, France (around 500,000 speakers), Germany, Luxembourg, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. In Luxembourg, 19% of the population speaks Portuguese as mother tongue, making it the largest minority language by percentage in a Western European country. [25]
Portuguese is the sole official language of Angola, and 85% of the population profess fluency in the language. [26] Additionally, 75% of Angolan households speak Portuguese as their primary language, and native Bantu languages have been influenced by Portuguese through loanwords. [26]
Portuguese is the sole official language of Mozambique and serves as a lingua franca between the various ethnic groups in the country. Slightly over 30% of the population are native speakers of Portuguese, while 65% profess fluency. [27] Most of Mozambican media is available solely in Portuguese, and the country receives several Portuguese and Brazilian television stations.
Despite being the sole official language, only 50% of the population professes fluency in Portuguese. [28] However, a Portuguese-based creole called Guinea-Bissau Creole (Kriol) is spoken by nearly the whole population.
Similar to Guinea-Bissau, although Portuguese is the only official language, a Portuguese-based creole known as Cape Verdean Creole is spoken by the majority of the population. Most Cape Verdeans are fluent in Portuguese as well. Education and media are available largely in standard European Portuguese only.
In São Tomé and Príncipe, Portuguese is by far the most spoken language, with around 95% of the population speaking it at home or professing fluency; 99.8% declared speaking Portuguese in the 1991 census. A Portuguese-based creole called Forro is also spoken.
Equatorial Guinea was a Spanish colony between 1778 and 1968 and was originally a group of Portuguese colonies between 1474 and 1778. A Portuguese creole is spoken by locals on the island of Annobón.
In 2007, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema announced a decision to make Portuguese the third official language of the country after Spanish and French. Despite government promotions, Portuguese remains rarely spoken in Equatorial Guinea, but increased political and trade relations with Portuguese-speaking nations (i.e. Brazil, Angola, Portugal) will soon increase the number of Portuguese speakers in the country. News, sports, and entertainment media in Portuguese will undoubtedly also facilitate increased comprehension. [29] The majority of the population (~90%)[ citation needed ] still speaks Spanish as their primary language, and Spanish is still the administrative language and that of education, while French is the second official language. [30]
Large Portuguese-speaking communities are found in Namibia, South Africa, and Zambia due to immigration from the Lusophone African countries. Portuguese is also taught in the schools of these countries.
With a population of over 212 million, Brazil is by far the world's largest Portuguese-speaking nation and the only one in the Americas. [31] Portuguese was introduced during the Portuguese colonial period. Portuguese has also served as a lingua franca between the various ethnic groups in Brazil and the native Amerindian population [32] after the Jesuits were expelled from every Portuguese territory and the languages associated with them prohibited.
Portuguese is the first language of the overwhelming majority of Brazilians, at 99.5%. [33]
The form of Portuguese spoken in South America is somewhat different from that spoken in Europe, with differences in vocabulary and grammar that can be compared to the differences between American and British English, [34] but with somewhat different phonology and prosody from the remaining Portuguese-speaking countries. Nevertheless, European and Brazilian Portuguese are completely mutually intelligible[ clarification needed ]. The vast majority of Brazilian characteristics are also found in some rural, remote Portuguese registers[ clarification needed ] (or the African and Asian ones, indicating an Old Portuguese feature lost in Europe), [35] while nearly all distinctive European characteristics can be found in any major dialect of Brazil (such as fluminense, specially its carioca sociolect, and florianopolitano ), due to a stronger or more recent Portuguese and other European immigration.[ clarification needed ]
Migration from Brazil also led to a great number of Portuguese speakers in the Southern Cone (especially Uruguay with portunhol da pampa ), Paraguay (see brasiguayos ), other regions of South America (especially Bolivia) except Venezuela, Japan (see Brazilians in Japan 400,000 and dekasegi , official numbers do not include second generation Portuguese speakers and naturalized citizens), South Korea, the Philippines (see Brazilians in the Philippines), and Israel (see Aliyah from Latin America in the 2000s).
Although Brazil is the only Portuguese-speaking nation in South America, it has the largest population, area and economy on the continent. Thus, the South American trade bloc Mercosul uses Portuguese alongside Spanish as its working languages. A Spanish influenced Portuguese dialect is spoken in the northern Uruguayan border area with Brazil. Given the proximity and trading relations between Portuguese speaking Brazil, and its respective Spanish speaking nations, Portuguese is offered as a foreign (sometimes obligatory) language course at most schools in Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay, Venezuela and Bolivia, and has become the second (after English) most studied foreign language in these countries.
In Venezuela and Guyana, there are communities of Portuguese immigrants (mostly Madeirans) and their descendants who speak Portuguese as their native language. [36]
Given the similarities between Spanish and Portuguese, a colloquial mix of both, unofficially called "Portuñol" or "Portunhol", is spoken by large number of people travelling between Brazil and its Spanish-speaking neighbours. People living in the border areas usually like Paraguay and Uruguay mix the two languages in their daily conversation, a phenomenon similar to Spanglish for Latinos living in the United States.
There are more than 1.5 million Portuguese Americans and about 300,000 Brazilian Americans living in the United States, [37] [38] and Portuguese is spoken by over 730,000 people at home in the country. [39] There are over 500,000 people of Portuguese descent living in Canada; however, most of the community's population now speaks English or French as their primary language. Portuguese is also a primary language along with English in the British Overseas Territory of Bermuda. [40]
In Mexico, mainly in the states of Quintana Roo, Yucatán, Jalisco, and Mexico City, there are small communities of speakers who are Brazilians. Portuguese, Cape Verdeans, Angolans, and Uruguayans are mainly from the Rivera Department.
Portuguese is co-official with Tetum in East Timor and was introduced during the colonial period. A little under 39% of the population professes fluency in Portuguese, and their number is steadily growing. Meanwhile, on the Indonesian side, it is rare to hear a Portuguese speaker because it lost in competition with the local language after becoming a Dutch colony in 18th century. The local Tetum language has been heavily influenced by Portuguese through loanwords, and code-switching between the two languages is common. [41]
Due to the one country, two systems policy of China regarding its special administrative regions, Macau is able to retain Portuguese as an official language alongside Cantonese. Portuguese was first introduced to Macau when Portuguese traders established a permanent settlement there in 1537. Despite being a Portuguese colony for over four centuries, the Portuguese language was never widely spoken in Macau and remained limited to administration and higher education. It was spoken primarily by the Portuguese colonists, Macanese people of mixed ancestry, and elites and middle-class people of pure Chinese blood. As a consequence, when Macau was handed back to China in 1999, Portuguese did not have a strong presence like English had in Hong Kong and continued its decline which began when Macau was still under Portuguese rule. Nevertheless, it was only after Portuguese rule ended that the Portuguese language in Macau began to see an increase in speakers due to China's increased trading relations with Lusophone countries. Currently, there is only one school in Macau where Portuguese is the medium of instruction, the Macau Portuguese School, and Portuguese is also mainly taught in government schools. There has been an increase in the teaching of Portuguese owing to the growing trade links between China and lusophone nations such as Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, and East Timor, with 5,000 students learning the language. [42] Today, about 3% of Macau's population speaks Portuguese as a first language and 7% of the population professes fluency. [43] Code-switching between Cantonese and Portuguese are commonly heard. A Portuguese creole called Macanese (Patuá) was spoken by Macanese of mixed ancestry but is near extinction today.
Portuguese is present in the Indian state of Goa, which was a Portuguese colony until 1961. Although it was the sole official language during Portuguese colonial rule, it is mostly spoken by the elderly and educated populations today and is not an official language. Rather, Goa's official state language is Konkani, which has however picked up some Portuguese vocabulary as a legacy of Portuguese influence. Attempts to make Konkani be written in the Portuguese alphabet and reintroduce Portuguese as a co-official language of Goa have been made in recent years; presently Portuguese is officially taught there. [44]
Portuguese rule in Daman and Diu has also left a smaller Portuguese influence on the territory. A Portuguese-based creole called Língua da Casa is spoken in the territory. As a result of the renewed interest in the Portuguese language and culture, the Portuguese language is making an impressive comeback. Portuguese is still taught in some schools in Goa.
Portuguese people were also present in the area of Vasai, previously Bassein or Bacaim since 1560 until 1739. Though the Portuguese were defeated by Marathas, there are some words which are used by the locals which were borrowed from the Portuguese language. Today there is a large Catholic population, and many churches built during those days are still being used for worship.
Portuguese is spoken in Japan among returned immigrants (500,000) or migrant workers from Brazil known as dekasegi . [45] Portuguese loanwords are also present in the Japanese language due to trading relations between Japan and the Portuguese Empire in the 16th century. Portuguese is now part of the curriculum in many Japanese schools, and many radio and television stations are broadcast exclusively in the Portuguese language.[ citation needed ]
In Malacca, Malaysia, a Portuguese creole known as Papiá Kristang or Cristão is still spoken by some of the Eurasian population.
Portuguese is a Western Romance language of the Indo-European language family, originating in the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. It is the official language of Portugal, Brazil, Cape Verde, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau and São Tomé and Príncipe, while having co-official language status in East Timor, Equatorial Guinea, and Macau. Portuguese-speaking people or nations are "Lusophones". As the 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 that evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia and the County of Portugal, and has kept some Celtic phonology.
The Community of Portuguese Language Countries, also known as the Lusophone Community, is an international organization and political association of Lusophone nations across five continents, where Portuguese is an official language. The CPLP operates as a privileged, multilateral forum for the mutual cooperation of the governments, economies, non-governmental organizations, and peoples of the Lusofonia. The CPLP consists of 9 member states and 33 associate observers, located in Europe, South America, Asia, Africa and Oceania, totaling 38 countries and 4 organizations.
Portuguese creoles are creole languages which have Portuguese as their substantial lexifier. The most widely-spoken creoles influenced by Portuguese are Cape Verdean Creole, Guinea-Bissau Creole and Papiamento.
Portuguese dialects are the mutually intelligible variations of the Portuguese language in Portuguese-speaking countries and other areas holding some degree of cultural bond with the language. Portuguese has two standard forms of writing and numerous regional spoken variations, with often large phonological and lexical differences.
Angolan Portuguese is a group of dialects and accents of the Portuguese language used mostly in Angola, where it is an official language. In 2005 it was used there by 60% of the population, including by 20% as their first language. The 2016 CIA World Fact Book reports that 12.3 million, or 47% of the population, speaks Portuguese as their first language. However, many parents raise their children to speak only Portuguese. The 2014 census found that 71% speak Portuguese at home, many of them alongside a Bantu language, breaking down to 85% in urban areas and 49% in rural areas.
European Portuguese, also known as Portuguese of Portugal, Iberian Portuguese, and Peninsular Portuguese, refers to the dialects of the Portuguese language spoken in Portugal, Angola, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe and Guinea-Bissau. The word "European" was chosen to avoid the clash of "Portuguese Portuguese" as opposed to Brazilian Portuguese.
Portuguese is spoken in a number of African countries and is the official language in six African countries: Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe and Equatorial Guinea. There are Portuguese-speaking communities in most countries of Southern Africa, a mixture of Portuguese settlers and Angolans and Mozambicans who left their countries during the civil wars. A rough estimate has it that there are about 14 million people who use Portuguese as their sole mother tongue across Africa, but depending on the criteria applied, the number might be considerably higher, since many Africans speak Portuguese as a second language, in countries like Angola and Mozambique, where Portuguese is an official language, but also in countries like South Africa and Senegal, thanks to migrants coming from Portuguese-speaking countries. Some statistics claim that there are over 60 million Portuguese speakers in the continent.
In linguistics, a sprachraum is a geographical region where a common first language, with dialect varieties, or group of languages is spoken.
The Portuguese-speaking African countries, also known as Lusophone Africa, consist of six African countries in which the Portuguese language is an official language: Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe and, since 2011, Equatorial Guinea. The six countries are former colonies of the Portuguese Empire. From 1778 until independence, Equatorial Guinea was also a colony of the Spanish Empire.
Reintegrationism is the linguistic and cultural movement in Galicia which advocates for the unity of Galician and Portuguese as a single language. In other words, the movement postulates that Galician and Portuguese languages not only shared a common origin and literary tradition, but that they are in fact variants of the same language even today. According to this, Galicia should re-integrate into the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.
Portuguese is the only official language of Angola, but 46 other languages are spoken in the country, mostly Bantu languages.
ACOLOP is an Olympic-related non-profit organization officially established on June 8, 2004, in Lisbon and has been approved by International Olympic Committee. It was founded by the national Olympic committees (NOCs) of Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, Guinea-Bissau, Macau, Mozambique, Portugal and São Tomé and Príncipe; it also includes Equatorial Guinea as an associate member. In April 2006, India and Sri Lanka were admitted also as associate members, based on their common historical past with Portugal.
Mozambican Portuguese refers to the varieties of Portuguese spoken in Mozambique. Portuguese is the official language of the country.
Guinean Portuguese is the variety of Portuguese spoken in Guinea-Bissau, where it is the official language.
Macanese Portuguese is a Portuguese dialect spoken in Macau, where Portuguese is co-official with Cantonese. Macanese Portuguese is spoken, to some degree either natively or as a second language, by roughly 2.3% of the population of Macau. It should not be confused with Macanese language, a distinct Portuguese creole that developed in Macau during the Portuguese rule.
Portuguese is the third most spoken language of the Americas, and the second most spoken language in South America. It is the sole official language of Brazil and is a co-official language of several regional organizations, notably Mercosul, UNASUL, ACTO, CELAC, the Rio Group, and ALADI.
The Portuguese Language Orthographic Agreement of 1990 is an international treaty whose purpose is to create a unified orthography for the Portuguese language, to be used by all the countries that have Portuguese as their official language. It was signed in Lisbon, on 16 December 1990, at the end of a negotiation, begun in 1980, between the Sciences Academy of Lisbon and the Brazilian Academy of Letters. The signatories included official representatives from all of the Portuguese-language countries except East Timor, which was under Indonesian occupation at the time, but later adhered to the Agreement, in 2004.
Galician, also known as Galego, is a Western Ibero-Romance language. Around 2.4 million people have at least some degree of competence in the language, mainly in Galicia, an autonomous community located in northwestern Spain, where it has official status along with Spanish. The language is also spoken in some border zones of the neighbouring Spanish regions of Asturias and Castile and León, as well as by Galician migrant communities in the rest of Spain, in Latin America including Puerto Rico, the United States, Switzerland and elsewhere in Europe.
The Portuguese language is spoken in Asia by small communities either in regions which formerly served as colonies to Portugal, notably Macau and East Timor where the language is official albeit not widely spoken, Lusophone immigrants, notably the Brazilians in Japan or by some Afro-Asians and Luso-Asians. In Larantuka, Indonesia and Daman and Diu, India, Portuguese has a religious connotation, according to Damanese Portuguese-Indian Association, there are 10 – 12,000 Portuguese speakers in the territory.
The official language of Guinea-Bissau is Portuguese, which was spoken by 32.1% of the population according to the 2009 census. It is the language of instruction in schools, the language of literary production, the written press, legislation and administration.
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