Portuguese

Portuguese belongs to the Romance group of the Italic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages. It is the first language of about 170 million people, chiefly in Portugal, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, Sao Tome & Principe, Angola, and Mozambique.

Portuguese is a descendant of the vernacular Latin brought to the Iberian peninsula by the soldiers and colonists of ancient Rome. The Portuguese spoken in Lisbon and Coimbra gave rise to the standard Portuguese of today. Although the greater part of the Portuguese vocabulary comes from Latin, a number of words have also been absorbed from Arabic, French, and Italian.