Portuguese (Brazil)
The one with all the speakers
Four out of five Portuguese speakers are Brazilian, which makes the European variety the minority one.
- Brazil has around 215 million speakers to Portugal's ten. The centre of the language is not in Europe.
- Brazilian Portuguese keeps its unstressed vowels open, which is why learners find it much easier to hear than the European variety.
- Você has replaced tu in most of the country, and the verb forms went with it.
- It took thousands of words from Tupi and from West African languages, especially for food, plants and place names.
- Object pronouns move to the front of the verb where Europe puts them behind, which is one of the clearest structural splits.
Two hundred and ten million speakers, open vowels, and music built into the sentence rhythm. The hundred commonest words cover half of everything said out loud: the best ratio on this site. Carnival, bossa nova, football commentary as an art form, and two hundred million people famous for adopting anyone who tries: the warmest return on effort in this list.
Where Portuguese (Brazil) parts company with the languages closest to it, and what each one would cost you from here.
Portuguese (Brazil) vs Portuguese → Portuguese (Brazil) vs Spanish → Portuguese (Brazil) vs French →
Reading about a language is not speaking it. These are the places I would go to find someone to speak Portuguese (Brazil) with.
The Portuguese (Brazil) Passepartout is not out yet
Five printed pages that carry you through the arrival. Leave your address and you hear about it first, and nothing else.
Leaving takes one click.
Short stories written inside a measured vocabulary, with the word lists and nothing invented for a textbook.