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Why is Portuguese on this site?
The words Latino and Hispanic are most associated with Spanish speaking national cultures. The fact is, Portuguese and Spanish cultures have always shared close geographic areas. The Iberian Peninsula is made up only of Spain and Portugal. They have shared a history of shared smaller cultures, like the Galacians. They have shared conquest and occupation by the Romans and the Moors and have often struggled with each other. In Europe, they share a peninsula. In America they share South America. And in Africa and Asia/Pacific, they have old colonial relationships.
Socially, linguistically and culturally the Iberian cultures share a lot. You'll find Spanish and Portuguese paired up at events like the Latin Grammys and at Universities across the world.
The Portuguese Language
In high school, I spoke Spanish with a Portuguese friend, Felipa. She spoke Portuguese to me. She never studied Spanish and I never studied Portuguese. We understood each other most of the time, even though the pronunciation was different, the accent was different and words were moved around in the sentence. Many experts consider the languages to be mutually intelligible. That requirement is often used to define dialects as opposed to separate languages. While there are many similarities, there are many difference and many false cognates.
The modern language starts to take root when Celtic tribes arrived on the peninsula around 300 BC. Around a hundred years later, Roman soldiers conquered the area. Vulgar Latin became the enforced language in the area. For several hundreds years, starting around 400 AD, invading Germanic tribes would begin to influence the language of the region. In 711, the Moors conquered Iberia and Arabic began to influence the language and people. Words like arroz(rice) became common. These combinations created Galician-Portuguese. The first written record of this language is the 12th century on a land title. In the following centuries, literature emerged.
During the age of conquest, Portugal established colonies in Asia, Africa and the Americas. Native words from each region would make their way back to Portugal. They were also subject to Spanish occupation for many decades, which allowed for Castilian to have a local impact. Modern Portuguese is based on the dialect most common in Lisbon. Luis de Camões began the standardization in 1572 when he wrone Os Lusíadas.
Today, the largest Portuguese-speaking nation is Brazil with their population at 173 million. Portugal is estimated to have 10 million people. Brazil's dialect is referred to as Brazilian Portuguese and has many distinctive differences. In areas where Brazil meets with Spanish-speaking countries, another dialect as emerged called Portuñol/Portunhol.
Today, Portuguese is the 6th largest language in the world for first-language/native speakers. Among all languages it is 8th and among Western languages, it is 3rd. Many of the Portuguese-speaking nations take part in an international community called the Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa
. Nations with Portuguese as the official language include: