Brazilian Portuguese

Brazilian Portuguese
português do Brasil português brasileiro
Native to	Brazil
Native speakers	203,080,756 (2022 – Official Census)[1]
Language family	Indo-European Italic Latino-Faliscan Latin Romance Western Romance Ibero-Romance West-Iberian Galician-Portuguese Portuguese Brazilian Portuguese
Dialects	Amazofonia Central Northeastern Cearense Caipira Mineiro Gaúcho Florianopolitan Paulistano Curitibano Fluminense
Writing system	Latin (Portuguese alphabet) Portuguese Braille
Official status
Official language in	Brazil
Recognised minority language in	French Guiana  Paraguay  Suriname  Uruguay  Colombia
Regulated by	Academia Brasileira de Letras
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Glottolog	braz1246
Linguasphere	51-AAA-ah
IETF	pt-BR[2][3]
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Brazilian Portuguese (Portuguese: português brasileiro; [poʁtuˈɡejz bɾaziˈlejɾu]) is the set of varieties of the Portuguese language native to Brazil and the most influential form of Portuguese worldwide.^[4][5] It is spoken by almost all of the 203 million inhabitants of Brazil and spoken widely across the Brazilian diaspora, today consisting of about two million Brazilians who have emigrated to other countries. With a population of over 203 million,^[1] Brazil is by far the world's largest Portuguese-speaking nation and the only one in the Americas.

Brazilian Portuguese differs, particularly in phonology and prosody, from varieties spoken in Portugal and Portuguese-speaking African countries. In these latter countries, the language tends to have a closer connection to contemporary European Portuguese, partly because Portuguese colonial rule ended much more recently there than in Brazil, and partly due to the heavy indigenous and diasporic African influence on Brazilian Portuguese.^[6] Despite this difference between the spoken varieties, Brazilian and European Portuguese barely differ in formal writing^[7] and remain mutually intelligible. However, due to the two reasons mentioned above, the gap between the written, formal language and the spoken language is much wider in Brazilian Portuguese than in European Portuguese.^[6]

In 1990, the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP), which included representatives from all countries with Portuguese as the official language, reached an agreement on the reform of the Portuguese orthography to unify the two standards then in use by Brazil on one side and the remaining Portuguese-speaking countries on the other. This spelling reform went into effect in Brazil on 1 January 2009. In Portugal, the reform was signed into law by the President on 21 July 2008 allowing for a six-year adaptation period, during which both orthographies co-existed. All of the CPLP countries have signed the reform. In Brazil, this reform has been in force since January 2016. Portugal and other Portuguese-speaking countries have since begun using the new orthography.

Regional varieties of Brazilian Portuguese, while remaining mutually intelligible, may diverge from each other in matters such as vowel pronunciation and speech intonation.^[8]