History of Portuguese
The Portuguese language developed in the Western Iberian Peninsula from Latin spoken by Roman soldiers and colonists starting in the 3rd century BC. Old Galician, also known as Medieval Portuguese, began to diverge from other Romance languages after the Roman Empire and the Germanic invasions, also known as barbarian invasions, in the 5th century, and started appearing in written documents around the 9th century. By the 13th century, Old Portuguese had its own literature and began to split into two languages. However, the debate of whether Galician and Portuguese are nowadays varieties of the same language, much like American English or British English, is still present. In all aspects—phonology, morphology, lexicon and syntax—Portuguese is essentially the result of an organic evolution of Vulgar Latin with some influences from other languages, namely the native Gallaecian and Lusitanian languages spoken prior to the Roman domination.
Social history
Romanization
Arriving on the Iberian Peninsula in 218 BC, the ancient Romans brought with them Latin, from which all Romance languages descend. The language was spread by arriving Roman soldiers, settlers and merchants, who built Roman cities mostly near the settlements of previous civilizations. Later, the inhabitants of the cities of Lusitania and the rest of Romanized Iberia were recognized as citizens of Rome.Roman control of the western part of Hispania was not consolidated until the campaigns of Augustus in 26 BC. Although the western territories to the south of the Tagus River were conquered only after the victory of Licinius Crassus in the year 93 BC, only an estimated four hundred words of the native languages persist in modern Portuguese. After 200 years of wars, first with the Carthaginians in the Eastern part of the peninsula, and then with the local inhabitants, Emperor Augustus conquered the whole peninsula, which was named Hispania. He then divided it into three provinces: Hispania Tarraconensis, Hispania Baetica, and Lusitania, the latter of which included most of modern Portugal. At the end of the 3rd century, Emperor Diocletian split Tarraconensis into three parts, creating the adjacent province of Gallaecia, which geographically enclosed the remaining part of Portugal, and modern-day Galicia in the northwestern region of Spain.
Iberian Romance
Between AD 409 and 711, as the Roman Empire was collapsing, the Iberian Peninsula was invaded by Germanic tribes, mainly Suevi and Visigoths, who largely absorbed the Roman culture and language of the peninsula; however, since the Roman schools and administration were closed, the Vulgar Latin language of ordinary people was left free to evolve on its own and the uniformity of the language across the Iberian Peninsula broke down. In the north-western part of the peninsula, Vulgar Latin began to develop local characteristics, becoming what linguists today call Galician-Portuguese. The Germanic languages influenced Galician-Portuguese by introducing words often linked to the military like guerra or laverca, placenames such as Resende, animals like ganso, texugo, human feelings such as orgulho, verbs like brigar, suffixes like reguengo and everyday objects such as frasco.From 711, with the Moorish invasion of the Iberian Peninsula in the Umayyad conquest of the Visigothic Kingdom in Hispania, Arabic was adopted as the administrative language in the conquered regions. However, much of the population continued to speak the Latin-derived Romance dialects, now referred to collectively as Andalusi Romance by modern linguists, or as Mozarabic popularly. The Almohad conquest of al-Andalus led to the emigration of Andalusi Christians from southern Iberia, speakers of Andalusi Arabic and Romance, to the Christian north, especially to the Tagus valley. The main lasting effect of Arabic influence on Romance speech is lexical. Modern Portuguese has anywhere from 400 up to 800 words of Arabic origin, especially relating to food, agriculture and the crafts, which have no cognates in other Romance languages except in Spanish from which, in fact, Portuguese borrowed many of its Arabic-derived words. The Arabic influence is also visible in place names, especially in the southern provinces, such as the Algarve, Alfama and Fátima.
The oldest surviving records containing written Galician-Portuguese are documents from the 9th century. In these official documents, bits of Galician-Portuguese found their way into texts that were written in Latin. Today, this phase is known as "Proto-Portuguese" simply because the earliest of these documents are from the former County of Portugal, although Portuguese and Galician were still a single language. This period lasted until the 12th century.
The lyric period
What modern scholars call Galician-Portuguese was originally the native language of the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, which was founded in 910 and included the northern part of present-day Portugal. It appears to have also been used regularly in other Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula as the language for lyric song. It was employed by poets from throughout the non-Basque medieval Christian kingdoms of the peninsula; including Leon, Castile, Aragon and Catalonia. It is also the language used in the Cantigas de Santa Maria. These songs were traditionally attributed to Alfonso X, a Castilian king, though more recent work shows that they must have been composed in collaboration with many translators, poets and musicians.The divergence of Galician-Portuguese
Portugal was formally recognized as an independent kingdom in 1143 by the Kingdom of León, into which Galicia was incorporated at the time, with Afonso Henriques as its first king. In 1290, King Diniz created the first Portuguese university, in Coimbra and decreed that the language of the Portuguese, then simply called the "Vulgar language" should be used in preference to Latin and known as the "Portuguese language". In 1296, Portuguese was adopted by the royal chancellary and was used not only in poetry but also when writing law and in notaries. In the first period of "Old Portuguese", the language came gradually to be used in official documents. With the political separation of the County of Portugal from Galicia, Galician-Portuguese lost its unity and slowly became two increasingly distinct languages. This growing difference accelerated when the kingdom of León was united with Castile and Galician was increasingly influenced by Castilian. Meanwhile, the southern variant of Galician-Portuguese became the modern Portuguese language within the Kingdom of Portugal and its empire.Portuguese outside of Portugal
Portuguese is the second most spoken Romance language, behind Spanish, partially because of the large population of speakers in Brazil, where it is the national language. There are many respects in which Brazilian Portuguese differs from European Portuguese in sound and structure.Another notable difference is the presence of more audible vowels in Brazilian Portuguese. Beyond this, the nuances of spoken versions of both language practices continue to evolve as generations of speakers age and the world continues to globalize, leading to changes in language practices internationally. Portuguese has been made an official language of Mozambique, Angola, the Cape Verde Islands, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Sao Tome and Principe, East Timor and Macao.
Standardization during the Renaissance
The end of "Old Portuguese" was marked by the publication of the Cancioneiro Geral by Garcia de Resende, in 1516."Modern Portuguese" developed from the early 16th century to the present. During the Renaissance, scholars and writers borrowed many words from Classical Latin and ancient Greek, which increased the complexity of the Portuguese lexicon. Most literate Portuguese speakers were also literate in Latin and so they easily adopted Latin words into their writing in Portuguese. As with most other European vernacular languages, the standardization of the Portuguese language was propelled by the development of the printing press. In 1536, Fernão de Oliveira published his Grammatica da lingoagem portuguesa in Lisbon, the first Portuguese grammar. The work of this heterodox Dominican priest, philologist and mariner was soon followed. In 1540, João de Barros crown officer published his Gramática da Língua Portuguesa along with moral dialogues and basics of the Catholic Church to help teaching young aristocrats. This second work, illustrated with woodcuts, is considered the world's first printed illustrated textbook.
Expansion during the age of discovery
The second period of Old Portuguese covers the time from the 14th to the 16th centuries and is marked by the Portuguese discoveries of the 15th and 16th centuries. Colonisers, traders and missionaries spread the Portuguese language to many regions in Africa, Asia and The Americas. Today most Portuguese speakers live in Brazil, the biggest former colony of Portugal. By the mid-16th century, Portuguese had become a lingua franca in Asia and Africa, used for not only colonial administration and trade but also communication between local officials and Europeans of all nationalities. In Ceylon, several kings became fluent speakers of Portuguese, and nobles often took Portuguese names. The spread of the language was helped by its association with the Catholic missionary efforts, which led to its being called Cristão in many places. The Nippo Jisho, a Japanese–Portuguese dictionary written in 1603, was a product of Jesuit missionary activity in Japan. The language continued to be popular in parts of Asia until the 19th century, despite the severe measures taken by the Dutch to abolish it in Ceylon and Indonesia.Some Portuguese-speaking Christian communities in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Indonesia preserved their language even after they were isolated from Portugal. The language has largely changed in these communities and has evolved through the centuries into several Portuguese creoles. Also, a considerable number of words of Portuguese origin are found in Tetum, the national language of East Timor, such as lee "to read", aprende "to learn" and tenke "to have to". Portuguese words entered the lexicons of many other languages, such as pan "bread" in Japanese, sepatu "shoe" in Indonesian, keju "cheese" in Malay and meza "table" in Swahili. Due to the vast expanse of the Portuguese Empire, there are also numerous words that entered English such as albino, baroque, mosquito, potato, savvy and zebra.
Historical sound changes
In both morphology and syntax, Portuguese represents an organic transformation of Latin without the direct intervention of any foreign language. The sounds, grammatical forms, and syntactical types, with a few exceptions, are derived from Latin, and almost 80% of its vocabulary is still derived from the language of Rome. Some of the changes began during the Empire, others took place later. A few words remained virtually unchanged, like carro, taberna, or even returned to a form close to the original, such as coxa – in this case, however, only the spelling looks identical: Latin ⟨x⟩ and Portuguese ⟨x⟩ designate two completely different sounds, and respectively. Learned Latinisms were formed in the late Middle Ages, due to the use of Church Latin by the Catholic Church, and during the Renaissance, when Classical antiquity in general, and Literary Latin in particular, enjoyed great prestige. Thus, for example, Latin aurum, which had originated ouro and dourado, was re-introduced as the adjective áureo. In the same way, locālem, which had evolved to lugar, was later reintroduced as the more erudite local. Many erudite Greek and Latin words and combining elements were also introduced or reintroduced in this way. Because of this, many of these words are still familiar to Portuguese speakers.Medieval Galician-Portuguese phonology
Galician-Portuguese had seven oral vowels and five nasal vowels. The vowels were raised to in unstressed syllables, even in final syllables ; e.g. vento, quente. However, the distribution is still dubious and under discussion; some either stating that these two vowels were allophones and in complementary distribution, Alemanha, manhã ; or stating they were not allophones and under distribution like in European Portuguese nowadays, Alemanha, manhã.Modern Portuguese phonology
Around the 16th century, according to Fernão de Oliveira's Grammatica da lingoagem portuguesa, in Chapter VIII, and would already be considered as different phonemes. As a result, the vowel phonology would consist about an 8-oral-vowel system and a 5-nasal-vowel system ; possibly resulting that would be raised to in unstressed syllables. Prosodic change in the Classical to Modern pronunciations of Portuguese has been studied through a statistical analysis in evolution of written texts in the 16th and 17th centuries.Contemporary Portuguese phonology
From the 16th century to now, Brazilian and European varieties started evolving separately, resulting in meaningful differences regarding vowel phonology. Brazilian Portuguese conserves the 8-oral-vowel system, but European and African varieties innovated by creating a 9th new vowel:, generally used when "e" is unstressed.- European Portuguese : it has taken a step further: are raised to in unstressed syllables, except by some words with double-consonant sequences where the first consonant was mute or not, opening the vowels to. E.g. abstenção, objeto, direção, internet. However, notice setembro is pronounced, although it could formerly be spelled septembro. These exceptions apply to unchanged words before the 20th century spelling reforms, because such "mute" consonants would not be noticed as they once existed. The Lisbon variety, has merged to before palatal consonants; e.g. "brasileiro", "coelho", "sexta-feira".
- Brazilian Portuguese : are raised to in middle unstressed syllables, and to in final unstressed syllables. In words with consonant sequences, the vowels are opened to in stressed syllables and raised to in unstressed syllables. E.g. abstenção, objeto, internet.
- Angolan Portuguese : are raised to in middle unstressed syllables, and raised to in final unstressed syllables. In Angolan Portuguese, unlike European Portuguese and Brazilian varieties, merge in complementary distribution to, and only appears as an allophone in unstressed last syllables. In words with consonant sequences, the vowels are opened to. E.g. abstenção, objeto, internet.
Palatalization
Palatalization of voiceless stops—the consonants and assimilated with the high vowels and, and with the semivowel.centum > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese cento > Modern Portuguese centum > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese cen > Modern Portuguese cem ~ facere > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese fazer > Modern Portuguese fazer ~A more ancient evolution was
- Proto-Italo-Western Romance fortiam > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese força > Modern Portuguese força
Voicing
Voicing—some consonants did not disappear but rather evolved with voiceless stops becoming voiced stops and voiced stops becoming voiced fricatives in certain positions, a common type of sound change:mūtum > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese mudo > Modern Portuguese mudo lacum > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese lago > Modern Portuguese lago locustam > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese lagosta > Modern Portuguese lagosta ~ ~Lenition
Lenition—consonant clusters, especially long consonants, were simplified:guttam > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese gota > Modern Portuguese gota quattuor > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese quatro > Modern Portuguese quatro peccāre > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese pecar > Modern Portuguese pecar ~Phoneme /b/ evolved as . The phoneme was generally derived either from an allophone of Latin between vowels or from the Latin phoneme corresponding to the letter ⟨v⟩.habēre > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese haver > Modern Portuguese haver ~ fabam > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese fava > Modern Portuguese fava amābam, amābat > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese amava > Modern Portuguese amava ~ lībrum > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese livro > Modern Portuguese livro parabolam > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese paravla, palavra > Modern Portuguese palavra ~
Elision
Elision—the consonants and of Vulgar Latin were deleted between vowels, after which sometimes the vowels around them coalesced, or an epenthetic semivowel was introduced between them. Original geminates, persisted, later becoming single,.dolōrem > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese door > Modern Portuguese dor ; borrowed doloroso bonum > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese bõo > Modern Portuguese bom ānellum > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese ãelo > Modern Portuguese elo ; borrowed anel ~ ~ salīre > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese sair > Modern Portuguese sair ~ cōlāre > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese coar > Modern Portuguese coar ~ notulam > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese nódoa > Modern Portuguese nódoa ~ catēnam > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese cadẽa > Modern Portuguese cadeia ~ ~ ~ ; borrowed cadena ~ ~Nasalization
In medieval Galician-Portuguese, and between vowels or at the end of a syllable became the velar nasal phoneme, leading to regressive nasalization of the preceding vowel as a secondary phonetic effect. This consonant was then at a later stage lost or modified in Portuguese, although it was retained in Galician in some words.This change produced one of the most striking phonological differences between Portuguese and Spanish. The history of nasal vowels in hiatus with a previous or following vowel is complex, depending on the identity of the two vowels and the position of the stress.
1. If the vowels were near each other, they collapsed into a single vowel :bonum > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese bõo > Modern Portuguese bom calentem > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese caẽte > Modern Portuguese quente ~
- Proto-Ibero-Romance ganātum > Galician-Portuguese gãado > Modern Portuguese gado lānam > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese lãa > Modern Portuguese lã ~
3. If the second vowel was more open, or as open, nasalization was lost:lūnam > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese lũa > Modern Portuguese lua . Exception: ūnam > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese ũa > Modern Portuguese uma ~ . In parts of northern Portugal, however, it is still pronounced, but now spelled uma.bonam > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese bõa > Modern Portuguese boa plēnum > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese chẽo > Modern Portuguese cheio ~ ~ ; borrowed pleno
4. If the first vowel was, however, nasalization evolved to a palatal nasal consonant, inserted between the two vowels:vīnum > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese vinho > Modern Portuguese vinho ~ rēgīnam > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese reinha > Modern Portuguese rainha ~ ~
Progressive nasalization—The spread of nasalization forward from a nasal consonant, especially. mātrem > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese mãy > Modern Portuguese mãe ~ meam > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese mia, mĩa > Modern Portuguese minha ~ ; but compare meum > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese meu > Modern Portuguese meu ad noctem > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese oonte > Modern Portuguese ontem ~ .
Epenthesis
Epenthesis—the insertion of a sound to break up a sequence of vowels: arēnam > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese arẽa > Modern Portuguese areia ~ ~ ~ ; borrowed arena gallīnam > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese galĩa > Modern Portuguese galinha ~ ~ vīnum > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese vinho > Modern Portuguese vinho ~Examples such as the former two have been used by some authors to argue that the digraph nh was a nasal approximant in medieval Portuguese, and thus its pronunciation in most dialects of Brazil and São Tomé and Príncipe is the original one.
Dissimilation
Dissimilation—Modification of a sound by the influence of neighboring sounds; similar became different over time.1. Between vowels:locustam > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese lagosta > Modern Portuguese lagosta ~ ~ campāna > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese campãa > Modern Portuguese campa ~
2. Between consonants:memorāre > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese nembrar > Modern Portuguese lembrar ; borrowed memorizar ~ animam > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese alma > Modern Portuguese alma ~ ; borrowed animado locālem > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese logar > Modern Portuguese lugar ; borrowed local ~ ~
Metathesis
Metathesis—a sound change that alters the order of phonemes in a word.Semi-vowel metathesis: prīmārium > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese primeiro > Modern Portuguese primeiro ~ ~ ; borrowed primário
Consonant metathesis in and : tenebrās > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese tẽevras > Modern Portuguese trevas ~ ; this was rare in Portuguese; borrowed tenebroso ~
Vowel metathesis:
- Proto-Romance genuculum > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Galician-Portuguese gẽolho > Modern Portuguese joelho ~ ~
Medieval sound changes
Old Portuguese had seven sibilants: lamino-alveolar affricates and ; apico-alveolar fricatives and ; palato-alveolar fricatives and, earlier ; and palato-alveolar affricate . This system was identical to the system of Old Spanish, and Portuguese followed the same path as Old Spanish in deaffricating the sibilants and into lamino-alveolar fricatives that still remained distinct from the apico-alveolar consonants. This produced a system of six fricatives and one affricate, which is still maintained in parts Minho region and northeast Portuguese province of Trás-os-Montes and in the adjacent Mirandese language; but in most places, these seven sounds have been reduced to four.Everywhere except in the above-mentioned parts of Trás-os-Montes, the lamino-alveolar and apico-alveolar fricatives merged.. In parts of northern Portugal and Galicia, they became apico-alveolars. In most of Brazil, they became lamino-alveolar consonants. In central and southern Portugal, they merged as lamino-alveolars before vowels, but as palato-alveolar elsewhere. Meanwhile, eventually lost its affrication and merged with, although is maintained throughout Trás-os-Montes and parts of Minho region.
It appears that the sound written ⟨v⟩ was at one point during the medieval period pronounced as a voiced bilabial fricative. Subsequently, it either changed into a labiodental fricative, or merged into . Also similarly to modern Spanish, the voiced stops eventually became pronounced as fricatives between vowels and after consonants, other than in the clusters . However, this change happened after the colonization of Brazil, and never affected Brazilian Portuguese.
Final unstressed was subsequently raised to. Final was eventually raised to in both Portugal and Brazil, but independently. Final unstressed was likewise raised to in Brazil, but shifted to in Portugal. In parts of Portugal, these changes have come to affect almost all unstressed instances of ; but not, nor the former sequences, nor in syllables closed by stop consonants. Hence in Portugal pesar "to weigh" but pregar "to preach" ; morar "to live", but corado "blushing", roubar "to rob". Recently in Rio de Janeiro, and have been affricated to and before, including from unstressed.
Old Portuguese had a large number of occurrences of hiatus, as a result of the loss of Latin between vowels. In the transition to modern Portuguese, these were resolved in a complex but largely regular fashion, either remaining, compressing into a single vowel, turning into a diphthong, or gaining an epenthetic consonant such as or ; see above.
Portuguese traditionally had two alveolar rhotic consonants: a flap and trill, as in Spanish. In many areas of Portugal the trill has passed into a uvular fricative. In most parts of Brazil, however, has become an unvoiced fricative, and all instances of not preceding a vowel have been likewise affected.
at the end of a syllable became heavily velarized in Portuguese. This still remains in Portugal, but in Brazil has progressed further, merging into.