Portuguese dialects

Portuguese dialects are the mutually intelligible variations of the Portuguese language in Portuguese-speaking countries and other areas holding some degree of cultural bond with the language. Portuguese has two standard forms of writing and numerous regional spoken variations, with often large phonological and lexical differences.
In Portugal, the language is regulated by the Sciences Academy of Lisbon, Class of Letters and its national dialect is called European Portuguese. This written variation is the one preferred by Portuguese ex-colonies in Africa and Asia, including Cabo Verde, Mozambique, Angola, Timor-Leste, Macau and Goa. The form of Portuguese used in Brazil is regulated by the Brazilian Academy of Letters and is known as Brazilian Portuguese.
Differences between European and Brazilian written forms of Portuguese occur in a similar way, and are often compared to, those of British English and American, though spelling divergencies were generally believed to occur with a little greater frequency in the two Portuguese written dialects until a new standard orthography came into full effect in the 2010s. Differences in syntax and word construction, not directly related to spelling, are also observed. Furthermore, there were attempts to unify the two written variations, the most recent of them being the Orthographic Agreement of 1990, which only began to take effect in the 2000s and is still under implementation in some countries. This and previous reforms faced criticism by people who say they are unnecessary or inefficient or even that they create more differences instead of reducing or eliminating them.
The differences between the various spoken Portuguese dialects are mostly in phonology, in the frequency of usage of certain grammatical forms, and especially in the distance between the formal and informal levels of speech. Lexical differences are numerous but largely confined to "peripheral" words, such as plants, animals, and other local items, with little impact in the core lexicon.
Dialectal deviations from the official grammar are relatively few. As a consequence, all Portuguese dialects are mutually intelligible although for some of the most extremely divergent pairs, the phonological changes may make it difficult for speakers to understand rapid speech.

Main subdivisions

Europe

The dialects of Portugal can be divided into two major groups:

The southern and central dialects are broadly characterized by preserving the distinction between and, and by the tendency to monophthongize ei and ou to and. They include the dialect of the capital, Lisbon, but it has some peculiarities of its own. Although the dialects of the Atlantic archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira have unique characteristics, as well, they can also be grouped with the southern dialects.
The northern dialects are characterized by preserving the pronunciation of ei and ou as diphthongs,, and by somewhat having sometimes merged with . They include the dialect of Porto, Portugal's second largest city.

Within each of these regions, however, is further variation, especially in pronunciation. For example, in Lisbon and its vicinity, the diphthong ei is centralized to instead of being monophthongized, as in the south.
It is usually believed that the dialects of Brazil, Africa, and Asia are derived mostly from those of central and southern Portugal.

Barranquenho

In the Portuguese town of Barrancos, a dialect of Portuguese heavily influenced by Southern Spanish dialects, known as barranquenho is spoken by a small community of 1500 people.

South America

Brazilian dialects can be divided into northern and southern groups, the northern dialects tending to slightly more open pre-stressed vowels. The dialects of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro have had some influence on the rest of the country in Brazil during the occupation of the territory, and through economic influence in the country. However, migration from the Northern states to the Southern states points to the two-way nature of the phenomenon. Local culture also plays important roles in the dialect-region sinergy throughout time. Speakers of what is for times called the Gaúcho accent, have been found to hold the accent as representative at remarkable level compared to other dialects. Also, considerable groups of people in inland cities of the three southern states carry noticeable German accent in their speech, which also applies to languages like Italian or Polish. Phenomena like internal migration, government policy, external pressure and socio-economic dynamics are some drivers that allow for proper understanding of the overwhelmingly complex development of the language, and the country, up to, and arguably most importantly for the current state of things, the 20th century. A convoluted process that was somehow encoded through, and into the language, not always in writing.
Between Brazilian Portuguese, particularly in its most informal varieties, and European Portuguese, there can be noticeable differences in grammar, aside from the differences in pronunciation and vocabulary. The most prominent ones concern the placement of clitic pronouns, and the use of subject pronouns as objects in the third person. Non-standard inflections are also common in colloquial Brazilian Portuguese.

Africa, Asia and Oceania

For historical reasons, the dialects of Africa are generally closer to those of Portugal than the Brazilian dialects, but in some aspects of their phonology, especially the pronunciation of unstressed vowels, they resemble Brazilian Portuguese more than European Portuguese. They have not been studied as exhaustively as European and Brazilian Portuguese.
Asian Portuguese dialects are similar to the African ones and so are generally close to those of Portugal. In Macau, the syllable onset rhotic is pronounced as a voiced uvular fricative or an uvular trill.

Notable features of some dialects

Many dialects have special characteristics. Most of the differences are seen in phonetics and phonology, and here are some of the more prominent:

Conservative

In some regions of northern Portugal and Brazil, the digraph ou still denotes a falling diphthong, but it has been monophthongized to by most speakers of Portuguese.
In the dialects of Alto-Minho and Trás-os-Montes, the digraph ch still denotes the affricate, as in Galicia, but for most speakers, it has merged with.
Some dialects of northern Portugal still contrast the predorsodental sibilants c/''ç and z'' with apicoalveolar sibilants s and s, with minimal pairs such as passo "step" and paço "palace" or coser "to sew" and cozer "to cook", which are homophones in most dialects. The other dialects of northern Portugal that have lost this distinction have apicoalveolar sibilants instead of the predorsodental fricatives, found in all southern dialects of Portugal as well as in Brazil. In those dialects, they also appear in syllable codas instead of the realizations that can be observed in all southern dialects.
In northern Portugal, the pronoun vós and its associated verb forms are still in use.
In Alentejo and parts of the Algarve, one finds word-final where standard EP has, a feature shared with BP.
Also in Brazil, Alentejo and the Algarve, progressive constructions are formed with the gerund form of verbs instead of a followed by the infinitive that one finds in most dialects of Portugal: está chovendo vs. está a chover.
Innovative
In central and southern Portugal, the diphthong is monophthongized to. The nasal diphthong is often monophthongized to as well.
In and near Lisbon, and are pronounced and, respectively. Furthermore, stressed is pronounced or before a palato-alveolar or a palatal consonant followed by another vowel.
In the dialect of the Beiras in central Portugal, the sibilant occurs at the end of words, before another word which starts with a vowel, instead of.
In northern Portugal, the phoneme has a velar allophone at the end of words.
In the dialects of Beira Baixa , Northern Portalegre and Far Western Algarve and São Miguel Island in the Azores, the near-front rounded vowel replaces, in a process similar to the one that originated the French u.. These are the only Galician-Portuguese and Ibero-Romance dialects to have these phonemes and they are in common with Gallo-Romance ones, which differentiate them from all the other Galician-Portuguese and Ibero-Romance dialects.
Micaelense Portuguese also features other sounds in its vowel inventory that is unique to all Portuguese dialects. The Micaelense vowel front rounded vowel replaces the Standard European Portuguese close-mid back rounded vowel in words spelt with ou/oi, as in outra or boi. Although all Azorean dialects are usually grouped together as a whole, these two characteristics are emblematic mostly of Micaelense Portuguese only, and is not the case in the way speakers of Azorean dialects from the other eight islands speak. However both and phonemes are also present in the some parts of other islands, in Terceira, Graciosa, Eastern Pico, Flores and Corvo, but are totally absent in the islands of Santa Maria, Faial, São Jorge and Western Pico.
In northern Portugal, the close vowels and may be pronounced as diphthongs, such as in "Porto", pronounced, "quê":, "hoje": or even
Some dialects of southern Portugal have gerund forms that inflect for person and number: em chegandos, em chegândemos, em chegandem. They are not used in writing.
There are some dialectal differences in how word final is realized. In Brazilian Portuguese, it is always pronounced. In Portugal, it is usually most audible when at the end of an utterance. In other contexts, it may be realized not at all or as mere labialization of the preceding consonant. The northern dialects tend to maintain it in most contexts. For instance, a sentence like o meu irmão comprou um carro novo would be pronounced as or in those dialects. In the Lisbon dialect the last two words would instead be pronounced,, or. In southern Portugal, word final and are also affected so in Alentejo, the same sentence would sound . In the southernmost region of the country, the Algarve, the vowel is completely lost:.
In most of Brazil, syllable-final is vocalized to, which causes mau "bad" and mal "badly" to become homophones. Similarly, degrau "step" and jornal "journal" rhyme, which results in false plurals such as degrais "steps", by analogy with correct plural jornais. In the caipira dialect, and in parts of Goiás and Minas Gerais, syllable-final is instead merged with, pronounced as an alveolar approximant in the Caipira way.
The pronunciation of syllable-initial and syllable-final r varies considerably with dialect. See Guttural R in Portuguese, for details. Syllable-initial ⟨r⟩ and doubled ⟨rr⟩ are pronounced as a guttural in most cities in Portugal, but as a traditional trill in rural Portugal. In Brazil, the sound is normally pronounced as an unvoiced guttural, which is also used for ⟨r⟩ at the end of syllables. In the northern dialects of Brazil, ⟨r⟩ at the end of words is normally silent or barely pronounced, it is kept, however, in most southern dialects, except in infinitives, where it tends to be omitted everywhere. In Macau, where Portuguese is spoken mostly as a second language, initial and intervocalic "r" is sometimes replaced with a diphthong, and ⟨r⟩ at the end of words is sometimes silent.
Some speakers of São Tomé and Príncipe produce the vibratory alveolar consonant in positions that do not exist in the Portuguese spoken in Brazil and Portugal. In addition, there is still the voiced uvular fricative as a variant that clearly distinguishes two generations of Portuguese speakers, those under 39 years old and those over 40 years old, or those born before or after the independence of the country.
Varieties in the Portuguese spoken in Uruguay share many similarities with the countryside dialects of the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, such as the denasalization of final unstressed nasal vowels, replacement of lateral palatal /ʎ/ with semivowel /j/, no raising of final unstressed /e/, alveolar trill /r/ instead of the guttural R, and lateral realization of coda /l/ instead of L-vocalization. Some of these sounds do not exist in Portugal.
In Guinea-Bissau, "the final ‘l’ seems weaker than in Portugal, even giving the impression of that there is a minimal pause between the preceding vowel and it, as in 'Senegal', which comes out like ". There is also height neutralization between middle vowels and, therefore, "if say 'he', we seem to hear 'he', and vice versa".
The close central vowel /ɨ/ occurs only at final, unstressed syllables, e.g. presidente /pɾeziˈdẽtɨ/ in Angola. Furthermore, many Angolans usually replace the consonant /ɲ/ with , for example, "ninho" , nasalizing the vowel that precedes it.
The pronunciation of syllable-final s/x/z also varies with dialect. See Portuguese phonology for details. Portugal and Rio de Janeiro favor, both before a consonant and finally. Most other parts of Brazil favor, but in the Northeast, is often heard before consonants, especially .
In the Northeast of Brazil and, to an increasing extent, in Rio de Janeiro and elsewhere, is inserted before final in a final-stressed word, which makes mas "but" and mais "more" homonyms, both pronounced or. Other affected examples are faz "he does", dez "ten", nós "we", voz "voice", luz "light", Jesus "Jesus", etc. Related forms like fazem, vozes, nosso are unaffected since is no longer final.
In Mozambique at the end of words ending in 'e' it changes to 'i' instead of 'ɨ' as in Portugal, as well as in Brazil. Mozambicans also suppress the final /r/ phoneme and the suppression of unaccented vowels is not as strong as in Portugal.
In Cape Verde /l/ is laminal dental , i.e., it is pronounced with the tip of the tongue touching the upper teeth. It is similar to the "l" sound in Spanish, French or German. The "l" sound in Portugal is velarized alveolar , i.e., that is, it is pronounced with the tip of the tongue touching the alveoli, well behind the upper incisor teeth, with the tongue curved, with a concavity facing upwards.
In most of Brazil, are palatalized to when they are followed by. Common sources of are the unstressed ending -e, as in gente "people" and de "of", and the epenthetic in words such as advogado "lawyer". Prefixes de-, des- and dez- vary from word to word and from speaker to speaker between and.
Informal Brazilian Portuguese makes major changes in its use of pronouns:
*Informal tu is dropped entirely in most regions along with all second-person singular verbal inflections. When tu survives, it is used with third-person inflections.
*Clitic te survives as the normal clitic object pronoun corresponding to você.
*Clitic pronouns almost always precede the verb. Post-verbal clitics and mesoclisis are seen only in formal contexts.
*Possessives seu, sua virtually always mean "your". To say "his, her", constructions like o carro dele "his car" or o carro dela "her car" are used.
*Third-person clitics o, a, os, as and combined clitics like mo, no-lo are virtually never heard in speech. Instead, the clitics are simply omitted, especially to refer to objects; or a subject pronoun is placed after the verb: Eu levo "I'll get it"; Vi ele "I saw him".
In East Timor, the phoneme /ʒ/ sometimes realized as , sometimes as , is typical of the Creole of Malacca and Singapore and also the Creole of Bidau and the same realization was also found of Portuguese spoken on the island, such as ʒ > z: já ~ ; vigésimo ~ ~ ~ .