Portuguese is a Romance language spoken by about 170 million people mainly in Brazil (Brasil) and Portugal. There are also Portuguese speakers in Angola, Cape Verde (Cabo Verde), East Timor (Timor-Leste), France (França), Guinea-Bissau (Guiné-Bissau), Macau (Macão), Mozambique (Moçambique), São Tomé e Principe.

The common ancestor of Portuguese and Galician first appeared in writing in legal documents and poetry in the late 12th century. The two languages began to grow apart in the 14th century. By the 16th century, Portuguese probably sounded very much as it does today. Writers and scholars deliberately adopted Latin forms of words and archaic spellings to emphasis the differences between Portuguese and Spanish.

A reformed Portuguese orthography (nova ortografia), in which words were spelled more in accordance with their pronunciation, was adopted is Portugal in 1916. A slightly modified form was adopted in Brazil in 1943 and revised in 1970.

Portugal joined the European Union in 1986. Portuguese is one of the languages of the European Parliament.