Portuguese

The Portuguese language is a member of the Romance group of the Italic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages. It is the mother tongue of about 170 million people, chiefly in Portugal and the Portuguese islands in the Atlantic (11 million speakers); in Brazil (154 million speakers); and in Portugal's former overseas provinces in Africa and Asia (about 5 million speakers). Although the Portuguese spoken in Portugal differs to some extent from the Portuguese spoken in Brazil–with reference to pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary–the differences are not major.