Top 7 similarities between English and Portuguese
Portuguese is a Romance language originating in the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. It is the sole official language of Portugal, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Brazil, while having co-official language status in East Timor, Equatorial Guinea, and Macau. A Portuguese-speaking person or nation is referred to as “Lusophone” (lusófono). As the result of expansion during colonial times, a cultural presence of Portuguese and Portuguese creole speakers are also found around the world.
Let's now see the top seven similarities between English and Portuguese
1- Portuguese grammar. In general, both languages use similar terminology and conceptualize grammar and syntax the same way.
2- Portuguese and English share what is called “open” classes, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. They are called open word classes because there’s a constant inflow of new words besides the elimination of older ones that are no longer in use.
3- Similarly, both languages also share what is classified as the “closed” word classes (or “function words”), namely articles, prepositions, pronouns, numerals, and conjunctions, that doesn’t change.
4- Apart from a few exceptions, by default, both English and Portuguese form the plural by adding an -s at the end of nouns, the so-called s-plural.
5- Because some words in English come from the same root as some words in Portuguese (mostly Latin words), the word will be similar in both languages, with a minor difference in the suffix
6- Portuguese and English are both members of the Indo-European language family—Portuguese belongs to the Romance branch (along with Spanish, Italian and French) and English belongs to the Germanic branch (which also includes German, Dutch, and Norwegian).
7- English and Portuguese are “genetically” similar not just because they are distant relatives, but also because they also evolved in the same language area, a geographical area of intense linguistic exchange. And languages that evolve in the same linguistic area tend to converge towards each other, even if they are completely unrelated.
Finally,
Portuguese is part of the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia and the County of Portugal and has kept some Celtic phonology and its lexicon. With approximately 215 to 220 million native speakers and 50 million second-language speakers, Portuguese has approximately 270 million total speakers. It is usually listed as the sixth-most spoken language and the third-most spoken European language in the world in terms of native speakers.
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