Portugal

The official language of Portugal is Portuguese, and was adopted as law by King D. Diniz in 1290. It is derived from Vulgar Latin, which was introduced in the east of the Iberian Peninsula about 2000 years ago. It is a Romantic language, closely related to Spanish, French, and Italian among others.

Being that it is spoken by 270 million people worldwide, there exist several different dialects of Portuguese that can have considerable differences in grammar, vocabulary and slang from the Portuguese spoken in Portugal.

There are two other officially recognized languages, Portuguese Sign Language, used by nearly 30,000 people, and the Mirandese language.

Mirandese, based on the Astur-Leonese, is spoken by about 15,000 people in the northeast of Portugal. It is mutually intelligible with two regional languages spoken in Spain, Asturian and Leonese.