Portuguese (portugu�s or, in full, l�ngua portuguesa) is a Western Romance language

originating in the Iberian Peninsula. It is the sole official language of Portugal,

Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Angola and S�o Tom� and Pr�ncipe.[7]
It also has co-official language status in East Timor, Equatorial Guinea and Macau
in China. As the result of expansion during colonial times, a cultural presence of
Portuguese and Portuguese creole speakers are also found in Goa, Daman and Diu in
India;[8] in Batticaloa on the east coast of Sri Lanka; in the Indonesian island of
Flores; in the Malacca state of Malaysia; and the ABC islands in the Caribbean
where Papiamento is spoken, while Cape Verdean Creole is the most widely spoken
Portuguese-based Creole. A Portuguese-speaking person or nation is referred to as
"Lusophone" (Lus�fono).

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 lexicon.[9][10] With approximately 215 to 220
million native speakers and 250 million total speakers, Portuguese is usually
listed as the sixth most natively spoken language in the world, the third-most
spoken European language in the world in terms of native speakers,[11] and the most
spoken language in the Southern Hemisphere. It is also the second-most spoken
language, after Spanish, in South America and all of Latin America, and is one of
the 10 most spoken languages in Africa[12] and is an official language of the
European Union, Mercosur, OAS, ECOWAS and the African Union. The Community of
Portuguese Language Countries is an international organization made up of all of
the world's officially Lusophone nations.