Wikipedia:Today's featured article/October 27, 2004

Portuguese is a Romance language predominantly spoken in Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Mozambique and East Timor. With more than 200 million native speakers, Portuguese is one of the few languages spoken all over the world. In terms of speakers, Portuguese is the fifth or sixth mother tongue language in the world. The language was spread worldwide in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as Portugal created the first and the longest lived modern-world colonial and commercial empire (1415–1975), spanning from Brazil in the Americas to Macau in China and Japan. As a result, Portuguese is now the official language of several independent countries and is widely spoken or studied as a second language in many others. There are still more than 20 Portuguese Creole languages. It is an important minority language in Andorra, Luxembourg, Goa and Namibia. Large Portuguese-speaking immigrant communities exist in many cities around the world, including Paris in France and Boston, New Bedford, and Newark in the United States. (more...)

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