Lusophone Countries

When you learn Portuguese, you are learning a language spoken across four continents. The Portuguese-speaking world — the Lusofonia — is the formal political space of the Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa (CPLP), founded in 1996, and the informal cultural space of roughly 260 million Portuguese speakers spread from Lisbon to Luanda, from São Paulo to Díli. Knowing who these speakers are and how their Portuguese differs is essential background for any serious learner.

This page is a reference overview of the nine member states of the CPLP plus Macau, with each country's name, article usage, nationality, capital, population, and distinctive linguistic features. We also cover the variety differences you will encounter as a PT-PT learner — the vocabulary, pronunciation, and clitic-placement patterns that vary across the Lusophone world.

Overview: the nine members of the CPLP

The first eight joined at the foundation of the CPLP in 1996; Guiné Equatorial joined in 2014, and its Portuguese status is somewhat symbolic — Spanish and French remain the dominant languages there.

Macau, a Special Administrative Region of China, is not a sovereign member state but is a Portuguese-speaking territory where português is still a co-official language alongside Chinese.

Portugal

No article: Vou a Portugal, Sou de Portugal, Vivo em Portugal.

Portugal is the historical homeland of the Portuguese language, but numerically a minority — only about 4% of all Portuguese speakers live in Portugal. The variety spoken here is known as PT-PT (or português europeu). Its most salient feature for learners is vowel reduction: unstressed vowels are compressed or deleted, making PT-PT sound faster and more consonantal than other varieties.

Brasil

Always with article: Vou ao Brasil, Sou do Brasil, Vivo no Brasil.

Brazil is home to more than 80% of all Portuguese speakers. The variety spoken here is PT-BR (or português brasileiro). Compared to PT-PT, PT-BR preserves vowels more fully, has different clitic placement (usually proclitic), uses você as the standard neutral second-person pronoun (where PT-PT uses tu), and has a significantly divergent lexicon for everyday items.

Angola

No article: Vou a Angola, Sou de Angola, Vivo em Angola.

Angola is the second-most-populous Lusophone country after Brazil. The variety spoken here, português de Angola, is closer to PT-PT than to PT-BR in many respects: it preserves tu in informal use, maintains enclitic pronoun placement in most cases, and shares most PT-PT vocabulary. But Angolan Portuguese has its own identity, influenced by kimbundu, umbundu, kikongo, and other Bantu languages — and a rich musical culture (semba, kuduro, kizomba) that has spread across the entire Lusophone world.

Moçambique

No article: Vou a Moçambique, Sou de Moçambique, Vivo em Moçambique.

Mozambique is linguistically complex. Portuguese is the official language and the language of education, but only a minority speak it as a first language — most people speak emakhuwa, xichangana, elomwe, or other Bantu languages natively. Mozambican Portuguese shows influence from these languages in vocabulary and some syntactic patterns. The country has produced one of the great contemporary writers in Portuguese: Mia Couto, whose prose weaves Bantu oral traditions into the Portuguese literary canon.

Cabo Verde

No article: Vou a Cabo Verde, Sou de Cabo Verde, Vivo em Cabo Verde.

The nationality cabo-verdiano is written with a hyphen — a detail worth remembering. Cape Verdean linguistic life is diglossic: Portuguese is the language of government, education, and formal writing, while crioulo cabo-verdiano (Kabuverdianu) is the mother tongue of nearly everyone and the language of everyday life. The world-famous singer Cesária Évora sang her mornas in crioulo, not in Portuguese — even though her country's name is Portuguese.

Guiné-Bissau

No article most often: Vou a Guiné-Bissau, Sou da Guiné-Bissau / de Guiné-Bissau (both heard, with and without article). The hyphen in Guiné-Bissau is part of the official name. The nationality guineense is invariable — same form for masculine and feminine.

Portuguese is the official language, but only a minority speak it fluently. The crioulo da Guiné-Bissau (Kriol) is spoken by the majority as a first or second language, and many rural communities speak various West African languages (Mandinga, Fula, Balanta) natively.

São Tomé e Príncipe

No article: Vou a São Tomé e Príncipe, Sou de São Tomé. The nationality santomense is invariable. The country has several Portuguese-based creoles (forro, angolar, lunguyê) alongside standard Portuguese.

The country's writer Francisco José Tenreiro was one of the pioneers of African poetry in Portuguese.

Timor-Leste

No article: Vou a Timor-Leste, Sou de Timor-Leste. The name is hyphenated. The nationality timorense is invariable.

Timor-Leste is the only Lusophone country in Asia. Portuguese is co-official with tétum (Tetum Prasa), a local language that has absorbed hundreds of Portuguese loanwords. The Portuguese spoken here has strong PT-PT roots (the country was a Portuguese colony until 1975), but after twenty-four years of Indonesian occupation, the community of fluent Portuguese speakers is small and the language is being actively re-introduced through education.

Guiné Equatorial

With article: Vou à Guiné Equatorial, Sou da Guiné Equatorial. (The name has no hyphen, unlike Guiné-Bissau.) The nationality equato-guineense is invariable.

Guiné Equatorial is the only former Spanish colony to join the CPLP. The decision to include Portuguese among the country's official languages was largely political, aimed at integrating the country into the Lusophone economic bloc. In practice, Spanish and French dominate, and Portuguese speakers are a small minority.

Macau

Macau was under Portuguese administration from 1557 to 1999 and retained Portuguese as a co-official language after its return to Chinese sovereignty. In practice, Portuguese is spoken by a small minority — mostly public servants, the legal profession, and descendants of the Macaense community, who speak a unique creole known as patuá macaense (increasingly endangered).

The CPLP

The Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa (Community of Portuguese Language Countries) was founded in 1996 to promote cultural, political, and economic ties among the Portuguese-speaking countries. Its summits rotate between member states, and it runs education, diplomatic, and development programs across the Lusophone world.

Lusofonia as a cultural space

Beyond its political institutions, Lusofonia is a cultural reality. Music, literature, film, and cuisine cross national borders constantly. A partial cultural map:

Regional vocabulary: the same concept, many words

One of the first things that surprises learners is that everyday objects have different names across the Lusophone world. PT-PT learners should recognize PT-BR equivalents because they appear constantly in TV, music, and online content; and African equivalents are useful when travelling or interacting with the sizeable Cape Verdean, Angolan, and Mozambican diasporas in Portugal.

Differences that matter for learners of PT-PT

If you are learning PT-PT specifically, a few practical notes about the other varieties:

• Clitic placement. In PT-PT and most African varieties, the pronoun typically comes after the verb in affirmative statements: Dou-te um livro (I give you a book). In PT-BR, it typically comes before: Eu te dou um livro. See Clitic placement for details.
• Você vs. tu. PT-PT uses tu for informal address and você as a polite-distant form (or avoids it entirely). PT-BR uses você as the neutral second-person pronoun almost everywhere. African varieties tend to follow PT-PT on this point.
• Vocabulary. The lists above are only the tip of the iceberg. Menus, transportation, and household vocabulary are the heaviest-hit categories.
• Pronunciation. PT-PT reduces vowels aggressively (pedacinho can sound like p'dac'nh); PT-BR pronounces most vowels fully. African varieties are closer to PT-PT on rhythm but have their own phonetic patterns.

Who speaks Portuguese? A summary

Total native speakers: around 230 million. Total speakers including second-language users: around 260 million. Portuguese is the sixth-most-spoken language in the world by native speakers, after Mandarin, Spanish, English, Hindi, and Arabic.

Common mistakes

Key takeaways

• The CPLP has nine member states: Portugal, Brasil, Angola, Moçambique, Cabo Verde, Guiné-Bissau, São Tomé e Príncipe, Timor-Leste, and Guiné Equatorial. Macau is a Lusophone territory but not a CPLP member.
• Most Lusophone African and Asian countries take NO article: Portugal, Angola, Moçambique, Cabo Verde, São Tomé e Príncipe, Timor-Leste. Brazil is the major exception: o Brasil. Equatorial Guinea also takes an article: a Guiné Equatorial.
• Nationalities vary in form:
  • gendered: português/portuguesa, angolano/angolana, brasileiro/brasileira, moçambicano/moçambicana;
  • hyphenated: cabo-verdiano/cabo-verdiana;
  • invariable: guineense, santomense, timorense, equato-guineense.
• PT-PT and PT-BR are mutually intelligible but diverge in vocabulary, pronoun use (tu vs. você), clitic placement, and vowel pronunciation.
• African varieties of Portuguese are generally closer to PT-PT in clitic placement and core vocabulary, with local influences from Bantu languages and creoles.
• Learning PT-PT gives you access to the entire Lusophone world — with a brief period of adjustment for each variety.