History of the Portuguese language
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Portuguese developed in the Western Iberian Peninsula from the spoken Latin language brought there by Roman soldiers and colonists starting in the 3rd century BC. The language began to differentiate itself from other Romance languages after the fall of the Roman Empire and the barbarian invasions in the 5th century. It started to be used in written documents around the 9th century, and by the 15th century it had become a mature language with a rich literature.
Romanization
The Romans conquered the Western Iberian Peninsula, which they called Hispania: later part of the Roman provinces of Lusitania and Gallaecia, currently Portugal and Galicia (the northwestern region of Spain). Arriving on the Iberian Peninsula in 218 BC, they brought with them the Roman people's language, Vulgar Latin, from which all Romance languages (also known as "New Latin languages") descend. Roman control of the western part of Hispania was not consolidated until the campaigns of Caesar Augustus in 26 BC, but already in the 2nd century BC southern Lusitania was Romanized, and very few traces of the native languages persist in modern Portuguese. Strabo, a 1st-century Greek geographer, comments in one book of his Geographia: "they have adopted the Roman customs, and they no longer remember their own language." The language was spread by arriving Roman soldiers, settlers and merchants, who raised Roman cities mostly near previous civilizations' settlements. Later, the inhabitants of the cities of Lusitania and rest of Romanized Iberia were recognized as citizens of Rome.
Lusitanic Romance
In the 3rd century the Roman emperor Diocletian split the Tarragonensis province in three and the Gallaecia province was created, western Hispania was then made of Lusitania in the south and Gallaecia in the north.
Between 409 A.D. and 711, as the Roman Empire was collapsing, the Iberian Peninsula was invaded by peoples of Germanic origin, known by the Romans as Barbarians. The Barbarians (mainly Suevi and Visigoths) largely absorbed the Roman culture and language of the peninsula; however, since the Roman schools and administration were closed and Europe entered the Dark Ages, the Latin Vulgar language was left free to evolve on its own and the uniformity of the Peninsula was soon disrupted. In the western part of the Peninsula (today's Northern Portugal and Galicia), Vulgar Latin gained some local characteristics and in that region the Suevi settled, leading to the formation of the "Lusitanian Romance Language". The Germanic languages influenced Portuguese in words linked to the military, such as guerra ("war") or laverca (lark [link] ).
From 711, with the Moorish invasion of the Peninsula, Arabic was adopted as the administrative language in the conquered regions. However, the population continued to speak their Romance dialects, the Mozarabs; so that when the Moors were overthrown, the influence that they had exerted on the language was small. Its main effect was in the lexicon: modern Portuguese still has a large number of words of Arabic origin, especially relating to food, agriculture and crafts, which have no cognates in other Romance languages. But there is no loan word in the lexicon related to human feelings, all being of Latin origin. The Arabic influence is also visible in placenames throughout the Southern provinces, such as Algarve, Alfama and Fátima.
Proto-Portuguese
| Extract of medieval Portuguese poetry |
|---|
| Das que vejo |
| non desejo |
| outra senhor se vós non, |
| e desejo |
| tan sobejo, |
| mataria um leon, |
| senhor do meu coraçon: |
| fin roseta, |
| bela sobre toda fror, |
| fin roseta, |
| non me meta |
| en tal coita voss'amor! |
| João de Lobeira (1270?–1330?) |
Old Portuguese: Portuguese-Galician Period
Portugal was formally recognized by the Kingdom of Leon as an independent country in 1143, with King Afonso Henriques. In the first period of "Old Portuguese" (from 12th to the 14th century), the language came gradually into general use in the following centuries. In 1290, king Diniz created the first Portuguese University in Lisbon (the Estudo Geral) and decreed that Portuguese, then simply called the "Vulgar language" (i.e. Vulgar Latin) should be used in preference to Classical Latin and known as the "Portuguese language". In 1296, Portuguese was adopted by the Royal Chancellary and was used not only in poetry but also when writing law and in notaries.
Until 1350, the language Portuguese-Galician remained the native language of Galicia and Portugal only; but by the 14th century Portuguese had become a mature language with a rich literary tradition, becoming a popular language for poetry in Iberia, adopted by many Leonese, Castilian, Aragonese and Catalan poets. For instance, Cantigas de Santa Maria was written by Alfonso X, a Castillian king. Some time later, when Spanish also became written in Castilian realms, Galicia came under the influence of the Castilian language, and the southern variant became the language of Portugal.
Old Portuguese: Discoveries Period
In the second period of Old Portuguese, between the 14th and the 16th centuries, with the Portuguese discoveries, the Portuguese language spread to many regions of Asia, Africa and The Americas. Today most of the Portuguese speakers live in Brazil. By the 16th century it had become a lingua franca in Asia and Africa, used not only for colonial administration and trade but also for communication between local officials and Europeans of all nationalities. In Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka) several kings became fluent speakers of Portuguese, and nobles often took Portuguese names. The spread of the language was helped by mixed marriages between Portuguese and local people (also very common in other areas of the world) and its association with the Catholic missionary efforts, which led to its being called Cristão ("Christian") in many places. The Nippo jisho, a Japanese-Portuguese dictionary written in 1603, was a product of Jesuit missionary activity in Japan. The language continued to be popular in parts of Asia until the 19th century, despite the severe measures taken by the Dutch to abolish it in Ceylon and Indonesia.Some Portuguese-speaking Christian communities in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Indonesia preserved their language even after they were isolated from Portugal. The language has largely changed in these communities and has evolved through the centuries into several Portuguese creoles. Also, a considerable number of words of Portuguese origin are found in Tetum, the national language of East Timor, such as lee 'to read' (from ler), aprende 'to learn' (from aprender) and tenke 'to have to' (from tem que). Portuguese words entered the lexicons of many other languages, such as pan 'bread' (from pão) in Japanese, sepatu 'shoe' (from sapato) in Indonesian, keju 'cheese' (from queijo), in Malay and meza 'table' (from mesa) in Swahili.
Modern Portuguese
The end of "Old Portuguese" was marked by the publication of the Cancioneiro Geral de Garcia de Resende, in 1516. But a variant of Old Portuguese is still spoken, as a dialect, especially in São Tomé and Príncipe, but also in Brazil, Portugal and Angola. The period of "Modern Portuguese" (from the 16th century to the present) saw an increase in the number of words of Classical Latin origin and erudite words of Greek origin borrowed into Portuguese during the Renaissance, which augmented the complexity of Portuguese.
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