PORTUGUESE LANGUAGE, LITER ATURE AND The Portuguese is one of the Romance family of languages, formed by the junction of the Latin-speaking Celts with the Teutonic races. Words of Greek, Phoenician, Iberian, Celtic and Carthaginian origin are found in Portuguese as in Spanish, indicating the relations into which commerce or conquest had brought the early inhabitants of the country. The Moorish occupation has further infused into it a Semitic element. Under the early kings of Portugal all documents were written in Latin; judicial sentences were written in Latin till a comparatively recent time; it is still used in seals, coins and monumental inscrip tions. It was only under Alfonso III and Diniz that Portuguese began to be generally used in documents. The differences • between Portu guese and Spanish are comparatively of mod ern origin, the two languages being very nearly alike in the time of Alfonso I (1143). These differences are due partly to the different spheres of activity of the two peoples. The relations of Spain were with France, Italy, Austria, and the Low Countries; those of the Portuguese were almost exclusively with the Spaniards themselves, or with peoples removed from European civilization. The dialect of Spanish spoken in Portugal at the beginning of the monarchy, moreover, was the Galician, which was also that of the court of Leon; but that court subsequently adopted the Castilian, which became the dominant language of Spain. The decline of the Galician dialect in Spain and the formation of the Portuguese language through the influences peculiar to the people finally determined the separation of Spanish and Portuguese, and from cognate dialects made them distinct languages. Early French introduced by Henry of Burgundy and his suite also constituted an element in the formation of the Portuguese language, and old French words which have fallen into desuetude are still to be found in Portuguese. The heraldic devices of the oldest Portuguese families are in French, while in modern times the Portuguese have shown a strong tendency to imitate the French in everything, and the language has been considerably modified by the introduction of French expressions and grammatical forms.
The 16th century is the classical age of Por tuguese literature, and the Royal Academy of Sciences began a dictionary in which all doubt ful points in regard to the language are re ferred to quotations from the writers of that age. There is no determined orthography ex
cept that which the rules of printers have made prevalent in printed books. Royal edicts and other public documents were formerly cited as models of language, but in later times they were far from being distinguished by accuracy.
The Portuguese language, by means of col onization and emigration, has been pretty widely spread. It is spoken in Portugal, the Azores, Brazil, the Portuguese colonies in Asia, Africa, and in the United States, and among the Portuguese Jews scattered over Europe, particularly in Hamburg and Amsterdam. The Portuguese possesses the richness and concise ness of the dialects founded on the Latin tongue. It appears to have derived from French the j sound and the nasal syllables, and it lacks the strong aspirations and guttural sounds of the Spanish. It has less dignity than the Spanish, but is superior in flexibility. In popular songs it displays a delicacy and variety of expression which have made the Spaniards call it the language of flowers. It makes free use of augmentives and diminutives. It is soft and sonorous in sound, but the too frequent oc currence of the nasal do somewhat mars its harmony. The words are systematically grouped, every noun having in general an ad lective, a verb and an adverb corresponding to it. Latin terms are preserved in Portuguese which are found in no other language in Eu rope; but these, as well as its other Latin ele ments, are more radically changed than else where, so that it is often extremely difficult to trace the derivation of Portuguese words. Me dial consonants, such as 1 and n, are frequently suppressed, doler becomes dor; popalus, povo; pm:ere, Or (Italian porre). The dialects of Portuguese differ only slightly from each other. Those of Minho, Algarve, the Azores in Europe, and of Goa, Macao, East Africa and Brazil are farthest from the written. The lin goa geral spoken on the .eastern and western coasts of Africa, as well as in some parts of India and Ceylon, which bears an analogy to the lingua franca of the Mediterranean, may be re garded as a dialect founded on Portuguese, and as containing reminiscences of the ancient mari time power of the people.