Portuguese is a Romanic language of the Indo-European family. Within over 250 million speakers, Portuguese is the sixth most spoken language in the world, the fourth most spoken language in the western hemisphere, and the most spoken language in the southern hemisphere. Portuguese is an official language in Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Cape Verde, East Timor, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and others. Portuguese evolved from the medieval language known today by linguists as Galician-Portuguese, Old Portuguese, or Old Galician, of the northwestern medieval Kingdom of Galicia. A vast majority of the Portuguese spoken worldwide is Brazilian Portuguese rather than European Portuguese. This is due to the huge number of Brazilians, over 190 million, who speak Portuguese as their mother tongue. The existence of Portuguese in Brazil is a legacy of Portuguese colonization of the Americas. The differences between Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese are comparable to differences found between British and American English, as such languages have evolved separately on either side of the Atlantic over the last few hundred years.

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