Language

Although Brazil is as large as Europe, a single language is spoken in this entire country: Portuguese. Portuguese is the official language of Brazil. Most Brazilians do not speak more than one language but many are learning English or Spanish. There are still some communities in the South of Brazil who speak German or Italian whereas some Amerindians in the Amazon basin do not speak Portuguese.

The Portuguese from Brazil is different from the Portuguese of Portugal. For this reason, a (small) minority prefers the term 'Brasileiro'. Nevertheless, most people use the word Portuguese and use Portugues do Brasil if they want to stress the difference with the Portuguese from Portugal. The Portuguese shows some variation within Brazil, but less variantion than the Portuguese within the smaller Portugal. Portuguese is also spoken in Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinnee-Bissau, São Tomé and Principe, East-Timor and areas like Goa and Malacca (Cristao). Portuguese is an official language in Macão (China) where it is a minority language.

Within the Portuguese language, most books, magazines, movies, tv series and music are published in Brazilian Portuguese. As a result of this, other forms of Portuguese are more and more influenced by the Portuguese of Brazil.