PORTUGUESE IS a well-travelled language. Thanks to all those seafarers, adventurers and merchants of Portugal's golden age, it has crossed cultures on five continents.
An estimated 200 million people worldwide speak Portuguese, making it the sixth most spoken language in the world.
In addition to Portugal and Brazil, Portuguese is an official language in five African countries and two Asian territories, and is widely spoken or studied as a second language in many places.
Today, it is used to a greater or lesser extent in Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Namibia, Sao Tome and Principe, East Timor, Macau, pockets of Oceania, and the small European states of Andorra and Luxembourg.
The language is also commonly heard elsewhere in cities with sizeable Portuguese-speaking immigrant communities such as London, Paris, Boston and Toronto.
Angola and Mozambique, along with Sao Tome and Principe, Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau, are known as the Paises Africanos de Lingua Oficial Portuguesa (Official Portuguese Language African Countries), or PALOP, forming a community of about 16 million speakers.
