A Short History of Portuguese (and the World) in 10 Words
To celebrate World Portuguese Language Day (May 5th), we take a journey through the combined history of Portuguese and the world — in 10 words.
I invite you to imagine an isolated island that has existed for millennia in the heart of the ocean. The inhabitants of this island, who arrived there through an ancient migration lost in the mists of myths and legends, have never since made contact with other people. Undoubtedly, a language exists on this island — no group of human beings has ever been discovered without the use of language.
However, the language of this island, after millennia of isolation, reveals little about the world’s history. It may provide insights into the island’s history and perhaps even have evolved into multiple languages. There might be various records, different usages, or idioms stemming from wars. The accents of the island’s different regions could help us understand the society, but the history of the world remains beyond the scope of this isolated language or languages.
Very few languages exist in such isolation. The vast majority flourish in open spaces, with borders more imaginary than real, exchanging words and phrases like passing breezes. Portuguese is one such language — perhaps even more so than others. It has never been an isolated island.
After all, the region where Portuguese developed lies at the edge of the ancient world. This world stretched from China to these remote, distant shores, touching the Atlantic. The center of that world was what we now call the Middle East in Europe. Echoes of that center reached the location of modern-day Portugal, leaving behind words like remnants on its beaches.
Afterwards, this edge of the world transformed into the center of another world for a time, a world no longer based on the land axis that spanned Europe, Africa and Asia but on oceanic communication. Lisbon became one of the hubs, and the language, rather than collecting remnants, dispersed fragments across the globe, which can still be heard in far-off languages.
Eventually, Portugal transitioned from being the end or the center of the world to occupying a small corner in Europe between the center and the periphery. The language, meanwhile, has a whole new story to tell, much wider than Europe.
So let us embark on a brief journey through world history, guided by 10 words in Portuguese (or related languages). The first word we’ll explore is:
1. MAGIA (“magic”)
Portuguese, like many other languages, originated from a specific form of Vulgar Latin, which was influenced by earlier languages about which little is known. Latin itself emerged from other preceding languages, which in turn stemmed from Proto-Indo-European, believed to have been spoken in the region of present-day Ukraine around 6,500 years ago. Languages descended from Proto-Indo-European are spoken today in India, Iran, Europe, and many other places worldwide.
The presence of a Latin language in the western Iberian Peninsula is a testament to the history of the Roman Empire and its expansion. Latin reached the end of the World, Finisterra, in the Northwest of Hispania.
In addition to Indo-European words that evolved on the Italian Peninsula, Latin brought words from other languages. For example, the word “magic,” the first word in our journey, is a Greek word that arrived through Latin and had already been imported into Greek from Old Persian.
The Latin that arrived in Northwest Iberia was Vulgar Latin, the speech of the people. It mixed with other languages, endowing those who lived in this western region with a language composed of both distant and closer words. Portuguese, like many other languages, has always been crafted from materials of diverse origins.
2. LUA (moon)
The end of the Roman Empire can still be felt in our language. Before talking about “lua”, we can look at “luva” (glove), a word of Germanic origin that arrived in the Iberian Peninsula during the fall of the Roman Empire. It came from the Gothic language, brought by the Germanic peoples to the Iberian Peninsula. The Gothic language left only a few words integrated into the local Hispanic Latin. Interestingly, Gothic persisted for centuries in a completely different part of Europe — Crimea. The history of the world as revealed by languages is much more complex than it seems.
There are not many examples of words from these Germanic tribes in Portuguese because the Suebi and Visigoths, who came to occupy the Peninsula, adopted Latin as their own language and probably did not arrive in large numbers. The inhabitants of the peninsula continued to be Hispanic Romans, living in new kingdoms with a Germanic nobility.
We can say with some certainty that the Latin spoken in the 6th century was already much different from the Vulgar Latin spoken during the height of the Roman Empire. Some features of Portuguese, such as the use of numbers to name weekdays — “segunda-feira” (Monday), “terça-feira” (Tuesday)… — come from that era. It is quite possible that during this time, specific phonetic phenomena — such as the loss of /n/ and /l/ between vowels — also began to shape the language, but they would only appear in writing much later.
For example, the word for moon, in Portuguese, is not the Spanish “luna” or the French “lune,” but rather a shorter word: “lua”. Speakers in Northwest Hispania (in Roman Gallaecia) began to drop the /n/ and /l/ between vowels. Why? We don’t know. It was, if you will, a mistake that crystallized. After all, each language is a collection of mistakes from previous languages. We all speak corrupted Latin — but Latin itself was already a corrupted version of a previous language. This is how humanity’s languages are made.
3. AZUL (blue)
In the 8th century, the Iberian Peninsula largely fell under the control of Muslims. Their presence is reflected in the language: there are many words of Arabic origin, as well as words of Persian origin that passed through Arabic. Words as significant as “açúcar” (sugar), “laranja” (orange), or “azul” (blue) illustrate this influence. Indeed, it is rare for a Portuguese person to go a day without using words of Arabic origin.
The Portuguese language bears witness to the rise and fall of empires and the power of wars during those times. The expansion of Christian kingdoms from north to south in five bands introduced various Latin dialects from north to south, mixing them with Mozarabic, a Latin language with a strong Arabic influence spoken in the south of the Peninsula.
The Romance language of the northwest of the Peninsula reached Lisbon in the 12th century, when the first King of Portugal, Afonso Henriques, helped by Crusaders from the North of Europe, conquered the city. The language blended with Mozarabic and Arabic. It should be noted that there were also North African languages in this mixture — much research remains to determine the influence of these languages on Portuguese. I’ve heard some argue, for example, that “azul” (blue) did not come to us through Arabic but has Amazigh (sometimes called Berber) origins. As the attention given to these languages by Portuguese historiography was limited, it is not improbable that many North African words have slipped into Portuguese (and other Iberian languages) unnoticed.
And thus, we arrive at the word that is the name of the language:
4. PORTUGUÊS (Portuguese)
The Kingdom of Portugal adopted the Northwestern Romance language — which came from present-day Galicia and the North of Portugal — as the language of administration, particularly during the reign of King Denis.
It wasn’t until the 15th century that someone wrote the name “Português” (“Portuguese”) as the name of the language: the person who christened the language was Prince D. Pedro, in the preface of a translation of Cicero.
Throughout the 16th century, after the expansion of the printing press across Europe, Portuguese gained grammars and began to slowly standardize. This was also the time of the zenith of Castilian influence. Portuguese — at least in Lisbon and around the court — was filled with words and constructions from this closely related language.
By the 16th century, the language we now call Portuguese incorporated elements from Asian (Arabic and Persian), North African, Celtic, and Castilian sources, as well as materials from other places that we might not recognize. It was mixed Latin, with shades of the entire continental mass known as the Old World. Analyzing the chemical composition of our language reveals the history of Antiquity and the Middle Ages.
Portuguese began to spread beyond Europe during the Age of Exploration, leaving traces in languages throughout the world. This marks the second moment in our history. The presence of Portuguese in other languages serves as testimony to the long and often painful history of Modernity. Let’s start this new stage with a word from another language:
5. PAPIAR (Cape Verdean for “to speak”)
The Portuguese language spread across Africa, Asia, and the Americas. The growing presence of Portuguese led to the incorporation of Portuguese words in various languages. Just as an example, the Arabic word for orange, as well as its equivalents in Turkish, Greek, and other languages, seems to have originated from the name “Portugal.”
However, let’s delve deeper. Situated in the middle of the Atlantic is Cape Verde, with a population of African and European origin, speaking Cape Verdean Creole. This language, which many simply call “crioulo”, has many similarities with Papiamento Creole, the official language in some Caribbean islands. The name “Papiamento” appears to be derived from “papiar,” a Cape Verdean word meaning “to speak.” These two languages, one on each side of the ocean, remind us of the cruel history of Atlantic slave trade.
Creole languages are not only reminders of that history: they are also evidence of human linguistic ability. In situations of partial language transmission, new generations crafted languages with distinct grammars and vocabulary. Human linguistic creativity is always present, waiting to flourish.
Now, let’s cross the Atlantic, just as many slaves did, to uncover another word:
6. SAMBA
In the Americas, Portuguese changed — a lot. Initially, the language underwent significant changes as it was spoken by indigenous people, slaves, and settlers alongside the “general languages” of Tupi-Guarani origin. Brazilian Portuguese still retains elements of this early phase in its spoken form today.
Later, towards the end of the 18th century and throughout the 19th century, Portuguese was standardized in Brazil. The new nation adopted a language standard with a strong European bent (reflecting the formation of the new state: the Emperor was a prince of Portugal). In the meantime, much changed, and these two varieties — one oral and originating in the 16th century, the other written and originating in the 19th century — exist side by side and intermingle, creating a complex linguistic landscape.
Brazilian Portuguese is another testament to the history of the Americas, Brazil, and humanity, transcending its European roots where Latin first arrived over 2,000 years ago. The word “samba” exemplifies the story: it has African roots, was adopted by the language in South America and is now used also in Europe.
Let’s continue our journey to the Indian Ocean, where our eighth word is the Swahili name for Portugal:
7. URENO
… a transformation of the word “reino,” the term that the inhabitants of the African coasts of the Indian Ocean heard from navigators en route to India.
In the Indian Ocean, Portuguese emerged as a lingua franca, utilized by the Portuguese and other Europeans, such as the Dutch, as well as by local populations to communicate with foreigners. To this day, we find languages of Portuguese origin in countries like Sri Lanka and hundreds of Portuguese words in languages such as Indonesian.
Additionally, we discover Portuguese words in Japanese. Contrary to popular belief “arigato” is not such a word. A true example is “igirisu,” which means “English,” demonstrating how the Portuguese introduced many Asians to Europeans.
Now, let’s examine a very different word, perhaps unexpected in this context:
8. FETISH (yes, in English)
Portuguese travels around the world have often resulted in the exchange of words and meanings. One such example is the word “fetish,” which has evolved and taken on different forms in many languages. It originated from the Portuguese term “feitiço,” an old word derived from Latin, meaning anything artificial or makeshift. By examining the history of this word, we can gain insights into the development of languages and the world in recent centuries.
When Portuguese navigators arrived at the Gold Coast, a remote region they had little knowledge about, they encountered magical objects revered by the local people. All cultures have amulets — the navigators themselves carried crosses — but in the hands of the others, amulets take on a mystical and exotic quality.
The Portuguese referred to these objects as “feitiços,” a word that later also came to mean a magical effect. As the navigators returned to Europe, Northern European writers used the Portuguese term to describe the customs and practices of the Gold Coast. The first known usage of the word was by Dutch explorer Pieter de Marees in 1602. He referred to the amulets as “fetissos” in his work Description and Historical Account of the Gold Kingdom of Guinea.
The book was later translated into French, and the translator adopted the term “fetissos.” Over time, the French adapted it to “fétiche,” and the English soon incorporated it into their language as “fetish.” Once adopted by both French and English, the word’s future was secured.
By the end of the 19th century, the term “fetish” began to be used to describe a sexual fixation on an object or body part, a unique form of idolatry. The word’s meaning then expanded again, taking on more general connotations. For example, one might have a fetish for yellow books.
From English and French, “fetish” spread across European languages and eventually returned to Portuguese, its origin. This journey demonstrates the fluidity of words and languages, the influence of French and English as languages of science replacing Latin, and the ways in which languages borrow from one another. It also sheds light on the creation of scientific and technical terminologies and the transformation of these terms into new words over time.
9. RÚA (in Galicia)
Before exploring the final word, let’s return to the origin — the Northwest of the Iberian Peninsula. It’s important to note that Northwestern Romance gave way not only to Portuguese, but also to Galician.
Galician was only standardized within the past 50 years, though it was spoken by nearly everyone until quite recently. If someone crossed the border between Portugal and Galicia at the end of the 19th century, they would not find significant differences between the dialects spoken in villages on both sides. After centuries of political separation, after Portugal became a kingdom in the 12th century, Galicia and Portugal still shared a language.
In the meantime, European languages underwent a rapid standardization process, driven by the expansion of the nation-state concept. Each state chose a language and a specific form of that language as its official language. Literature in this standard became a national symbol. Portugal chose — quite naturally — Portuguese and Spain chose Castillian, which became what is now known as Spanish. However, other languages were still spoken by wide majorities of people in some regions.
These other languages, including Galician, became somewhat invisible despite being spoken by millions. This invisibility was counteracted by literary revivals in the context of 19th-century Romanticism. It was the case of Galician. Finally, after being again ignored (and actively repressed) during Francoism, Galician became an official language in the 1980s.
Today, walking through Galicia, one can find old words on signs that are the same as in Portugal, reminding us that history of Portuguese began in this region. Take “rúa” as an example — the word for “street” is quite similar to the Portuguese “rua” (the difference lies in spelling, which is always a contentious topic in Galicia).
The northern border of Portugal is a line that bisects the territory where the language emerged. This division and the difference in prestige between Galician and Portuguese — which both originated in the same area and were based on the same linguistic material — illustrates how the languages of states experienced vastly different fates compared to languages that are not associated with states.
Here too, we find the history of the world: the establishment of national language standards alongside efforts to preserve and defend languages that were excluded from this narrative.
Now, let’s journey down to Lisbon and listen to someone chatting among friends. Perhaps the word we’re looking for will come up…
10. BUÉ (“a lot”, informally)
This particular word, unfamiliar to Brazilians, means “a lot” and is used in very informal situations (so informal that when it entered dictionaries there was a big fuss). Several theories exist about its origin, but the most common suggests it came from a word in Kimbundu, a language spoken in Angola.
The word would have been introduced to Portugal during the decolonization process, brought by those returning to the metropolis and by Africans who migrated to Portugal. This development serves as another testament to history: the world’s independence movements in the 20th century and the significant population shifts of recent decades.
The presence of this African word in Lisbon also reminds us that the future of Portuguese is intertwined with Africa. The language is experiencing tremendous growth on this continent, and it wouldn’t be surprising if, within a few decades, the largest number of Portuguese speakers reside here.
This story unfolded in just a few minutes, demonstrating how the Portuguese language, as spoken today, bears traces of ancient histories — from the Roman Empire, the Silk Routes, and Islamic expansion to the Iberian expansion, the slave trade, Indian Ocean history, the development of national languages, the use of French and English as languages of science in the last two centuries, and the history of Africa. All of this is inscribed in the words we use, bearing witness to the history of the world.
This article originated from a talk at the University of Carthage for students of Portuguese, given at the invitation of Prof. Maria de Lurdes Ferreira. I dedicate it to Anis Mokni, a Tunisian translator and teacher of Portuguese. A brief bibliography on the History of Portuguese can be found on this page.
