Portuguese ( português (help·info) or língua portuguesa [ˈɫĩgwɐ puɾtuˈɣezɐ]) is a Romance language. It is the official language of Portugal, Brazil, Mozambique, Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, and São Tomé and Príncipe. Portuguese has co-official status (alongside the indigenous language) in Macau in East Asia, East Timor in Southeast Asia and in Equatorial Guinea in Central Africa. Also the result of expansion during colonial times, Portuguese speakers are also found in Goa, Daman and Diu in India and in Malacca in Malaysia.

Portuguese is a part of the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several dialects of colloquial Latin in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia. With approximately 210 to 215 million native speakers and 240 million total speakers, Portuguese is usually listed as the seventh most spoken language in the world (or sixth, being very close to Bengali in native speakers), the third European language most spoken in the world, the most spoken language in both South America (the number of Spanish and Portuguese speakers is actually extremely close, but about 51% of the continent's population lives in Brazil) and the Southern Hemisphere, the second most spoken Romance language in Africa (after French) and the most spoken Romance language in Oceania, Japan and Mainland Asia.^{[citation needed]}