Lusophone in Encyclopedia

Lusophone

Encyclopedia

Tutorials

Encyclopedia

Dictionary

Directory

Email this to a friend Lusophone

Lusophone

The Museum of the Portuguese Language in São Paulo, the first language museum in the world.

A reading campaign in East Timor.

A Lusophone (or lusophone) is someone who speaks the Portuguese language as a native, as an additional language or as a learner. As an adjective, it means "Portuguese-speaking". The word itself is derived from the name of the ancient Roman province of Lusitania, which covered an area that is today Portugal. The notion reaches beyond the dictionary definition of "Portuguese speaker". It extends to refer to people who are culturally and linguistically linked to Portugal, either historically or by choice. The term does not have an ethnic connotation, in that a lusophone may not have any Portuguese ancestry at all. The Lusophone world is mainly a legacy of the Portuguese empire, although Portuguese diaspora communities have also played a role in spreading the Portuguese language and Portuguese culture. Even after the empire's collapse, the corresponding countries continue to exhibit both cultural and political affinities and a broad cultural diversity, expressed in the existence of the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries, created in 1996.

Lusophone countries include Portugal, Brazil, Mozambique, Angola, São Tomé and Príncipe, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, East Timor, the Chinese Special Administrative Region (SAR) of Macau and others in various parts of the world, including India's Goa and Kerala states, and the town of Melaka in Malaysia. The Community of Portuguese Language Countries is an international organization consisting of the eight independent countries where Portuguese is an official language. These countries are also referred to as the "Lusosphere". Diaspora communities in the United States, Canada, Venezuela, South Africa and Western Europe are also important centers for the Portuguese language, as well as an often hybrid or bilingual Lusophone migrant culture.

Sometimes Galicia, in Spain, where the Galician language is spoken, is also included, as Galician is similar to Portuguese and sometimes considered the same language.