Portuguese Language - Dialects

Dialects

Modern Standard European Portuguese (português padrão) is based on the Portuguese spoken in the area including and surrounding the city of Coimbra, in central Portugal, while modern Standard Brazilian Portuguese (português neutro) is based on the Portuguese spoken in the area including and surrounding the city of Rio de Janeiro, in southeastern Brazil, which if vanished from its stereotypical traits i.e. its strong European flavor in phonology and prosody, is linguistically a halfway between Brazilian dialects and accents.

Standard European Portuguese is also the preferred standard by the Portuguese-speaking African countries, as such and despite the fact that its speakers are dispersed around the world, Portuguese has only two dialects used for learning: the European and the Brazilian. Some aspects and sounds found in many dialects of Brazil are exclusive to South America, and can not be found in Europe. However, the Santomean Portuguese in Africa may be confused with a Brazilian dialect by its phonology and prosody. Some aspects link some Brazilian dialects with the ones spoken in Africa, such as the pronunciation of "menino", which is pronounced as (though rather different for many Brazilian speakers, e.g. ) compared to in European Portuguese, though most of them are assumed to be conservative rather than innovative. Dialects from inland northern Portugal have significant similarities with Galician. Nevertheless, Brazilian Portuguese has an outsized influence in Africa, due to its popularity in programs such as telenovelas, as is seen as much less imperialist than European Portuguese as most Brazilians are pardo.

Audio samples of some dialects and accents of Portuguese are available below. There are some differences between the areas but these are the best approximations possible. IPA transcriptions refer to the names in local pronounce.