3.1. The Lusophone world
Across the vast yet split up area in which Portuguese is spoken
throughout the world, its pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary, as
with all living languages, varies to differing degrees from region to
region. Such differences however have not compromised the essential
unity of Portuguese. Despite the spread of the language within Europe
and more markedly throughout the rest of the world, Portuguese has
managed to maintain a high level of cohesion between its
varieties.
The regional characteristics that a language often acquires over
time may render it a dialect. Some linguists also distinguish
between a speech and a dialect:
- Dialects are considered to be complete linguistic systems
originating from a particular language, alive or dead. They are
normally found within a set geographical range and are not strongly
separated from other sets of dialects originating from the same
language. Expressed another way, dialects are considered to be formed
whenever a grammatical structure is being used that is not distinct
enough to that of its related language to be considered completely
separate from it.
- Speachs, on the other hand, are deemed to be an expressive
peculiarity used within a particular region that does not reach a
level of systematic coherence that a dialect would. They are thought
to consist of a less extensive set of differences than what dialects
feature and, having distinguished themselves from the written
language, are only expressed orally.
In light of the difficulty of categorising the regional differences
that a language may take on, we will use in this text the term dialect
to refer to the collection of linguistic peculiarities found within a
given area, without taking into consideration how greatly these
peculiarities differ from what is considered the standard language.
In the study of the forms that the Portuguese language has taken
on, it is necessary to distinguish between its dialects and creoles,
especially in the regions of Africa, Asia and Oceania where it is
spoken. The Portuguese creoles are a result of the contact that the
Portuguese language had from the fifteenth century with the indigenous
languages that it encountered throughout the world. At present, these
creoles have differentiated themselves from standard Portuguese to
such a degree that, unlike dialects, they are considered to be
separate languages derived from Portuguese.
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