3.2.a. Portugal

The region in which northern and southern-central Portuguese is spoken stretches all the way from the north-east to the south-east of Portugal. It should be noted however that certain regions have their own peculiar set of pronunciations, most notably in the northern region that takes in part of Minho and the Douro seaside, in the west of the Algarve that also forms a part of the central-south and across an extensive area mostly in the central-south of Beira-Baixa and the Alto-Alentejo.

The dialects spoken in the archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira can be considered as southern extensions of the continental Portuguese dialects from the southern-central group. The dialects spoken on the islands of São Miguel and Madeira however are the only exceptions where, independently of each other, both have differentiated themselves from the southern-central dialectical group with the development of a certain number of local peculiarities, some of which can be found on mainland Europe.