Portuguese language

Portuguese is a Romance language and the sole official language of Portugal, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Angola, and São Tomé and Príncipe. It also has co-official language status in East Timor, Equatorial Guinea and Macau.

Quote

• The Portuguese language remained a lingua franca in Bengal as late as the eighteenth century. Clive, who could never give an order in any native language, was said to speak fluent Portuguese. The first three books printed in the Bengali language were printed in Latin characters in Lisbon in 1743, and it was a Portuguese who composed the first Bengali prose work and the first Bengali grammar and dictionary. In Modern Bengali, articles of common use, items used in Christian services, and plants often go by their Portuguese names; e.g., ag-bent (holy water), alpin (pin), altar (altar), ananas (pineapple), balti (bucket), bispa (bishop), botel (bottle), spanj (sponge), girja (church), tamak (tobacco), piyara (pear), ata (custard apple), veranda, etc. Other Portuguese words have passed into the English language, including caste, peon, padre, papaya, plantain, cobra, mosquito, pomfret, and palmyra.
  • Sen, Colleen T. “The Portuguese Influence on Bengali Cuisine.” in Harlan Walker, ed (1997). Food on the Move: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, 1996. Oxford Symposium. pp. 288–298. ISBN 978-0-907325-79-6. 
• The Portuguese language is beautiful, rich and resounding, less sluggish and hard than German and English, more energic and phonetically diverse than Italian, softer and more natural than Spanish and superior in every aspect to French.
  • José Bonifácio