World Portuguese language day, May 5

“There comes the machimbombo,” someone tells you in Mozambique. In Angola, you may hear the autocarro is nearly there. Machimbombo and autocarro are the same thing. In Brazil, it is known as ônibus, or, more informally, busão—bus.

With all its vocabulary and syntactical diversity, the Portuguese language has over 260 million speakers across nine countries where it is spoken as an official language. It is the world’s fifth most spoken, the third in the West, and the first in the Southern Hemisphere.

In 2009, Portuguese-speaking nations decided that May 5 should be celebrated as the international day of the Portuguese language. In November 2019, Unesco ratified the date as World Portuguese Language Day, aimed at celebrating diversity as the identity of its speakers. The decision was made in Paris, during the UN Assembly-General for Education, Science, and Culture. Differences may actually prove capable of bringing people closer together. In Cape Verde, Portuguese speakers call each other brodas. In Agola, cambas. In Brazilian Portuguese, amigos.

In the meeting, Portuguese Prime Minister Antônio Costa described the move as an important step for the 260 million speakers of Portuguese, adding that the language is the fifth most used online.

A 2013 survey indicates that, by the end of the 21st century, Portuguese will be spoken by over 350 million people in Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Mozambique, Portugal, São Tomé and Príncipe, and East Timor, the countries making up the lusophone community.