Programa Acadêmico de Português

One of the world's major languages, ranked sixth according to number of native speakers (approximately 250 million). It is the language with the largest number of speakers in South America, spoken by nearly all of Brazil's approximately 183 million population, which amounts to over 51% of the continent's population even though it is the only Portuguese-speaking nation in the Americas. It is also a major lingua franca in Portugal's former colonial possessions in Africa. It is the official language of ten countries (see the table on the right), being co-official with Spanish and French in Equatorial Guinea, with Chinese in the Chinese special administrative region of Macau, and with Tetum in Timor-Leste, which makes it official in all continents with the exception of North America, where it does not have any official status.