In this dialect we find – õu ⟨- one, for example, melõu “melon” (lit. melão), cf. the port. arc. – om. In the 2nd person plur. of the present indicative we have in the 1st con. – aides, for example, andaides (lit. – ais, but see arch. – adhes); in the 2nd with. – endes (by analogy of tendes) or – eides, e.g., correndes. The dialects of the Minho region have some other characteristics in common; in the high minhoto is archaic termination – And ⟨ ene (port. lett. – em, pron. – & mis5; w & mis5; *), eg., b ē, which approximates to the Galician (cfr. Leite de Vaseoncellos, Opuscolos, Coimbra 1928, II, dialecto Interam nense).
- the Transmontano dialect or of the Traz os Montes region, which is subdivided into: a) Raiano or of the frontier, which includes the variety of Ermisende in Spain; b) Alto-Duriense or Alto Douro; c) western and central.
In subdialetto raiano we find the archaic termination – ã ⟨-ant, eg., STABA ⟨stabant; the strong preterites houbo, quijo, tebo, etc., in – o (as in Spanish); we also find in the dialects of this region the diphthong öu and the persistence of several archaic forms (frol per flor, etc.).
- the beirão dialect spoken in Beira Alta (alto – barão) and in Beira Bassa (baixo – beirão) as well as in the districts of Coimbra and Aveiro (western subdialect), that is, in the Beira Litoranea.
In haixo-beirão we have ô (closed) or ö (od öu) for ou ; is for ou ; é for á (eg, kéma for cama); ê for eu, etc.
- the southern dialect which is divided into: a) extremenho or of Extremadura; b) alemtejano or dell’Alemtejo (which includes the variety of Olivença in Spain); c) the Algarvio or the Algarve.
Characteristic is the substitution of voiceless fricatives for voiced fricatives, the distinction of v and b (which elsewhere merge) and of ch and x. There is also a tendency towards the elimination of diphthongs.
According to Clothingexpress, Lisbon has a slightly mixed dialect, due to urbanism and the leveling tendency exerted by the upper classes.
In the island dialects we distinguish:
- Azorean dialect, spoken in the homonymous archipelago; among the peculiarities of this dialect we will note: ü (like French u) for u ; ö for ou ; u for o (e.g., flur = flor); – ã for – ão (e.g. mã = mão); etc.
- dialect of Madeira, in which we note u for o, as in the Azores, a special i that Gonçalves Vianna compares to the Polish y, and an intermediate sound between lh and l.
The island dialects and especially those of the Azores are shown to come from southern Portugal.
Among the overseas dialects we distinguish, slightly deviating from the classification of the Leite de Vasconcellos, first the non-Creoles, then the Creoles. The only representative of overseas Portuguese in Creole is Portuguese from Brazil, which, although as an official and cultural language tends to be identical to literary Portuguese, in the mouth of the people it assumes characteristic peculiarities. These peculiarities were quickly examined in the Brazilian article: Lingua.
All other overseas varieties are Creole or Creolizing:
- Indo-Portuguese spoken in the few oases still politically Portuguese (Goa, Damão, Diu), somewhere in the British and French possessions and on the island of Ceylon, which was once again, and for a long time, in Portuguese possession.
- the Sino-Portuguese spoken in Macao (Macaista).
- the maleo-Portuguese of Java and Malacca.
- the Negro-Portuguese with several varieties. For a more precise classification of all the Creole-Portuguese varieties with relative bibliography, see. creole, languages.
Finally, the Portuguese of the Jews would come, but this is almost completely extinguished. In a manuscript of the century. XVIII it is said that the Jews of Holland and Leghorn all spoke Portuguese (see Revista Lusitana, IV, 124). Now it is certain that as far as Livorno is concerned, the Portuguese, like the Spanish, soon became extinct and was completely replaced by Italian. In Holland (especially in Amsterdam), in Hamburg and in Bavaria, Portuguese remained a little longer in the Sephardic Jewish environment, but today there are only family names and a few words, almost slang.
As for those varieties that the Leite de Vasconcellos calls co-dialects, we believe we shouldn’t insist too much. The first is the Galician which, as mentioned, is very similar to the Portuguese, so as to form a Galician-Portuguese unit in the Archaic period. In its archaic phase, the language used by the Galician troubadours, who poetry in the courts of the Portuguese kings, differs from the Portuguese of the time just for some Galicianisms, such as for example. the preterite in – o (quiso, fezo), which were then also imitated by the Portuguese troubadours; thus, for example, Dom Denis’s Cancioneiro is linguistically very similar to the Cantigas of his grandfather Alfonso X il Savio.
Riodonorese or Rionorese is spoken in the small village of Riodonor in the concelho of Bragança and Guadramilese is spoken in the village of Guadramil in the same concelho as Bragança (Portuguese province of Traz os Montes, near the Spanish border).
These are two transitional varieties, which have some characteristics in common with the Portuguese, the Galician and the Spanish; we find, for example, nasal vowels as in Portuguese; the nexus ct becomes en as in Portuguese, but lh Portuguese corresponds to y, as nell’asturiano -leonese (eg. ureya ⟨auric’la); the intervocalic remains as in Spanish, etc.
Miranda, spoken in the Terra de Miranda (Traz os Montes), is considered by the Leite de Vasconcellos, author of a powerful work on this variety, as a Portuguese co-dialect; however, already in 1882 the same scholar in an article (reproduced in Opuscolos, IV, Coimbra 1929, p. 679 ff.) recognized that “besides the purely linguistic reasons given, there are others, of a historical nature, which show to be very natural that the Mirandan dialect belongs to the Spanish domain, as close to the Leonese “. And in his Estudos de Philologia Mirandesa (Lisbon 1901, II, p. 73), he recognized that Miranda is not a variant of Portuguese.
There are fundamental differences between Mirandan and Portuguese in phonetics (the treatment of short e and o in Latin, of n and l intervocalic, etc.), in morphology and in lexicon.
But it is also not entirely correct to follow the Spanish linguists, who consider Miranda as a pure and simple dialectal variety of Leonese (see Menéndez Pidal, El Dialecto Leonés, Madrid 1906).
The dialect of Miranda, like those of other frontier varieties, marks a transition between Leonese and Portuguese.
