History.

When the Romans arrived at the Iberian Peninsula in 216 BC, they brought the Latin language with them, from which all Romance languages are descended. The language was spread by Roman soldiers, settlers, and merchants, who built Roman cities mostly near the settlements of previous Celtic civilizations established long before the Roman arrivals. For that reason, the language has kept a relevant substratum of much older, Atlantic European Megalithic Culture and Celtic culture, part of the Hispano-Celtic group of ancient languages.  Between AD 409 and AD 711, as the Roman Empire collapsed in Western Europe, the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by Germanic peoples of the Migration Period. The occupiers, mainly Suebi, Visigoths and Buri who originally spoke Germanic languages, quickly adopted late Roman culture and the Vulgar Latin dialects of the peninsula and over the next 300 years totally integrated into the local populations. After the Moorish invasion beginning in 711, Arabic became the administrative and common language in the conquered regions, but most of the remaining Christian population continued to speak a form of Romance commonly known as Mozarabic, which lasted three centuries longer in Spain. Like other Neo-Latin and European languages, Portuguese has adopted a significant number of loanwords from Greek, mainly in technical and scientific terminology. These borrowings occurred via Latin, and later during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.  Portuguese evolved from the medieval language, known today by linguists as Galician-Portuguese, Old Portuguese or Old Galician, of the northwestern medieval Kingdom of Galicia and County of Portugal.It is in Latin administrative documents of the 9th century that written Galician-Portuguese words and phrases are first recorded. This phase is known as Proto-Portuguese, which lasted from the 9th century until the 12th-century independence of the County of Portugal from the Kingdom of León, which had by then assumed reign over Galicia.  In the first part of the Galician-Portuguese period (from the 12th to the 14th century), the language was increasingly used for documents and other written forms. For some time, it was the language of preference for lyric poetry in Christian Hispania, much as Occitan was the language of the poetry of the troubadours in France. The Occitan digraphs "lh" and "nh", used in its classical orthography, were adopted by the orthography of Portuguese, presumably by Gerald of Braga, a monk from Moissac, who became bishop of Braga in Portugal in 1047, playing a major role in modernizing written Portuguese using classical Occitan norms. Portugal became an independent kingdom in 1139, under King Afonso I of Portugal. In 1290, King Denis of Portugal created the first Portuguese university in Lisbon (the "Estudos Gerais", which later moved to Coimbra) and decreed for Portuguese, then simply called the "common language", to be known as the Portuguese language and used officially.  In the second period of Old Portuguese, in the 15th and 16th centuries, with the Portuguese discoveries, the language was taken to many regions of Africa, Asia, and the Americas. By the mid-16th century, Portuguese had become a "lingua franca" in Asia and Africa, used not only for colonial administration and trade but also for communication between local officials and Europeans of all nationalities.  Its spread was helped by mixed marriages between Portuguese and local people and by its association with Roman Catholic missionary efforts, which led to the formation of creole languages such as that called Kristang in many parts of Asia (from the word "cristão", "Christian"). The language continued to be popular in parts of Asia until the 19th century. Some Portuguese-speaking Christian communities in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Indonesia preserved their language even after they were isolated from Portugal.  The end of the Old Portuguese period was marked by the publication of the "Cancioneiro Geral" by Garcia de Resende, in 1516. The early times of Modern Portuguese, which spans the period from the 16th century to the present day, were characterized by an increase in the number of learned words borrowed from Classical Latin and Classical Greek because of the Renaissance (learned words borrowed from Latin also came from Renaissance Latin, the form of Latin during that time), which greatly enriched the lexicon. Most literate Portuguese speakers were also literate in Latin; and thus they easily adopted Latin words into their writing – and eventually speech – in Portuguese.  Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes once called Portuguese "the sweet and gracious language", while the Brazilian poet Olavo Bilac described it as ("the last flower of Latium, naive and beautiful. Portuguese is also termed "the language of Camões", after Luís Vaz de Camões, one of the greatest literary figures in the Portuguese language and author of the Portuguese epic poem "The Lusiads".  In March 2006, the Museum of the Portuguese Language, an interactive museum about the Portuguese language, was founded in São Paulo, Brazil, the city with the greatest number of Portuguese language speakers in the world. The museum is the first of its kind in the world. In 2015 the museum was partially destroyed in a fire, but restored and reopened in 2020.

Geographic distribution.

Portuguese is the native language of the vast majority of the people in Portugal, Brazil and São Tomé and Príncipe (95%). Perhaps 75% of the population of urban Angola speaks Portuguese natively, while approximately 85% fluent; these rates are lower in the countryside. Just over 50% (and rapidly increasing) of the population of Mozambique are native speakers of Portuguese, and 70% are fluent, according to the 2007 census. Portuguese is also spoken natively by 30% of the population in Guinea-Bissau, and a Portuguese-based creole is understood by all. No data is available for Cape Verde, but almost all the population is bilingual, and the monolingual population speaks the Portuguese-based Cape Verdean Creole. Portuguese is mentioned in the Constitution of South Africa as one of the languages spoken by communities within the country for which the Pan South African Language Board was charged with promoting and ensuring respect.  There are also significant Portuguese-speaking immigrant communities in many countries including Andorra (15.4%), Bermuda, Canada (400,275 people in the 2006 census), France (900,000 people), Japan (400,000 people), Jersey, Namibia (about 4–5% of the population, mainly refugees from Angola in the north of the country), Paraguay (10.7% or 636,000 people), Macau (0.6% or 12,000 people), Switzerland (196,000 nationals in 2008), Venezuela (554,000). and the United States (0.35% of the population or 1,228,126 speakers according to the 2007 American Community Survey).  In some parts of former Portuguese India, namely Goa and Daman and Diu, the language is still spoken by about 10,000 people. In 2014, an estimated 1,500 students were learning Portuguese in Goa.

Official status.

The Community of Portuguese Language Countries (in Portuguese "Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa", with the Portuguese acronym CPLP) consists of the eight independent countries that have Portuguese as an official language: Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal and São Tomé and Príncipe.  Equatorial Guinea made a formal application for full membership to the CPLP in June 2010, a status given only to states with Portuguese as an official language. In 2011, Portuguese became its third official language (besides Spanish and French) and, in July 2014, the country was accepted as a member of the CPLP.  Portuguese is also one of the official languages of the Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China of Macau (alongside Chinese) and of several international organizations, including Mercosur, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the Union of South American Nations, the Organization of American States, the African Union, the Economic Community of West African States, the Southern African Development Community and the European Union.

Lusophone countries.

According to The World Factbook country population estimates for 2018, the population of each of the ten jurisdictions is as follows (by descending order):  The combined population of the entire Lusophone area was estimated at 279 million in July 2017. This number does not include the Lusophone diaspora, estimated at approximately 10 million people (including 4.5 million Portuguese, 3 million Brazilians, and half a million Cape Verdeans, among others), although it is hard to obtain official accurate numbers of diasporic Portuguese speakers because a significant portion of these citizens are naturalized citizens born outside of Lusophone territory or are children of immigrants, and may have only a basic command of the language. Additionally, a large part of the diaspora is a part of the already-counted population of the Portuguese-speaking countries and territories, such as the high number of Brazilian and PALOP emigrant citizens in Portugal or the high number of Portuguese emigrant citizens in the PALOP and Brazil.  The Portuguese language therefore serves more than 250 million people daily, who have direct or indirect legal, juridical and social contact with it, varying from the only language used in any contact, to only education, contact with local or international administration, commerce and services or the simple sight of road signs, public information and advertising in Portuguese.

Portuguese as a foreign language.

Portuguese is a mandatory subject in the school curriculum in Uruguay. Other countries where Portuguese is commonly taught in schools or where it has been introduced as an option include Venezuela, Zambia, the Republic of the Congo, Senegal, Namibia, Eswatini (Swaziland), South Africa, Ivory Coast, and Mauritius. In 2017, a project was launched to introduce Portuguese as a school subject in Zimbabwe. Also, according to Portugal's Minister of Foreign Affairs, the language will be part of the school curriculum of a total of 32 countries by 2020. In the countries listed below, Portuguese is spoken either as anative language by minorities due to the Portuguese colonial past or as a "lingua franca" in bordering and multilingual regions, such as on the border between Brazil and Uruguay, as well as Angola and Namibia.

Future.

According to estimates by UNESCO, Portuguese is the fastest-growing European language after English and the language has, according to the newspaper "The Portugal News" publishing data given from UNESCO, the highest potential for growth as an international language in southern Africa and South America. Portuguese is a globalized language spoken officially on five continents, and as a second language by millions worldwide.  Since 1991, when Brazil signed into the economic community of Mercosul with other South American nations, namely Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, Portuguese is either mandatory, or taught, in the schools of those South American countries.  Although early in the 21st century, after Macau was returned to China and Brazilian immigration to Japan slowed down, the use of Portuguese was in decline in Asia, it is once again becoming a language of opportunity there, mostly because of increased diplomatic and financial ties with economically powerful Portuguese-speaking countries (Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, etc.) in the world.

Dialects.

, a pronoun meaning "you", is used for educated, formal, and colloquial respectful speech in most Portuguese-speaking regions. In the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, is virtually absent from the spoken language. Riograndense and European Portuguese normally distinguishes formal from informal speech by verbal conjugation. Informal speech employs followed by second person verbs, formal language retains the formal, followed by the third person conjugation.  Conjugation of verbs in has three different forms in Brazil (verb "to see":, in the traditional second person,, in the third person, and, in the innovative second person), the conjugation used in the Brazilian states of Pará, Santa Catarina and Maranhão being generally traditional second person, the kind that is used in other Portuguese-speaking countries and learned in Brazilian schools.  The predominance of Southeastern-based media products has established as the pronoun of choice for the second person singular in both writing and multimedia communications. However, in the city of Rio de Janeiro, the country's main cultural center, the usage of has been expanding ever since the end of the 20th century, being most frequent among youngsters, and a number of studies have also shown an increase in its use in a number of other Brazilian dialects.  Modern Standard European Portuguese ( or ) is based on the Portuguese spoken in the area including and surrounding the cities of Coimbra and Lisbon, in central Portugal. Standard European Portuguese is also the preferred standard by the Portuguese-speaking African countries. As such, and despite the fact that its speakers are dispersed around the world, Portuguese has only two dialects used for learning: the European and the Brazilian. Some aspects and sounds found in many dialects of Brazil are exclusive to South America, and cannot be found in Europe. The same occur with the Santomean, Mozambican, Bissau-Guinean, Angolan and Cape Verdean dialects, being exclusive to Africa. See Portuguese in Africa.  Audio samples of some dialects and accents of Portuguese are available below. There are some differences between the areas but these are the best approximations possible. IPA transcriptions refer to the names in local pronunciation.

Other countries and dependencies.

Differences between dialects are mostly of accent and vocabulary, but between the Brazilian dialects and other dialects, especially in their most colloquial forms, there can also be some grammatical differences. The Portuguese-based creoles spoken in various parts of Africa, Asia, and the Americas are independent languages.

Characterization and peculiarities.

Portuguese, like Catalan, preserved the stressed vowels of Vulgar Latin which became diphthongs in most other Romance languages; cf. Port., Cat., Sard. "pedra" ; Fr. ', Sp. ', It. ', Ro. ', from Lat.'("stone"); or Port. ', Cat. ', Sard. '; Sp. ', It. ', Fr. ', Ro. ', from Lat.'("fire"). Another characteristic of early Portuguese was the loss of intervocalic "l" and "n", sometimes followed by the merger of the two surrounding vowels, or by the insertion of an epenthetic vowel between them: cf. Lat.'("to jump"),'("to hold"),'("chain"), Port. ', ', "".  When the elided consonant was "n", it often nasalized the preceding vowel: cf. Lat.'("hand"),'("frog"),'("good"), Old Portuguese ', ','(Portuguese: ', ', '). This process was the source of most of the language's distinctive nasal diphthongs. In particular, the Latin endings "-anem",'and'became'in most cases, cf. Lat.'("dog"),'("brother"),'("reason") with Modern Port. ', ', ', and their plurals "-anes", "-anos", "-ones" normally became "-ães", "-ãos", "-ões", cf. "cães", "irmãos", "razões".  The Portuguese language is the only Romance language that has preserved the clitic case mesoclisis: cf. (I'll give thee), (I'll love you), (I'll contact them). Like Galician, it also retains the Latin synthetic pluperfect tense: (I had been), (I had lived), (you had lived). Romanian also has this tense, but uses the -s- form.

Vocabulary.

Most of the lexicon of Portuguese is derived, directly or through other Romance languages, from Latin. Nevertheless, because of its original Lusitanian and Celtic Gallaecian heritage, and the later participation of Portugal in the Age of Discovery, it has a relevant number of words from the ancient Hispano-Celtic group and adopted loanwords from other languages around the world.  A number of Portuguese words can still be traced to the pre-Roman inhabitants of Portugal, which included the Gallaeci, Lusitanians, Celtici and Cynetes. Most of these words derived from the Hispano-Celtic Gallaecian language of northwestern Iberia, and are very often shared with Galician since both languages have the same origin in the medieval language of Galician-Portuguese. A few of these words existed in Latin as loanwords from other Celtic sources, often Gaulish. Altogether these are over 2,000 words, some verbs and toponymic names of towns, rivers, utensils and plants.  In the 5th century, the Iberian Peninsula (the Roman Hispania) was conquered by the Germanic Suebi and Visigoths. As they adopted the Roman civilization and language, however, these people contributed with some 500 Germanic words to the lexicon. Many of these words are related to warfare – such as'spur','stake', and 'war', from Gothic "*spaúra", "*stakka", and "*wirro" respectively; the natural world i.e.'swine' from "*sweina", 'hawk' from "*gabilans", 'wave' from "*vigan"' human emotions such as or ('pride', 'proud') from Old Germanic "*urguol" or verbs like 'to craft, record, graft' from "*graba" or 'to squeeze, quash, grind' from Suebian "*magōn" or 'to shred' from "*harpō". The Germanic languages influence also exists in toponymic surnames and patronymic surnames borne by Visigoth sovereigns and their descendants, and it dwells on placenames such as Ermesinde, Esposende and Resende where "sinde" and "sende" are derived from the Germanic "sinths" (military expedition) and in the case of Resende, the prefix "re" comes from Germanic "reths" 'council'. Other examples of Portuguese names, surnames and town names of Germanic toponymic origin include Henrique, Henriques, Vermoim, Mandim, Calquim, Baguim, Gemunde, Guetim, Sermonde and many more, are quite common mainly in the old Suebi and later Visigothic dominated regions, covering today's Northern half of Portugal and Galicia.  Between the 9th and early 13th centuries, Portuguese acquired some 400 to 600 words from Arabic by influence of Moorish Iberia. They are often recognizable by the initial Arabic article "a(l)-", and include common words such as 'village' from الضيعة "alḍai`a" (or from Edictum Rothari: "aldii", "aldias"), 'lettuce' from الخس "alkhass", 'warehouse' from المخزن "almakhzan", and 'olive oil' from الزيت "azzait".  Starting in the 15th century, the Portuguese maritime explorations led to the introduction of many loanwords from Asian languages. For instance, 'cutlass' from Japanese "katana", 'tea' from Chinese "chá", and 'chicken-soup, piece of cake' from Malay.  From the 16th to the 19th centuries, because of the role of Portugal as intermediary in the Atlantic slave trade, and the establishment of large Portuguese colonies in Angola, Mozambique, and Brazil, Portuguese acquired several words of African and Amerind origin, especially names for most of the animals and plants found in those territories. While those terms are mostly used in the former colonies, many became current in European Portuguese as well. From Kimbundu, for example, came "kifumate" > 'head caress' (Brazil), "kusula" > 'youngest child' (Brazil), 'tropical wasp' (Brazil), and "kubungula" > 'to dance like a wizard' (Angola). From South America came 'potato', from Taino; and, from Tupi–Guarani "naná" and Tupi "ibá cati", respectively (two species of pineapple), and 'popcorn' from Tupi and 'toucan' from Guarani "tucan".  Finally, it has received a steady influx of loanwords from other European languages, especially French and English. These are by far the most important languages when referring to loanwords. There are many examples such as: / 'bracket'/'crochet', 'jacket', 'lipstick', and /'steak'/'slice','street' respectively, from French,,,, ; and'steak',,, /,, from English "beef", "football", "revolver", "stock", "folklore".  Examples from other European languages: 'pasta', 'pilot', 'carriage', and 'barrack', from Italian,,, and ; 'hair lock', 'wet-cured ham' (in Portugal, in contrast with "presunto" 'dry-cured ham' from Latin "prae-exsuctus" 'dehydrated') or 'canned ham' (in Brazil, in contrast with non-canned, wet-cured "presunto cozido" and dry-cured "presunto cru"), or "castelhano" 'Castilian', from Spanish "melena"'mane', "fiambre" and "castellano."

Classification and related languages.

Portuguese belongs to the West Iberian branch of the Romance languages, and it has special ties with the following members of this group:  Portuguese and other Romance languages (namely French and Italian) are moderately mutually intelligible, and share considerable similarities in both vocabulary and grammar. Portuguese speakers will usually need some formal study before attaining strong comprehension in those Romance languages, and vice versa. However, Portuguese and Galician are mutually intelligible, and Spanish is asymmetrically comprehensible to Portuguese speakers. Given that Portuguese has a larger phonemic inventory than Spanish, Portuguese is still considerably intelligible (if spoken slowly and without jargon) to most Spanish speakers, owing to their genealogical proximity and shared genealogical history as West Iberian (Ibero-Romance languages), historical contact between speakers and mutual influence, shared areal features as well as modern lexical, structural, and grammatical similarity (89%) between them.  Portuñol/Portunhol, a form of code-switching, has a more lively use and is more readily mentioned in popular culture in South America. Said code-switching is not to be confused with the Portuñol spoken on the borders of Brazil with Uruguay () and Paraguay (), and of Portugal with Spain (), that are Portuguese dialects spoken natively by thousands of people, which have been heavily influenced by Spanish.  Portuguese and Spanish are the only Ibero-Romance languages, and perhaps the only Romance languages with such thriving inter-language forms, in which visible and lively bilingual contact dialects and code-switching have formed, in which functional bilingual communication is achieved through attempting an approximation to the target foreign language (known as 'Portuñol') without a learned acquisition process, but nevertheless facilitates communication. There is an emerging literature focused on such phenomena (including informal attempts of standardization of the linguistic continua and their usage).

Galician-Portuguese in Spain.

The closest relative of Portuguese is Galician, which is spoken in the autonomous community (region) and historical nationality of Galicia (northwestern Spain). The two were at one time a single language, known today as Galician-Portuguese, but they have diverged especially in pronunciation and vocabulary due to the political separation of Portugal from Galicia. There is, however, still a linguistic continuity consisting of the variant of Galician referred to as "galego-português baixo-limiao", which is spoken in several Galician villages between the municipalities of Entrimo and Lobios and the transborder region of the natural park of Peneda-Gerês/Xurês. It is "considered a rarity, a living vestige of the medieval language that ranged from Cantabria to Mondego [...]". As reported by UNESCO, due to the pressure of the Spanish language on the standard official version of the Galician language, the Galician language was on the verge of disappearing. According to the UNESCO philologist Tapani Salminen, the proximity to Portuguese protects Galician. Nevertheless, the core vocabulary and grammar of Galician are still noticeably closer to Portuguese than to those of Spanish. In particular, like Portuguese, it uses the future subjunctive, the personal infinitive, and the synthetic pluperfect. Mutual intelligibility (estimated at 90% by R. A. Hall, Jr., 1989) is excellent between Galicians and northern Portuguese. Many linguists consider Galician to be a co-dialect of the Portuguese language.  Another member of the Galician-Portuguese group, most commonly thought of as a Galician dialect, is spoken in the Eonavian region in a western strip in Asturias and the westernmost parts of the provinces of León and Zamora, along the frontier with Galicia, between the Eo and Navia rivers (or more exactly Eo and Frexulfe rivers). It is called "eonaviego" or "gallego-asturiano" by its speakers.  The Fala language, known by its speakers as "xalimés", "mañegu", "a fala de Xálima" and "chapurráu" and in Portuguese as "a fala de Xálima", "a fala da Estremadura", "o galego da Estremadura", "valego" or "galaico-estremenho", is another descendant of Galician-Portuguese, spoken by a small number of people in the Spanish towns of Valverde del Fresno ("Valverdi du Fresnu"), Eljas ("As Ellas") and San Martín de Trevejo ("Sa Martín de Trevellu") in the autonomous community of Extremadura, near the border with Portugal.  There are a number of other places in Spain in which the native language of the common people is a descendant of the Galician-Portuguese group, such as La Alamedilla, Cedillo ("Cedilho"), Herrera de Alcántara ("Ferreira d'Alcântara") and Olivenza ("Olivença"), but in these municipalities, what is spoken is actually Portuguese, not disputed as such in the mainstream.  It should be noticed that the diversity of dialects of the Portuguese language is known since the time of medieval Portuguese-Galician language when it coexisted with the Lusitanian-Mozarabic dialect, spoken in the south of Portugal. The dialectal diversity becomes more evident in the work of Fernão d'Oliveira, in the "Grammatica da Lingoagem Portuguesa", (1536), where he remarks that the people of Portuguese regions of Beira, Alentejo, Estremadura, and Entre Douro e Minho, all speak differently from each other. Also Contador d'Argote (1725) distinguishes three main varieties of dialects: the local dialects, the dialects of time, and of profession (work jargon). Of local dialects he highlights five main dialects: the dialect of Estremadura, of Entre-Douro e Minho, of Beira, of Algarve and of Trás-os-Montes. He also makes reference to the overseas dialects, the rustic dialects, the poetic dialect and that of prose.  In the kingdom of Portugal, "Ladinho" (or "Lingoagem Ladinha") was the name given to the pure Portuguese language romance, without any mixture of Aravia or Gerigonça Judenga. While the term "língua vulgar" was used to name the language before D. Dinis decided to call it "Portuguese language", the erudite version used and known as Galician-Portuguese (the language of the Portuguese court) and all other Portuguese dialects were spoken at the same time. In a historical perspective the Portuguese language was never just one dialect. Just like today there is a standard Portuguese (actually two) among the several dialects of Portuguese, in the past there was Galician-Portuguese as the "standard", coexisting with other dialects.

Influence on other languages.

Portuguese has provided loanwords to many languages, such as Indonesian, Manado Malay, Malayalam, Sri Lankan Tamil and Sinhala, Malay, Bengali, English, Hindi, Swahili, Afrikaans, Konkani, Marathi, Punjabi, Tetum, Xitsonga, Japanese, Lanc-Patuá, Esan, Bandari (spoken in Iran) and Sranan Tongo (spoken in Suriname). It left a strong influence on the "língua brasílica", a Tupi–Guarani language, which was the most widely spoken in Brazil until the 18th century, and on the language spoken around Sikka in Flores Island, Indonesia. In nearby Larantuka, Portuguese is used for prayers in Holy Week rituals. The Japanese–Portuguese dictionary "Nippo Jisho" (1603) was the first dictionary of Japanese in a European language, a product of Jesuit missionary activity in Japan. Building on the work of earlier Portuguese missionaries, the "Dictionarium Anamiticum, Lusitanum et Latinum" (Annamite–Portuguese–Latin dictionary) of Alexandre de Rhodes (1651) introduced the modern orthography of Vietnamese, which is based on the orthography of 17th-century Portuguese. The Romanization of Chinese was also influenced by the Portuguese language (among others), particularly regarding Chinese surnames; one example is "Mei". During 1583–88 Italian Jesuits Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci created a Portuguese–Chinese dictionary – the first ever European–Chinese dictionary.  For instance, as Portuguese merchants were presumably the first to introduce the sweet orange in Europe, in several modern Indo-European languages the fruit has been named after them. Some examples are Albanian "portokall", Bosnian (archaic) "portokal", "prtokal", Bulgarian портокал ("portokal"), Greek πορτοκάλι ("portokáli"), Macedonian "", Persian پرتقال ("porteghal"), and Romanian "portocală". Related names can be found in other languages, such as Arabic البرتقال ("burtuqāl"), Georgian ფორთოხალი ("p'ort'oxali"), Turkish "portakal" and Amharic "birtukan". Also, in southern Italian dialects (e.g. Neapolitan), an orange is "portogallo" or "purtuallo", literally "(the) Portuguese (one)", in contrast to standard Italian "arancia".

Derived languages.

Beginning in the 16th century, the extensive contacts between Portuguese travelers and settlers, African and Asian slaves, and local populations led to the appearance of many pidgins with varying amounts of Portuguese influence. As each of these pidgins became the mother tongue of succeeding generations, they evolved into fully fledged creole languages, which remained in use in many parts of Asia, Africa and South America until the 18th century. Some Portuguese-based or Portuguese-influenced creoles are still spoken today, by over 3 million people worldwide, especially people of partial Portuguese ancestry.

Phonology.

Portuguese phonology is similar to those of languages such as French (especially that of Quebec), the Gallo-Italic languages, Occitan, Catalan and Franco-Provençal, unlike that of Spanish, which is similar to those of Sardinian and the Southern Italian dialects. Some would describe the phonology of Portuguese as a blend of Spanish, Gallo-Romance (e.g. French) and the languages of northern Italy (especially Genoese), but with a deeper Celtic substratum.  There is a maximum of 9 oral vowels, 2 semivowels and 21 consonants; though some varieties of the language have fewer phonemes. There are also five nasal vowels, which some linguists regard as allophones of the oral vowels.

Vowels.

Like Catalan and German, Portuguese uses vowel quality to contrast stressed syllables with unstressed syllables. Unstressed isolated vowels tend to be raised and sometimes centralized.

Consonants.

Phonetic notes

Grammar.

A notable aspect of the grammar of Portuguese is the verb. Morphologically, more verbal inflections from classical Latin have been preserved by Portuguese than by any other major Romance language. Portuguese and Spanish share very similar grammar. Portuguese also has some grammatical innovations not found in other Romance languages (except Galician and Fala):

Writing system.

Portuguese is written with 26 letters of the Latin script, making use of five diacritics to denote stress, vowel height, contraction, nasalization, and etymological assibilation (acute accent, circumflex, grave accent, tilde, and cedilla). The trema was also formerly used in Brazilian Portuguese, and can still be encountered in words derived from proper names in other languages, such as Anhangüera and mülleriano., though 'Anhangüera' and'mülleriano' are a classical example of Estrangeirismo (), a systematical usage of foreign Loanwords; in this case from Guarani and German origin, respectively. Accented characters and digraphs are not counted as separate letters for collation purposes.

Portuguese ( or, in full, ) is a Western Romance language originating in the Iberian Peninsula. It is 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. A Portuguese-speaking person or nation is referred to as "Lusophone" ("Lusófono"). As the result of expansion during colonial times, a cultural presence of Portuguese and Portuguese creole speakers are also found around the world (e.g., Cape Verdean Creole, and Papiamento the most widely spoken of these).

Portugalština "(língua portuguesa)" spadá mezi západní románské jazyky do iberorománské větve, spolu se španělštinou, katalánštinou a galicijštinou. Portugalština se rozšířila po světě v průběhu 15. a 16. století, když si Portugalsko vytvořilo svou koloniální říši, která přetrvala (s výjimkou Brazílie) až do roku 1975 (Mosambik, Angola), popř. 1999, kdy Portugalsko přišlo o svou poslední zámořskou kolonii – Macao, které bylo tehdy předáno Číně. Z toho vyplývá, že portugalština je v současné době úředním jazykem více nezávislých států a je také často používána jako druhý jazyk. Kromě vlastní portugalštiny existuje ještě na dvacet kreolských jazyků vytvořených převážně na bázi portugalštiny. V důsledku emigrace z Portugalska v posledních desetiletích se portugalština stala jazykem významných menšin v západní Evropě a severní Americe.


Medical disorders.

"Déjà vu" is associated with temporal lobe epilepsy. This experience is a neurological anomaly related to epileptic electrical discharge in the brain, creating a strong sensation that an event or experience currently being experienced has already been experienced in the past.  Migraine with Aura is also associated with deja vu.  Early researchers tried to establish a link between "déjà vu" and mental disorders such as anxiety, dissociative identity disorder and schizophrenia but failed to find correlations of any diagnostic value. No special association has been found between déjà vu and schizophrenia. A 2008 study found that "déjà vu" experiences are unlikely to be pathological dissociative experiences.  Some research has looked into genetics when considering "déjà vu". Although there is not currently a gene associated with "déjà vu", the LGII gene on chromosome 10 is being studied for a possible link. Certain forms of the gene are associated with a mild form of epilepsy, and, though by no means a certainty, "déjà vu", along with jamais vu, occurs often enough during seizures (such as simple partial seizures) that researchers have reason to suspect a link.

Pharmacology.

Certain drugs increase the chances of "déjà vu" occurring in the user, resulting in a strong sensation that an event or experience currently being experienced has already been experienced in the past. Some pharmaceutical drugs, when taken together, have also been implicated in the cause of "déjà vu". Taiminen and Jääskeläinen (2001) reported the case of an otherwise healthy male who started experiencing intense and recurrent sensations of "déjà vu" upon taking the drugs amantadine and phenylpropanolamine together to relieve flu symptoms. He found the experience so interesting that he completed the full course of his treatment and reported it to the psychologists to write up as a case study. Because of the dopaminergic action of the drugs and previous findings from electrode stimulation of the brain (e.g. Bancaud, Brunet-Bourgin, Chauvel, & Halgren, 1994), Tamminen and Jääskeläinen speculate that "déjà vu" occurs as a result of hyperdopaminergic action in the mesial temporal areas of the brain.

Explanations.

Split perception explanation.

Déjà vu may happen if a person experienced the current sensory twice successively. The first input experience is brief, degraded, occluded, or distracted. Immediately followed by that, the second perception might be familiar because the person naturally related it to the first input. One possibility behind this mechanism is that the first input experience involves shallow processing, which means that only some superficial physical attributes are extracted from the stimulus.

Memory-based explanation.

Implicit memory  Research has associated "déjà vu" experiences with good memory functions. Recognition memory enables people to realize the event or activity that they are experiencing has happened before. When people experience "déjà vu", they may have their recognition memory triggered by certain situations which they have never encountered.  The similarity between a "déjà-vu"-eliciting stimulus and an existing, or non-existing but different, memory trace may lead to the sensation that an event or experience currently being experienced has already been experienced in the past. Thus, encountering something that evokes the implicit associations of an experience or sensation that "cannot be remembered" may lead to "déjà vu". In an effort to reproduce the sensation experimentally, Banister and Zangwill (1941) used hypnosis to give participants posthypnotic amnesia for material they had already seen. When this was later re-encountered, the restricted activation caused thereafter by the posthypnotic amnesia resulted in 3 of the 10 participants reporting what the authors termed "paramnesias".  Two approaches are used by researchers to study feelings of previous experience, with the process of recollection and familiarity. Recollection-based recognition refers to the realization of the current situation has occurred before. Familiarity-based recognition refers to the feeling of familiarity with the current situation without identifying anything.  In 2010, O’Connor, Moulin, and Conway developed another laboratory analog of déjà vu based on two contrast groups of carefully selected participants, a group under posthypnotic amnesia condition (PHA) and a group under posthypnotic familiarity condition (PHF). The idea of PHA group was based on the work done by Banister and Zangwill (1941), and the PHF group was built on the research results of O’Connor, Moulin, and Conway (2007). They applied the same puzzle game for both groups, “Railroad Rush Hour”, which is a game aims for sliding the red car through the exit by rearranging and shifting other blocking trucks and cars on the road. After completing the puzzle, each participant in the PHA group received a posthypnotic amnesia suggestion to forget the game in the hypnosis. On the other hand, each participant in the PHF group was not given the puzzle but received a posthypnotic familiarity suggestion that they would feel familiar with this game during the hypnosis. After the hypnosis, all participants were asked to play the puzzle (the second time for PHA group) and reported the feelings of playing.  In the PHA condition, if a participant reported no memory of completing the puzzle game during hypnosis, researchers scored the participant as passing the suggestion. In the PHF condition, if participants reported that the puzzle game felt familiar, researchers would score the participant as passing the suggestion. It turns out that, both in the PHA and PHF conditions, 5 participants passed the suggestion and 1 did not, which is 83.33% of the total sample. More participants in PHF group felt strong sense of familiarity, for instance, commenting like “I think I have done this several years ago”. Furthermore, more participants in PHF group experienced a strong déjà vu, for example, describing like “I think I have done the exact puzzle before.” Only 3 out of 6 participants in PHA group felt a sense of déjà vu, and none of them experienced a strong sense of déjà vu. These figures are consistent with Banister and Zangwill’s findings. Some participants in PHA group related the familiarity when completing the puzzle with an exact event that happened before, which is more likely to be a phenomenon of source amnesia. Other participants started to realize that they may have completed the puzzle game during hypnosis, which is more akin to the phenomenon of breaching. In contrast, participants in PHF group reported that they felt confused about the strong familiarity of this puzzle but the feeling of play it just sliding across their mind. Overall, the experiences of participants in PHF group is more likely to be the déjà vu in life, while the experiences of participants in PHA group is unlike to be the real déjà vu.  A 2012 study in the journal "Consciousness and Cognition", that used virtual reality technology to study reported "déjà vu" experiences, supported this idea. This virtual reality investigation suggested that similarity between a new scene's spatial layout and the layout of a previously experienced scene in memory (but which fails to be recalled) may contribute to the "déjà vu" experience. When the previously experienced scene fails to come to mind in response to viewing the new scene, that previously experienced scene in memory can still exert an effect—that effect may be a feeling of familiarity with the new scene that is subjectively experienced as a feeling that an event or experience currently being experienced has already been experienced in the past, or of having been there before despite knowing otherwise.  Cryptomnesia: Reconstruction of a memory  Another possible explanation for the phenomenon of "déjà vu" is the occurrence of "cryptomnesia", which is where information learned is forgotten but nevertheless stored in the brain, and similar occurrences invoke the contained knowledge, leading to a feeling of familiarity because the event or experience being experienced has already been experienced in the past, known as ""déjà vu"". Some experts suggest that memory is a process of reconstruction, rather than a recall of fixed, established events. This reconstruction comes from stored components, involving elaborations, distortions, and omissions. Each successive recall of an event is merely a recall of the last reconstruction. The proposed sense of recognition ("déjà vu") involves achieving a good "match" between the present experience and our stored data. This reconstruction, however, may now differ so much from the original event that we "know" we have never experienced it before, even though it seems similar.  Dual neurological processing  In 1964, Robert Efron of Boston's Veterans Hospital proposed that "déjà vu" is caused by dual neurological processing caused by delayed signals. Efron found that the brain's sorting of incoming signals is done in the temporal lobe of the brain's left hemisphere. However, signals enter the temporal lobe "twice" before processing, once from each hemisphere of the brain, normally with a slight delay of milliseconds between them. Efron proposed that if the two signals were occasionally not synchronized properly, then they would be processed as two separate experiences, with the second seeming to be a re-living of the first.

Dream-based explanation.

Dreams can also be used to explain the experience of déjà vu, and they are related in three different aspects. Firstly, some déjà vu experiences duplicate the situation in dreams instead of waking conditions, according to the survey done by Brown (2004). 20% of the respondents reported their déjà vu experiences were from dreams and 40% of the respondents reported that from both reality and dreams. Secondly, people may experience déjà vu because some elements in their remembered dreams were shown. Research done by Zuger (1966) supported this idea by investigating the relationship between remembered dreams and déjà vu experiences, and suggested that there is a strong correlation. Thirdly, people may experience déjà vu during a dream state, which links déjà vu with dream frequency.

Related terms.

"Jamais vu".

"Jamais vu" (from French, meaning "never seen") is any familiar situation which is not recognized by the observer.  Often described as the opposite of "déjà vu", "jamais vu" involves a sense of eeriness and the observer's impression of seeing the situation for the first time, despite rationally knowing that he or she has been in the situation before. "Jamais vu" is more commonly explained as when a person momentarily does not recognize a word, person, or place that they already know. "Jamais vu" is sometimes associated with certain types of aphasia, amnesia, and epilepsy.  Theoretically, a "jamais vu" feeling in a sufferer of a delirious disorder or intoxication could result in a delirious explanation of it, such as in the Capgras delusion, in which the patient takes a known person for a false double or impostor. If the impostor is himself, the clinical setting would be the same as the one described as depersonalization, hence "jamais vus" of oneself or of the very "reality of reality", are termed depersonalization (or surreality) feelings.  The feeling has been evoked through semantic satiation. Chris Moulin of the University of Leeds asked 95 volunteers to write the word "door" 30 times in 60 seconds. 68 percent of the subjects reported symptoms of "jamais vu", with some beginning to doubt that "door" was a real word.  The experience has also been named ""vuja de"" and ""véjà du"".

"Déjà vécu".

Déjà vécu is a feeling of “already living through”; however, it has been considered as a pathological form of déjà vu recently. Déjà vécu has behavioral consequences, unlike from déjà vu. Patients of déjà vécu would withdraw from their current events or activities since they believed that they have participated in them before because of the familiarity. Patients justify their feelings of familiarity with beliefs bordering on delusion.

"Presque vu".

Presque vu (, from French, meaning "almost seen") is the intense feeling of being on the very brink of a powerful epiphany, insight, or revelation, without actually achieving the revelation. The feeling is often therefore associated with a frustrating, tantalizing sense of incompleteness or near-completeness.

"Déjà rêvé".

Déjà rêvé (from French, meaning "already dreamed") is the feeling of having already dreamed something that you are now experiencing.

"Déjà entendu".

Déjà entendu (literally "already heard") is the experience of feeling sure about having already heard something, even though the exact details are uncertain or were perhaps imagined.

"Déjà vous".

Deja vous is a pun on the English pronunciation of déjà vu. The French pronunciation of the vowel U in vu,, does not exist in English. Therefore déjà vu is pronounced with a in English. When pronounced this way,, it means "already you" in French, rather than "already seen" and is written "déjà vous".

Déjà vu (; ) is the feeling that one has lived through the present situation before. The phrase translates literally as "already seen". Although some interpret déjà vu in a paranormal context, mainstream scientific approaches reject the explanation of "déjà vu" as "precognition" or "prophecy". Rather, they explain it as the feeling that one has lived through the present situation before. It is an anomaly of memory whereby, despite the strong sense of recollection, the time, place, and practical context of the "previous" experience are uncertain or believed to be impossible. Two types of "déjà vu" are recognized: the pathological "déjà vu" usually associated with epilepsy or that which, when unusually prolonged or frequent, or associated with other symptoms such as hallucinations, may be an indicator of neurological or psychiatric illness, and the non-pathological type characteristic of healthy people, about two-thirds of whom have had "déjà vu" experiences. People who travel more or watch more movies are more likely to experience "déjà vu" than others. Furthermore, people also tend to experience "déjà vu" more in fragile conditions or under high pressure, and research shows that the experience of "déjà vu" also decreases with age.

Déjà vu (francouzsky „již viděno“, vyslovováno []) označuje v psychologii jev, kdy má člověk z ničeho nic intenzivní pocit něčeho už dříve prožitého, viděného nebo slyšeného.


Etymology.

The Thames, from Middle English "Temese", is derived from the Brittonic Celtic name for the river, "Tamesas" (from *"tamēssa"), recorded in Latin as "Tamesis" and yielding modern Welsh "Tafwys" "Thames". The name may have meant "dark" and can be compared to other cognates such as Russian темно (Proto-Slavic *"tĭmĭnŭ"), Lithuanian "tamsi" "dark", Latvian "tumsa" "darkness", Sanskrit "tamas" and Welsh "tywyll" "darkness" (Proto-Celtic *"temeslos") and Middle Irish "teimen" "dark grey". The origin is shared by many other river names in Britain, such as the River Tamar at the border of Devon and Cornwall, several rivers named Tame in the Midlands and North Yorkshire, the Tavy on Dartmoor, the Team of the North East, the Teifi and Teme of Wales, the Teviot in the Scottish Borders and a Thames tributary the Thame.  Kenneth H. Jackson has proposed that the name of the Thames is not Indo-European (and of unknown meaning), while Peter Kitson suggested that it is Indo-European but originated before the Celts and has a name indicating "muddiness" from a root "*tā-",'melt'.  Indirect evidence for the antiquity of the name 'Thames' is provided by a Roman potsherd found at Oxford, bearing the inscription "Tamesubugus fecit" (Tamesubugus made [this]). It is believed that Tamesubugus' name was derived from that of the river. Tamese was referred to as a place, not a river in the Ravenna Cosmography (c. AD 700).  The river's name has always been pronounced with a simple "t" /t/; the Middle English spelling was typically "Temese" and the Brittonic form "Tamesis".

Administration.

The administrative powers of the Thames Conservancy have been taken on with modifications by the Environment

Human activity.

The marks of human activity, in some cases dating back to Pre-Roman Britain, are visible at various points along the river. These include a variety of structures connected with use of the river, such as navigations, bridges and watermills, as well as prehistoric burial mounds. A major maritime route is formed for much of its length for shipping and supplies: through the Port of London for international trade, internally along its length and by its connection to the British canal system. The river's position has put it at the centre of many events in British history, leading to it being described by John Burns as "liquid history".  Two broad canals link the river

Physical and natural aspects.

The usually quoted source of the Thames is at Thames Head (at ). This is about north of Kemble parish church in southern Gloucestershire, near the town of Cirencester, in the Cotswolds.  However, Seven Springs near Cheltenham, where the Churn (which feeds into the Thames near Cricklade) rises, is also sometimes quoted as the Thames' source, as this location is furthest from the mouth, and adds some to the river's length. At Seven Springs above the source is a stone with the Latin hexameter inscription "Hic tuus o Tamesine pater septemgeminus fons", which means "Here, O Father Thames, [is] your sevenfold source".  The springs at Seven Springs flow throughout the year, while those at Thames Head are only seasonal (a winterbourne). The Thames is the longest river entirely in England. (The longest river in the United Kingdom, the Severn, flows partly in Wales). However, as the River Churn, sourced at Seven Springs, is longer than the section of the Thames from its traditional source at Thames Head to the confluence, the overall length of the Thames measured from Seven Springs, at, is greater than the Severn's length of. Thus, the "Churn/Thames" river may be regarded as the longest natural river in the United Kingdom.  The stream from Seven Springs is joined at Coberley by a longer tributary which could further increase the length of the Thames, with its source in the grounds of the National Star College at Ullenwood.  The Thames flows through or alongside Ashton Keynes, Cricklade, Lechlade, Oxford, Abingdon-on-Thames, Wallingford, Goring-on-Thames and Streatley, Pangbourne and Whitchurch-on-Thames, Reading, Wargrave, Henley-on-Thames, Marlow, Maidenhead, Windsor and Eton, Staines-upon-Thames and Egham, Chertsey, Shepperton, Weybridge, Sunbury-on-Thames, Walton-on-Thames, Molesey and Thames Ditton. The river was subject to minor redefining and widening of the main channel around Oxford, Abingdon and Marlow before 1850, since when further cuts to ease navigation have reduced distances further.  Molesey faces Hampton, and in Greater London the Thames passes Hampton Court Palace, Surbiton, Kingston upon Thames, Teddington, Twickenham, Richmond (with a famous view of the Thames from Richmond Hill), Syon House, Kew, Brentford, Chiswick, Barnes, Hammersmith, Fulham, Putney, Wandsworth, Battersea and Chelsea. In central London, the river passes Pimlico and Vauxhall, and then forms one of the principal axes of the city, from the Palace of Westminster to the Tower of London. At this point, it historically formed the southern boundary of the medieval city, with Southwark, on the opposite bank, then being part of Surrey.  Beyond central London, the river passes Bermondsey, Wapping, Shadwell, Limehouse, Rotherhithe, Millwall, Deptford, Greenwich, Cubitt Town, Blackwall, New Charlton and Silvertown, before flowing through the Thames Barrier, which protects central London from flooding by storm surges. Below the barrier, the river passes Woolwich, Thamesmead, Dagenham, Erith, Purfleet, Dartford, West Thurrock, Northfleet, Tilbury and Gravesend before entering the Thames Estuary near Southend-on-Sea.

Human history.

The River Thames has played several roles in human history: as an economic resource, a maritime route, a boundary, a fresh water source, a source of food and more recently a leisure facility. In 1929, John Burns, one-time MP for Battersea, responded to an American's unfavourable comparison of the Thames with the Mississippi by coining the expression "The Thames is liquid history".  There is evidence of human habitation living off the river along its length dating back to Neolithic times. The British Museum has a decorated bowl (3300–2700 BC), found in the river at Hedsor, Buckinghamshire, and a considerable amount of material was discovered during the excavations of Dorney Lake. A number of Bronze Age sites and artefacts have been discovered along the banks of the river including settlements at Lechlade, Cookham and Sunbury-on-Thames.  So extensive have the changes to this landscape been that what little evidence there is of man's presence before the ice came has inevitably shown signs of transportation here by water and reveals nothing specifically local. Likewise, later evidence of occupation, even since the arrival of the Romans, may lie next to the original banks of the Brent but have been buried under centuries of silt.

Roman Britain.

Some of the earliest written references to the Thames () occur in Julius Caesar's account of his second expedition to Britain in 54 BC, when the Thames presented a major obstacle and he encountered the Iron Age Belgic tribes the Catuvellauni and the Atrebates along the river. The confluence of the Thames and Cherwell was the site of early settlements and the River Cherwell marked the boundary between the Dobunni tribe to the west and the Catuvellauni tribe to the east (these were pre-Roman Celtic tribes). In the late 1980s a large Romano-British settlement was excavated on the edge

Middle Ages.

A Romano-British settlement grew up north of the confluence, partly because the site was naturally protected from attack on the east side by the River Cherwell and on the west by the River Thames. This settlement dominated the pottery trade in what is now central southern England, and pottery was distributed by boats on the Thames and its tributaries.  Competition for the use of the river created the centuries-old conflict between those who wanted to dam the river to build millraces and fish traps and those who wanted to travel and carry goods on it. Economic prosperity and the foundation of wealthy monasteries by the Anglo-Saxons attracted unwelcome visitors and by around AD 870 the Vikings were sweeping up the Thames on the tide and creating havoc as in their destruction of Chertsey Abbey.  Once King William had won total control of the strategically important Thames Valley, he went on to invade the rest of England. He had many castles built, including those at Wallingford, Rochester, Windsor and most importantly

Early modern period.

During a series of cold winters the Thames froze over above London Bridge: in the first Frost Fair in 1607, a tent city was set up on the river, along with a number of amusements, including ice bowling.  In good conditions, barges travelled daily from Oxford to London carrying timber, wool, foodstuffs and livestock. The stone from the Cotswolds used to rebuild St Paul's Cathedral after the Great Fire in 1666 was brought all the way down from Radcot. The Thames provided the major route between the City of London and Westminster in the 16th and 17th centuries; the clannish guild of watermen ferried Londoners from landing to landing and tolerated no outside interference. In 1715, Thomas Doggett was so grateful to a local waterman for his efforts in ferrying him

Victorian era.

In the 19th century the quality of water in Thames deteriorated further. The dumping of raw sewage into the Thames was formerly only common in the City of London, making its tideway a harbour for many harmful bacteria. Gas manufactories were built alongside the river, and their by-products leaked into the water, including spent lime, ammonia, cyanide, and carbolic acid. The river had an unnaturally warm temperature caused by chemical reactions in the water, which also removed the water's oxygen. Four serious cholera outbreaks killed tens of thousands of people between 1832 and 1865. Historians have attributed Prince Albert's death in 1861 to typhoid that had spread in the river's dirty waters beside Windsor Castle. Wells with water tables that mixed with tributaries (or the non-tidal Thames) faced such pollution with the widespread

20th century.

The growth of road transport, and the decline of the Empire in the years following 1914, reduced the economic prominence of the river. During the Second World War, the protection of certain Thames-side facilities, particularly docks and water treatment plants, was crucial to the munitions and water supply of the country. The river's defences included the Maunsell forts in the estuary, and the use of barrage balloons to counter German bombers using the reflectivity and shapes of the river to navigate during the Blitz.  In the post-war era, although the Port of London remains one of the UK's three main ports, most trade has moved downstream from central London.

21st century.

In 2010, the Thames won the largest

The active river.

One of the major resources provided by the Thames is the water distributed as drinking water by Thames Water, whose area of responsibility covers the length of the River Thames. The Thames Water Ring Main is the main distribution mechanism for water in London, with one major loop linking the Hampton, Walton, Ashford and Kempton Park Water Treatment Works with central London.  In the past, commercial activities on the Thames included fishing (particularly eel trapping), coppicing willows and osiers which provided wood, and the operation of watermills for flour and paper production and metal beating. These activities have disappeared. A screw turbine hydro-electric plant at Romney Lock to power Windsor Castle using two Archimedes' screws was opened in 2013 by the Queen. This followed the first installation of such a screw at Mapledurham Watermill in 2011.  The Thames is popular for a wide variety of riverside housing, including high-rise flats in central London and chalets on the banks and islands upstream. Some people live in houseboats, typically around Brentford and Tagg's Island.

Transport and tourism.

The tidal river.

In London there are many sightseeing tours in tourist boats, past the more famous riverside attractions such as the Houses of Parliament

The upper river.

In summer, passenger services operate along the entire non-tidal river from Oxford to Teddington. The two largest operators are Salters Steamers and French Brothers. Salters operate services between Folly Bridge, Oxford and Staines. The whole journey takes four days and requires several changes of boat.

Cable car.

The Air Line cable car over the Thames from the Greenwich Peninsula to the Royal Docks has been in operation since the 2012 Summer Olympics.

Police and lifeboats.

The river is policed by five police forces. The Thames Division is the River Police arm of London's Metropolitan Police, while Surrey Police, Thames Valley Police, Essex Police and Kent Police have responsibilities on their parts of the river outside the metropolitan area. There is also a London Fire Brigade fire boat on the river. The river claims a

Navigation.

The Thames is maintained for navigation by powered craft from the estuary as far as Lechlade in Gloucestershire and for very small craft to Cricklade. The original towpath extends upstream from Putney Bridge as far as the connection with the now disused Thames and Severn Canal at Inglesham, one and a half miles upstream of the last boat lock near Lechlade. From Teddington Lock to the head of navigation, the navigation authority is the Environment Agency. Between the sea and Teddington Lock, the river forms part of the Port of London and navigation is administered by the Port of London Authority. Both the tidal river through London and the non-tidal river upstream are intensively used for leisure navigation.  The non-tidal River Thames is divided into reaches by the 45 locks. The locks are staffed for the greater part of the day, but can be operated by experienced users out of hours. This part of the Thames links to existing navigations at the River Wey Navigation, the River Kennet and the Oxford Canal. All craft using it must be licensed. The Environment Agency has patrol boats (named after tributaries of

The river as a boundary.

Until enough crossings were established, the river presented a formidable barrier, with Belgic tribes and Anglo-Saxon kingdoms being defined by which side of the river they were on. When English counties were established their boundaries were partly determined by the Thames. On the northern bank were the ancient counties of Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Middlesex and Essex. On the southern bank were the counties of Wiltshire, Berkshire, Surrey and

Crossings.

Many of the present-day road bridges are on the site of earlier fords, ferries and wooden bridges. At Swinford Bridge, a privately owned toll bridge, there was first a ford and then a ferry prior to the bridge being built. The earliest known major crossings of the Thames by the Romans were at London Bridge and Staines Bridge. At Folly Bridge in Oxford the remains of an original Saxon structure can be seen, and medieval stone bridges such as Newbridge, Wallingford Bridge and Abingdon Bridge are still

Pollution.

Treated sewage.

Treated sewage from all the towns and villages in the Thames catchment flow into the Thames via sewage treatment plants. This includes all the sewage from Swindon, Oxford, Reading and Windsor.  However, untreated sewage still regularly enters the Thames during wet weather. When London's sewerage system was built, sewers were designed to overflow through discharge points along the river during heavy storms. Originally, this would happen once or twice a year, however overflows now happen once

Mercury levels.

Mercury (Hg) is an environmentally persistent heavy metal which at high concentrations can be toxic to marine life and humans. Sixty sediment cores of 1 m in depth, spanning the entire tidal River Thames, between Brentford and the Isle of Grain have been analysed for total Hg. The sediment records show a clear rise and fall of Hg pollution through history. Mercury concentrations in the River Thames

Natural carbon compounds.

Evaluation of select of lipid compounds in the Thames estuary, known as glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers (GDGTs) has revealed enhanced concentrations of isoprenoid GDGT compounds (crenarchaeol) around

Sport.

There are several watersports prevalent on the Thames, with many clubs encouraging participation and organising racing and inter-club competitions.

Rowing.

The Thames is the historic heartland of rowing in the United Kingdom. There are over 200 clubs on the river, and over 8,000 members of British Rowing (over 40% of its membership). Most towns and districts of any size on the river have at least one club. Internationally attended centres are Oxford, Henley-on-Thames and events and clubs on the stretch of river from Chiswick to Putney.  Two rowing events on the River Thames are traditionally

Sailing.

Sailing is practised on both the tidal and non-tidal reaches of the river. The highest club upstream is at Oxford.

Skiffing.

Skiffing has dwindled in favour of private motor boat ownership but is competed on

Punting.

Unlike the "pleasure punting" common on the Cherwell in Oxford and the Cam in

Kayaking and canoeing.

Kayaking and canoeing are common, with sea kayakers using the tidal stretch for touring. Kayakers and canoeists use the tidal and non-tidal sections for training, racing and trips. Whitewater playboaters and slalom paddlers are catered for at weirs like those at Hurley Lock, Sunbury Lock and Boulter's Lock. At Teddington just

Swimming.

In 2006 British swimmer and environmental campaigner Lewis Pugh became the first person to swim the full length of the Thames from outside Kemble to Southend-on-Sea to draw attention to the severe drought in England which saw record temperatures indicative of a degree of global warming. The swim took him 21 days to complete. The official headwater of the river had stopped flowing due to the drought forcing Pugh to run the first.  Since June 2012 the Port of

Meanders.

A Thames meander is a long-distance journey over all or part of the Thames by running,

The Thames in the arts.

Visual arts.

The River Thames has been a subject for artists, great and minor, over the centuries. Four major artists with works based on the Thames are Canaletto, J. M. W. Turner, Claude Monet and James

Literature.

The Thames is mentioned in many works of literature including novels, diaries and poetry. It is the central theme in three in particular:  "Three Men in a Boat" by Jerome K. Jerome, first published in 1889, is a humorous account of a boating holiday on the Thames between Kingston and Oxford. The book was intended initially to be a serious travel guide, with accounts of local history of places along the route, but the humorous elements eventually took over. The landscape and features of the Thames as described by Jerome are virtually unchanged, and the book's enduring popularity has meant that it has never been out of print since it was first published.  Charles Dickens "Our Mutual Friend" (written in the years 1864–65) describes the river in a grimmer light. It begins with a

Music.

The Water Music composed by George Frideric Handel premiered on 17 July 1717, when King George I requested a concert on the River Thames. The concert was performed for King George I on his barge and he is said to have enjoyed it so much that he ordered the 50 exhausted musicians to play the suites three times on the trip.  The song 'Old Father Thames' was recorded by Peter Dawson at Abbey Road Studios in 1933 and by Gracie Fields five years later.  Jessie Matthews sings "My river" in the 1938 film "Sailing Along", and the tune is the centrepiece of a major dance number near the end of the film.  The Sex Pistols played a concert on the "Queen Elizabeth Riverboat" on 7 June 1977, the Queen's Silver Jubilee year, while sailing down

Major flood events.

London flood of 1928.

The 1928 Thames flood was a disastrous flood of the River Thames that affected much of riverside London on 7 January 1928, as well as places further downriver. Fourteen people were drowned in London and thousands were made homeless

Thames Valley flood of 1947.

The 1947 Thames flood was overall the worst 20th-century flood of the River Thames, affecting much of the Thames Valley as well as elsewhere in England during the middle of March 1947 after a very severe winter.

Canvey Island flood of 1953.

On the night of 31 January, the North Sea flood of 1953 devastated the island taking the lives of 58 islanders, and led to the temporary evacuation of the 13,000 residents. Canvey is consequently

The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At, it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the River Severn.

Temže () je řeka protékající jižní Anglií, která spojuje Londýn se Severním mořem. Je 346 km dlouhá. Povodí má rozlohu 12 935 km2.


Motivations behind the Plan.

There are two main theories concerning the motivations behind the drawing of the Plan. The dispute between scholars centres around the assertion put forward by Horn and Born in their 1979 work "The Plan of Saint Gall", that the Plan in the Stiftsbibliothek Sankt Gallen was a copy of an original drawing issued by the court of Louis the Pious after the synods held at Aachen in 816 and 817. The purpose of the synods was to establish Benedictine monasteries throughout the Carolingian Empire as a bulwark against encroaching Christian monastic missionaries from Britain and Ireland who were bringing Celtic lifestyle influences to the Continent (see Celtic art). Horn and Born argued that the Plan was a "paradigmatic" drawing of how a Benedictine monastery should look if the Benedictine Rule was to be strictly followed; a guide for the construction of future monastic ensembles.  Other scholars, particularly Werner Jacobsen, Norbert Stachura and Lawrence Nees have, on the contrary, argued that the Plan is an original drawing made at the Monastery of Reichenau for the abbot of Saint Gall, Gozbert, who decided to build a new abbey church in the 820s. This argument is based on Jacobsen's observations of marks left by pairs of compasses in the parchment, as well as alterations and changes undertaken during its drawing. Lawrence Nees has also argued that the fact that the manuscript was drawn and written by two scribes, a younger one and an elder who acted as a supervisor "filling in and completing where the knowledge of the main scribe ended", can only be explained if the drawing is an original.

The manuscript.

The Plan was created from five parchments sewn together, and measures 45 inches by 31 inches (113 cm by 78 cm). It is drawn with red ink lines for the buildings, and brown ink for lettered inscriptions. The sequence in which the parchment was joined is the following: the first parchment consisted of the drawing of the abbey church and cloister; the second and third parchments were added to the bottom and right side of the original vellum, and here the abbey church was enlarged; buildings were added around the cloister; and the abbot's house, outer school, guest house and pilgrim's house were drawn. A fourth parchment was then added to the top where the infirmary, novitiate, cemetery, orchard, garden were drawn; and finally a fifth parchment was added to the bottom to accommodate the designs for the livestock quarters.  About 333 inscriptions, forty of them in meter, in the handwritings of two different scribes, describe the functions of the buildings. It has been possible to attribute the handwriting of these scribes to the monastery of Reichenau and one of them has been identified as monk Reginbert.  The scale to which the Plan was drawn has also been a subject of dispute. Horn and Born, for example, argue that a single scale was used while others, such as Reinle and Jacobsen, argue that multiple scales were applied for different elements.  The reverse of the Plan was inscribed in the 12th century, after it had been folded into book form, with the Life of Saint Martin by Sulpicius Severus.

The Dedication.

It is widely held that the Plan was dedicated to Gozbertus, the Abbot of St Gall from 816–36. However, recently Alfons Zettler has put forward the possibility of it being dedicated to another monk, Gozbert – known as young Gozbert – also an inhabitant of the monastery of Saint Gall during the same period.  The text reads [as translated by Horn into English]:  The Latin reads:

Architectural design and structures.

As mentioned above the Plan represents a Benedictine monastery and it is possible to see the Benedictine Rule being applied in the architectural design. One of the main aspects of the Rule was the ascetic life of the monks who had to dedicate themselves to prayer, meditation and study, and not worry about worldly matters. For this purpose, the Benedictine Rule required a monastery which was self-sufficient, and which provided for the monks all the necessary facilities, food, and water. The Plan thus depicts 40 ground plans which include not only the properly monastic buildings (basilica, cloister, abbot's house and cemetery) but also secular buildings for the use of lay workers and visitors.  Lynda Coon has identified five distinct "spatial-units":  She has also identified a status differentiation in the structures which follow the cardinal points. Accordingly, she argues that the northwest is reserved for the secular elite while the southwest is for the secular lower classes. Regarding the sacred spaces, the northeast and southeast is reserved for the monastic elite, and the far east and far south for what she calls "the liminal", that is to say in between lay and monastic.  Alfons Zettler has recently identified another criterion that the authors of the Plan may have followed for the layout of the structures, which does not follow the cardinal points but is determined by a clockwise direction starting and ending at the abbot's house. He argues that the basis of the organisation would have been a division of public/private and lay/monastic which is represented in the Plan by an increasing lay presence in each sector of the monastery when moving around the cloister clockwise from the infirmary.

The monk's cloister.

The monastic cloister occupies the centre of the Plan. It is placed in the southeast aligning itself both with the sacred east and with the poor – the accommodation for pilgrims and the poor is placed in the east just beneath the cloister – far from the worldly commodities and pleasures of the secular elite.  The structure of the cloister is highly symbolic. Firstly, it is a closed space looking inwards to its own centre where a savin tree is placed – – illustrating the ideal of a monk's experience removed from the world. Secondly, it is foursquare and four paths lead from its covered galleries to the centre – – symbolising Jerusalem and its four rivers.  The cloister is surrounded by two-storied buildings consisting of the warming room and dormitory to the east – and – the refectory, vestiary and kitchen to the south –, and – and the cellar and larder to the west – and. The monks, as well as the abbot, had a private entrance to the basilica either through their dormitory or through the portico of the cloister.

The abbot's house.

The abbot's intermediary position between the clerical and lay worlds is seen in the position of his accommodation on the Plan. The abbot's quarters are located at the other side of the abbey church from the monk's cloister, to the north-east, aligning itself with the secular elite guest houses where the royalty, the emperor and the emperor's court would lodge. The abbot's house also looks over the infirmary and novitiate to the east, the outer school and the house for elite guests to the west.  The abbot's house faces outwards, its porticoes opening to the outside world, in opposition with the monk's cloister porticoes which open to an enclosed green space. However, in order to comply with an ascetic way of life and to the Benedictine Rule, the abbot shares his bedroom and privy with seven other monks, and his servant quarters are set apart.  Finally, the abbot's residence has a privileged entry to the east-end of the basilica through a private passageway – – signalling his spiritual status as head of the monastery.

The basilica.

The monastery church or basilica is cruciform in shape and doubled-apsed to the east and to the west. It measures c.91.44 meters from apse to apse, the nave is c.12 meters in width and each aisle is c.6 meters in width.  In the west entrance there are two towers dedicated to St. Michael (northern tower) and St. Gabriel (southern tower). The inscriptions on the towers – "ad universa super inspicienda" – give them a surveillance function while no indication of bells is given.  The entrance to the church is also the only entrance to the whole monastic complex and it is marked by a square porch inscribed: (Here all the arriving crowd will find their entry). From here the visitors are directed to a semi-circular atrium where they are separated to different parts of the monastery depending on their status – the elite is directed to the north gate and the pilgrims and lower-classes to the south gate – or to the church.  The interior of the church is divided by columns and railings which not only direct the lay visitors to their authorised spaces but also block their view of the sacred east where the altar of Saint Mary and Saint Gall is placed. According to Horn and Born only one-sixth of the church is accessible to seculars while five-sixths of it is reserved for the sole use of the monks. Lay guests are only admitted in the side aisles of the church, the area around the baptismal font – – and the crypt – ; the only place in the church where monks and seculars mix to worship at the tomb of Saint Gall. The transept, the presbytery, the nave and the two apses (dedicated to Saint Peter to the west and Saint Paul to the east) being solely for the ascetics' use.  The northern and southern aisles of the basilica are furnished with four altars each. The northern aisle houses the altars (from west to east) of Saints Lucia and Cecilia, of the Holy Innocents, of Saint Martin, and of Saint Stephen. The altars on the southern aisle are dedicated (from west to east) to Saints Agatha and Agnes, to Saint Sebastian, to Saint Mauritius, and to Saint Lawrence.  The nave opens to the aisles through nine arcades in each side, three of them "railed off" to prevent the entry of laymen. The main surface of the nave houses the baptismal font, the altar of Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the Evangelist, the altar of the Holy Saviour at the Cross and the ambo. The transept is separated from the nave by further screens and railings, in its southern arm is the altar of Saint Andrew and in its northern arm the altar of Saints Philipp and James. From the transcript the monks and lay brothers access the crypt. Finally, at the easternmost of the church is the presbytery with the high altar dedicated to Saint Mary and Saint Gall.

Derivative works.

Umberto Eco.

According to Earl Anderson (Cleveland State University), it is likely that Umberto Eco references the plan in his novel "The Name of the Rose":

Models.

The Plan has inspired a tradition of model making. In 1965 Ernest Born and others created a scale model of the plan for the "Age of Charlemagne" exhibition in Aachen, Germany. This became the inspiration for the book he co-authored in 1979 with Walter Horn, but was also the first in a tradition of modeling the plan. More recently the plan has been modeled on computers using CAD software. It is possible to see the different models in the Saint Gall Project website.

Campus Galli.

Campus Galli is a Carolingian monastic community under construction in Meßkirch, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. The construction project includes plans to build a medieval monastery according to the early 9th-century Plan of Saint Gall using techniques from that era. The long-term financing of the project is to come from revenue generated from the site's operation as a tourist attraction. The construction site has been open for visitors since June 2013.

St. Gall Project.

The St. Gall Project was founded to produce a digital online presence for the plan including models and an extensive online database on early medieval monastic culture. The project is directed by Patrick Geary (UCLA) and Bernard Frischer (University of Virginia) with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The website was released to the public in December 2007. Future resources will include intellectual and textual aspects of the plan and monasticism; space for publication of new papers and research, lesson plans and teaching aides, blogs and chat rooms.

The Plan of Saint Gall is a medieval architectural drawing of a monastic compound dating from 820–830 AD. It depicts an entire Benedictine monastic compound, including churches, houses, stables, kitchens, workshops, brewery, infirmary, and a special house for bloodletting. According to calculations based on the manuscript's tituli the complex was meant to house about 110 monks, 115 lay visitors, and 150 craftmen and agricultural workers. The Plan was never actually built, and was so named because it is dedicated to Gozbert abbot of Saint Gall. The planned church was intended to keep the relics of Saint Gall. The plan was kept at the famous medieval monastery library of the Abbey of St. Gall – Stiftsbibliothek Sankt Gallen – where it remains to this day (Ms 1092).

Plán ze St. Gallen (německy "Der St. Galler Klosterplan") je slavná středověká kresba ideálního modelu kláštera, která vznikla na počátku 9. století. Je to jediná zachovaná architektonická kresba z doby mezi pádem západořímské říše v 5. století a 13. stoletím v obvodu latinské Evropy. Plán je považován za švýcarskou národní památku a dodnes budí živý zájem mezi historiky, historiky umění, architekty a umělci pro svou originalitu, krásu a vhled do raně středověké kultury. Je uložen v knihovně opatství St. Gallen (svatého Havla).