European Portuguese is the official language of Portugal, Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé and Príncipe and Mozambique. Brazilian Portuguese is the official language of Brazil
The differences between European and Brazilian Portuguese are comparable to the ones found between British and American English.
Today it is one of the world's major languages, ranked seventh according to number of native speakers (between 205 and 230 million).
Portuguese is the official language of Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal, São Tomé and Príncipe and Mozambique. It is also one of the official languages of East Timor (with Tetum) and the Chinese special administrative region of Macau (with Chinese).
Small Portuguese-speaking communities subsist in former overseas colonies of Portugal such as Macau, where it is spoken by 7% of the population, and East Timor (13.6%).
It is also spoken by substantial immigrant communities, though not official, in Andorra, Australia,France, Luxembourg, Jersey (with a statistically significant Portuguese-speaking community of approximately 10,000 people), Paraguay, Namibia, South Africa, Switzerland, Venezuela, Japan and the U.S. states of California, Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey,New York and Rhode Island. In some parts of India, such as Goa and Daman and Diu,Portuguese is still spoken. There are also significant populations of Portuguese speakers in Canada (mainly concentrated in and around Toronto and Montreal), Bermuda and the Netherlands Antilles.
Portuguese is an official language of several international organizations. The Community of Portuguese Language Countries(with the Portuguese acronym CPLP) consists of the eight independent countries that have Portuguese as an official language. It is also an official language of the European Union, accounting for 3% of its population, Mercosul, the Organization of American States, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the Union of South American Nations, and the African Union (one of the working languages) and one of the official languages of other organizations.
The Portuguese language is gaining popularity in Africa, Asia, and South America as a second language for study.