Portuguese Language

The language spoken in Recife and Brazil is Portuguese. The Portuguese settled Brazil, which remained a colony of Portugal until 1822.

Today, the Portuguese language is spoken by more than 200 million people. It is the eighth most spoken language in the world. In the western world, Portuguese is the third most spoken language; only English and Spanish (actually, Castilian, one of the few languages spoken in Spain) have more speakers.

Portuguese is the official language of eight countries in four continents (in alphabetic order, with approximated number of speakers): Angola (10,9 million inhab.), Brazil (185 mil), Cape Verde (415 thousand), Guinea Bissau (1,4 mil), Mozambique (18,8 mil), Portugal (10,5 mil), Saint Thomas and Prince (182 mil) and East Timor (800 thousand). In Portuguese, the names of the countries would be written Angola, Brasil, Cabo Verde, Guiné Bissau, Moçambique, Portugal, São Tomé e Príncipe e Timor Leste.
In 1996, these countries formed the CPLP - Comunidade de Países de Língua Portuguesa - Community of Countries of Portuguese Language, to preserve and to uniformize the different dialects of Portuguese.

Brazil is one of the few countries in Latin America to speak Portuguese. Besides Brazil, only Suriname (ex-Dutch Guyana), the French Guyana and Guyana (ex-British Guyana), in the north or South America, do not speak English in Continental South America.
Portuguese and Spanish have similar grammar; the Portuguese vocabulary incorporated many words from Spanish. However, the pronunciation, the richer Portuguese vocabulary and the low educational levels of Brazilians makes it harder for Brazilian Portuguese speakers to understand Spanish than vice-versa.
The Portuguese spoken in Brazil has different accents, but not dialects. There are certain differences in vocabulary, but the language is spoken uniformly across the country.

Check out the link below for a good Portuguese language course in CD ROM: