section_path: Geographic distribution
section_name: Geographic distribution
paragraph_text: Geographic distribution
  
  Portuguese is spoken by approximately 200 million people in South America, 30 million in Africa, 15 million in Europe, 5 million in North America and 0.33 million in Asia and Oceania. It is the native language of the vast majority of the people in Portugal, Brazil and São Tomé and Príncipe (95%). Around 75% of the population of urban Angola speaks Portuguese natively, with 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. Almost 50% of the East Timorese are fluent in Portuguese. 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 territories including Andorra (17.1%), Bermuda, Canada (400,275 people in the 2006 census), France (1,625,000 people), Japan (400,000 people), Jersey, Luxembourg (about 25% of the population as of 2021), Namibia (about 4–5% of the population, mainly refugees from Angola in the north of the country), Paraguay (10.7% or 636,000 people), Switzerland (550,000 in 2019, learning + mother tongue), 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. Approximately 2% of the people of Macau, China are fluent speakers of Portuguese. Additionally, the language is being very actively studied in the Chinese school system right up to the doctorate level. The Kristang people in Malaysia speak Kristang, a Portuguese-Malay creole; however, the Portuguese language itself is not widely spoken in the country.