Portuguese language in Africa The nation-states with Portuguese as an official language in Africa are referred to by the acronym PALOP () and include the following: Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and São Tomé and Príncipe. Portuguese is a primarily urban language having a reduced presence in rural areas, except for in Angola and São Tomé and Príncipe, where the language is more widespread. South Africa also has approximately 300,000 speakers of Portuguese, primarily settlers from Madeira and white Angolans and Mozambicans who emigrated from 1975 onwards, following the independence of the former colonies. The civil wars in Angola and Mozambique also resulted in
Portuguese dialects dialects of Brazil, Africa, and Asia derived mostly from those of central and southern Portugal. In the Portuguese town of Barrancos (in the border between Extremadura, Andalucia and Portugal), a dialect of Portuguese heavily influenced by Southern Spanish dialects is spoken, known as "barranquenho". Brazilian dialects are divided into northern and southern groups, the northern dialects tending to slightly more open pre-stressed vowels. The economic and cultural dominance of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro in Brazil made their dialects end up having some influence on the rest of the country. However, migration from the Northern states to the Southern