2019-09-13 Fri

Fourth most spoken language in the world, Portuguese is celebrated on this stamp of Cape Verde.

May fifth is dedicated to this 800+ old language since the year 2006. This day has been put aside to celebrate the importance of the language, which has over 800 years of history and is the official language of another eight countries: Portugal, Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau and Equatorial Guinea, Mozambique, Sao Tome e Principe and Timor Leste.

According to historians, the oldest documents in the language date back to 1215. Portuguese was the last language to derive from Vulgar Latin, spoken in Lazio, a historic site in Italy, in which the city of Rome was founded and grew into the capital of the Roman Empire. The Portuguese language was considered uncultured, because it was spoken by the poorer layers of the population.

In the year 2014, Cape Verde issued a 60 escudos stamp to celebrate the 800 Years of Portuguese Language. The stamp shows a hand holding pen with a globe on the background. The Globe is adorned with a band of the flags of countries which have Portuguese as national language.

Image Courtesy: https://colnect.com

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