Portuguese Language Orthographic Agreement of 1990

The Portuguese Language Orthographic Agreement of 1990 (Portuguese: Acordo Ortográfico da Língua Portuguesa de 1990) is an international treaty whose purpose is to create a unified orthography for the Portuguese language, to be used by all the countries that have Portuguese as their official language. It was signed in Lisbon, on 16 December 1990, at the end of a negotiation, begun in 1980, between the Sciences Academy of Lisbon and the Brazilian Academy of Letters. The signatories included official representatives from all of the Portuguese-language countries except East Timor, which was under Indonesian occupation at the time, but later adhered to the Agreement, in 2004.

Galicia was invited to take part in the reform but the Spanish government ignored the invitation, since it officially regards Galician and Portuguese as different languages. However, an unofficial commission formed by Galician linguists who support the unity of the language attended the meetings as observers.^[1]

As of 2023, the agreement has been ratified and implemented by the Portuguese-speaking countries Portugal, Brazil and Cape Verde. Countries like Angola and Mozambique still use the old orthography and have not completed the adoption of the reform. The former Portuguese colony of Macau is not a party to the agreement and retains the old orthography. The agreement's objectives of unifying the orthography in all CPLP countries and compiling a common vocabulary for the entire Portuguese language have not been fully achieved and failed.

As of the decade of 2020, the agreement does not have complete adoption from the Portuguese-speaking countries, still without reaching its objectives of unification of the orthography and compilation of a vocabulary common to the Lusophony.