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Spanish-Portuguese refers to contact varieties that emerge where Portuguese and Spanish meet, or at the borders between Portuguese-speaking and Spanish-speaking communities. There is no single standardized language called Spanish-Portuguese; rather, it describes a spectrum of informal speech forms produced by bilingual or semi-lingual speakers in everyday communication. Common terms used for these varieties include Portuñol and Portunhol, which reflect regional naming practices.

Geographically, these contact forms are most often observed along Brazil’s borders with Spanish-speaking countries, such as Uruguay, Argentina, and Paraguay, as well as in border towns and migrant communities elsewhere in South America. They arise from ongoing bilingual contact, trade, migration, and tourism, and vary widely from place to place and even between speakers.

Linguistically, Spanish-Portuguese varieties typically involve code-switching and lexical borrowing, with speakers mixing vocabulary from both languages. Grammatical influence can include calques, mixed sentence structures, and partial transfer of syntax. Phonology may adapt to resemble the substrate language more closely in a given context, leading to a range of pronunciations that blend features of both languages. The result is usually a fluid, dynamic form of speech rather than a fixed, codified language.

Sociolinguistically, these varieties are not official languages or standardized varieties. They often function as facilitators of rapid communication across language borders but can be stigmatized as deficient by some speakers. Research treats them as a sociolinguistic phenomenon illustrating language contact, bilingualism, and regional identity rather than as a distinct language family.