This paper presents an overview of the Yoruba language with respect to its history in both Africa and Brazil. It also highlights some features of Yoruba in terms of their connections with the history of Brazilian Portuguese. The aim of the paper is to show how a certain language with several dialects in Africa is significant for a scientifically approached comparison with Portuguese, and to show that this question is essential if we are to understand the constitution of Brazilian Portuguese from the multi-cultural mixing pot of the colonial period. Some linguistic structures were connected with particular African languages, and others with different ones, but another third type could be a consequence of the meeting of typologically distinct languages. This paper touches on socio-historical phenomena, such as discussion of the denomination of the Yoruba language, it gives information about Yoruba dialects and how one of these, known as Nago, became the most important dialect in Brazil. The paper also summarizes linguistic traits such as the dropping of subject and object pronouns, making Yoruba a pro-drop language, like Portuguese. The paper also looks at the discontinuous negative structure with a basic function of reinforcement in Yoruba.