Why You Should Learn… Portuguese

Above I am reblogging The Well-Travelled Postcard‘s item on why you should learn Portuguese. It perfectly captures the dilemma that any student of the language faces – whether to go with the European accent or the Brazilian one. It’s a pleasant dilemma really. And yes, as the post notes, Brazil is “hot stuff”, and Lisbon really is a great city. When I first read this post, it certainly made me feel proud, if not a little conceited, about the fact that I have made the effort with this language, and I am grateful for the fact that I have had the privilege of going to both Portugal and Brazil (twice in both cases, and hopefully again soon). The people are very warm and I have made good friends in both countries. I hope other readers feel similarly inspired. Be sure to check out The Well-Travelled Postcard’s items on azulejos, fado, the life of an intern in Lisbon and other Portuguese-related posts.

The Well-Travelled Postcard

           Following on from my post last week about learning Arabic, here’s the sixth post in my series on the top 10 most spoken languages in the world.

No. 7: Portuguese

178 million native speakers, 193 million total speakers. Official language of Brazil, Portugal, Macau and 7 other countries in Africa, including Mozambique and Cape Verde.

Why Portuguese?

          I studied Portuguese for two years at university in Exeter and have taken up weekly classes again with a lovely Brazilian woman at work, Adriana. Already speaking Spanish and Italian does majorly help me, so despite the fact that I only took it up in 2009, I can hold a decent conversation in Portuguese, although I’m rapidly discovering that the languages spoken in Portugal and Brazil are vastly different! For a start, several letters are pronounced differently, then there are the grammatical differences, & last of all the vocabulary differs…

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