Learn Portuguese – Go to the Olympics
A couple of weeks ago Rio de Janeiro was awarded the 2016 Summer Olympic Games. Brazil is a wonderful place with happy people, music and dancing. Over the last decade the country has become part of the emerging BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) markets. Especially, when it comes to bio fuels as the country is completely independent of oil.
The national language is portuguese. Portuguese is part of the romance family of languages (along with Spanish, Italian and French). The language has roots in Latin and was create about 2000 years ago. Due to historical struggles, colonization and migration; French, Creole, Arabic and other languages have influenced the language.
According to Wikipedia, Portuguese is one of the world’s major languages and is ranked 6th according to number of native speakers (between 191 and 230 million). It is the language of about half of South America’s population, even though Brazil is the only Portuguese-speaking nation in the Americas. It is also a major lingua franca in Portugal’s former colonial possessions in Africa. It is an official language in nine countries, also being co-official with Cantonese Chinese in Macau and Tetum in East Timor. There are sizeable communities of Portuguese speakers in various regions of North America, notably in the United States (New Jersey, New England, California and south Florida) and in Ontario, Canada.
We hope the Olympics inspire more people to learn this beautiful language. What about you, are you going to learn Portuguese?
