Friday, April 22, 2011

Reasons to Learn Portuguese

Over the past two years, many friends have asked me why I decided to learn Portuguese. I'll share a few compelling reasons below:
  1. Referred to as the language of Camões, Portuguese is beautifully melodic. Brazilian writer Olavo Bilac once described it as "a última flor do Lácio, inculta e bela (the last flower of Latium, wild and beautiful)."
  2. Os Lusíadas
  3. With around 240 million speakers, Portuguese is the sixth most spoken language in the world. Lusophone countries include Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal, and São Tomé and Príncipe, as well as territories such as the Chinese Special Administrative Region (SAR) of Macau, India's Goa and Kerala states, and the town of Melaka in Malaysia.
  4. I didn't want to learn French.
  5. Brazil, represented by the first letter in BRIC, is currently the eighth largest economy in the world and is expected to become the fourth largest by 2040, leapfrogging the economies of Japan, France, Germany and the United Kingdom.
  6. Bossa nova and fado
  7. Gisele Bündchen