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from every purchase are put right back into this site!)
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INTRODUCTION TO
PORTUGUESE |
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Language Materials: Cultural Materials: General Information:
Joshua
Rudder |
What is Portuguese? Like English, Greek, Farsi, and Sanskrit, Portuguese belongs to the Indo-European family of languages. A language family is a collective of languages with a common ancestor. Portuguese is a part of one of the widely distributed branches of that family, the Romance languages. These form a group of Indo-European languages birthed from Latin (Roma, Romanus, so Romance). Portuguese is most closely related to Galician, spoken in Northwestern Spain, and then more distantly to Spanish, Catalan, Occitan (including Provençal), Sardinian, Italian, French, and, finally, Romanian, with which it shares the lowest number of similarities among all its closest relatives. But Portuguese is more than just historical or grammatical facts on a page. I hope these lessons will go a long way in showing you that, and helping you become a part of the Portuguese-speaking world, because that is the ultimate goal. Who speaks Portuguese? Over 200,000,000 people around the world claim Portuguese as their native language. This means that far more people speak Portuguese than speak French, German, Italian or Japanese. Portuguese is the seventh most spoken language in the world today, behind English, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, Hindi, and Russian. Regionally, it is spoken not only in Portugal, but also in Brazil (Brasil) in South America; Angola, Guiné-Bissau, Mozambique (Moçambique), Cape Verde (Cabo Verde), and São Tomé e Príncipe in Africa. It claims some Atlantic islands, notably the Azores (Açores) and Madeira, and is the language of some chief ports in the Orient, such as Macau in China and East Timor (Timor do Leste). It is the third most spoken language in Canada, after English and French. In the United States, in areas where Portuguese has become one of the more recognized minority languages, many schools have added it to their standard list of languages offered. It might comfort you to know that the Portuguese-speaking (or Lusophone) world is often exposed to a higher rate of multiculturalism from outside sources, and thus has a higher rate of non-native bilingualism (a good example is Brazil, where English is widely spoken). Don't be afraid to speak to anyone, because if you want to learn, that's the best way to do it. In sum, these are the four reasons why you are learning Portuguese: (1)
Two hundred million new people to
add to your Instant Messenger buddy list.
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