Why learn Portuguese? Just ask Fernanda Costa!
As part of the Language Villages’ Europe Day celebrations this past month, we received a visit from the new Coordinator for the Teaching of Portuguese, Fernanda Costa. Mrs. Costa has been appointed by the government of Portugal to oversee the teaching of Portuguese on the East Coast (her region even includes Minnesota!), by helping train teachers and spread the word about the importance of learning the language. “We have to let those who want to learn Portuguese know about the importance of our language as a tool for world business,” Costa urged in a November issue of the newspaper O Jornal. Indeed, Brazil boasts South America’s leading economic power and is quickly expanding its influence in the international business world.
For Europe Day, Mrs. Costa visited students at schools around the Twin Cities to teach them a bit of Portuguese and about the European Union. Students were full of questions, from comparisons of the current economic situation in the European Union to the all-important, “What are the bathrooms like in Portugal?”
Although Mrs. Costa is Portuguese, she has spent most of her life in Africa, having been born in Mozambique when it was a Portuguese colony, later spending time coordinating Portuguese programs in South Africa. She is now working out of the Portuguese consulate in Boston, since New England has a large population of Portuguese speakers.
Mrs. Costa’s connections to these various "Lusophone," or Portuguese-speaking, regions exemplify the fact that Portuguese is truly a world language. There are between 191 and 230 million native speakers, ranking it 6th in the list of the world’s most spoken languages. There are actually more people in South America that speak Portuguese than speak Spanish!
Even in North America, there are around two million Portuguese speakers. Most are native speakers, but many younger students are learning Portuguese, too, some as a heritage language and others because of their interest in the culture or their desire to try something different and get ahead. Whatever the reason, Fernanda Costa knows students won’t go wrong by choosing Portuguese.
Interested in learning Portuguese? Try our summer camp session at Mar e Floresta!
clv@cord.edu
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