Portuguese Is More Widely Spoken Than You Might Think!

This might come to you as a surprise. Portuguese is spoken by more than 250 million people in 9 countries around the world, including Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, Guinea Bissau, Macau, Mozambique, Portugal and Sao Tome and Principe.

This Ibero-Romance language has evolved from Latin and it is now the fifth most widely spoken language in the world. You might think that Spanish is the closest language to Portuguese but, in fact, it is Galician, which is spoken in the autonomous region of Galicia, in North-western Spain.

Portuguese has had a global influence for a long time in many parts of the world due to Portugal`s discoveries and colonisation. Brazil`s growing economy and the sheer size of the country`s population have also helped the Portuguese language to become more widely known and appreciated around the world.

If you are ever in São Paulo (Brazil), make sure you visit the Portuguese Language Museum, which is housed in the Estação da Luz railway station in the city centre. It is a must-see to those who live in or visit the city.

The Camões Institute, in Lisbon, offers a very impressive online library of resources in Portuguese, covering a wide variety of topics and including the epic poem `Os Lusíadas`, by Luís Vaz de Camões. It is a free service and there is no need to register.

If, like me, you live or work in the United Kingdom, you can easily get hold of Portuguese language resources from Wordery, Foyles or the Portuguese Bookshop.

It`s great to see so many people learning Portuguese in preparation for going to the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro and travelling to other parts of the country afterwards.