Language Profile Portuguese
Portuguese (português or língua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia (Spain) and northern Portugal. Today it is one of the world's major languages, ranked 6th according to number of native speakers (approximately 177 million). It is the language with the largest number of speakers in South America, spoken by nearly all of Brazil's population, which amounts to over 51% of the continent's population even though it 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 the official language of ten countries. Portuguese is one of the fastest-growing European languages, and, according to estimates by UNESCO, is the language with the highest potential for growth as an international language in southern Africa and South America.
Learning Portuguese is easy because:
A great number of nouns have the distinctive endings of a for the feminine form and o for the masculine form, corresponding to Latin nouns of the first and second declensions, respectively. The sign of the plural in Portuguese is regularly -s. The core of the Portuguese vocabulary is inherited from Latin. The invasions of the Suevi introduced a few Germanic words. Like Spanish, Portuguese has borrowed a lot of words from Arabic, and like the other modern European languages, its vocabulary contains also a great many words of French and Greek origin. Therefore there are many cognates that learners will recognize, which will help them to enrich their vocabulary.
Learning Portuguese is challenging because:
Portuguese pronunciation is complex, being made up of 75 different sounds or sound combinations. While the writing often looks similar to Spanish, this lures learners into a false sense of security as the pronunciation is usually very different. Portuguese has an extremely elaborate grammar, as Portuguese retains many grammatical forms no longer found in other Romance languages. The future subjunctive and future perfect subjunctive, for example, remain in use. Some of the differences between European and Latin American Portuguese can cause confusion. In Portugal, the noun disquete (diskette) is a feminine noun while in Brazil it's masculine. Portuguese spelling such as facto (fact) and baptismo (baptism) become fato and batismo in Brazil. Idiomatic expressions further confuse the issue, for example, the common Brazilian expression bate-boca (noun = argument, quarrel) assumes the literal, confusing and nonsensical translation of the verb form beat mouth in Portugal.
Portuguese with Cactus:
Cactus provides Portuguese language training as 1:1 programs, closed groups for in-house company training, full-immersion courses, online courses, self-study, and on public evening courses.