PORTUGUESE LANGUAGE ACQUISITION WORLDWIDE

WE OFFER PORTUGUESE LANGUAGE TRAINING, COURSES & CULTURAL IMMERSION IN THE FOLLOWING LOCATIONS:

EUROPE

:: PORTUGUESE language acquisition in PORTUGAL

CANADA

:: PORTUGUESE language acquisition in CANADA

PORTUGUESE

With over 260 million speakers, Portuguese is the fifth most spoken language in the world, the most widely spoken in the southern hemisphere, and the third most spoken in the Western world.

In addition to Brazil and Portugal, it is used in Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Macau, Mozambique, Sao Tome and Principe and East Timor, as well as in the former territories of Portuguese India (Goa, Daman, Isle of Angediva, Simbor, Gogol, Diu and Dadra and Nagar Haveli) and in small communities that were part of the Portuguese Empire in Asia as Malacca, Malaysia and East Africa as Zanzibar, Tanzania.

It has official status in the European Union (EU), Mercosur (Mercosul in Portuguese), the African Union, the Organization of American States (OAS), the Latin Union, the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP) and the Association of National Olympic Committees of Portuguese Official Language (ACOLOP).

Portuguese is a pluricentric language with two main groups of dialects, those of Brazil and those of the Old World. For historical reasons, the dialects of Africa and Asia are generally closer to those of Portugal than the Brazilian dialects, although in some aspects of their phonetics, especially the pronunciation of unstressed vowels, they resemble Brazilian Portuguese more than European Portuguese.

They have not been studied as widely as European and Brazilian Portuguese. Audio samples of some dialects of Portuguese are available below. There are some differences between the areas but these are the best approximations possible. For example, the caipira dialect has some differences from the one of Minas Gerais, but in general it is very close.

A good example of Brazilian Portuguese may be found in the capital city, Brasilia, because of the generalized population from all parts of the country.