Author: Jacob Lumbroso Added: April 25, 2008
Learning Portuguese can be an important skill. While often overshadowed by the Chinese and Indian economies, Brazilian exports of various agricultural products, increased manufacturing, and oil discoveries have strengthened its economy and led Brazil to be the economic powerhouse of South America. Brazil is known for its military manufacturing and its oil exports continue to buttress the importance of Portuguese on the world stage. More than 200 million people speak Portuguese throughout the world today and more than 172 million of these reside in Brazil. Learning Portuguese can open doors to employment in a variety of areas including in virtually any business related to oil, certain agricultural industries, teaching, translation, and interpreting, and travel. In the United States it can also lead to an increase rapport with Portuguese employees that may be learning English or with contacts in companies abroad. Learning Portuguese improves your chances of success in job market dealing with Brazil or Portugal, as well as several countries in Africa. Learning Portuguese can be a fun task, as well as an important one. Even if your just a casual traveler, learning it can also be beneficial since most of the sign boards and instructions in Brazil and Portugal are naturally written in Portuguese. Learning the language to order food, communicate with locals and talk with taxi drivers will enhance the experience of your travels significantly. Learning Portuguese is one step to joining the ranks of businesses oriented toward the growing market of South America. Portuguese is one of the great languages of the world. Learning the language is becoming part of a world-class education. Portuguese is spoken in Portugal and Brazil as well as in communities of Portuguese émigrés. Portuguese is not an easy language to learn and there is no single method can insure that the proficiency will be achieved without investment of time. So it's important to vary your resources to insure that you maximize your language learning experience. Learning Portuguese is potentially easier for those who have already learned Spanish, though some potential challenges do exist since familiarity in one can also lead to errors in converting from one to the other. Choosing the right course or methodology is of course critical and that can make learning the language a relative cake walk or much more difficult. Much importance should be given to the accent and pronunciations. Studying Portuguese doesn't require expensive personal tutors. So you want to be careful not to end up paying more money than is necessary. It is an ongoing and involved process. While you cannot learn the language overnight, you can find materials and courses that can give you an edge time wise and simply the amount of effort you exert. A critical challenge to remember is that of vocabulary. Having studied various books and courses to learn to read Portuguese I found several to be of benefit. The most valuable ones were those who made sure to present new vocabulary first. In the case of Portuguese, the most time will likely be spent on the script. Then a short story or paragraph utilizing this new vocabulary in conjunction with previously learned vocabulary was presented. In terms of audio, a variety of excellent courses are available.
--- Jacob Lumbroso is an enthusiast for foreign languages. He writes articles on history and languages for http://www.usedpimsleur.com and recommends Portuguese Pimsleur courses to learn various languages.
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