How easy is it to learn Portuguese for Indians?
Portuguese is the 6 most spoken language in the world, the most spoken in the South Hemisphere, and the second most spoken Romance language after Spanish with about 260M speakers worldwide. Portuguese enjoys the status of an official language in its former colonial territories such as Guinea Bissau and Angola and is the only working or official language of Portugal and Brazil. Language learning isn’t only about learning Portuguese but, it gives you a whole new perspective from Brazil to Mozambique that one can share and enjoy with 240 Speakers.
If you’re considering learning Portuguese as an Indian, then you must be wondering how easy it is for you to master the language.
Let’s consider you have made up your mind to learn Portuguese in India. Unfortunately, there aren’t many worthy education providers who actually teach Portuguese well in India. Portuguese is a rare language around the world although it is very famous in South America, especially in Brazil and Portugal. Portuguese is also very famous among football buffs. With that said, there is no point in trying to learn the language if you do not get the right guidance. Hypothetically speaking, let’s say you manage to get an actually good Guide who not only understands the language well but also caters to your necessities and how you can learn the language.
The next step would be to gather resources to practise the language on your own. This is another big hurdle. Considering the rarity of Portuguese in the Asian continent, it is very tough for you to find good Portuguese literature which will be worth your time and effort. Of course you might find some Portuguese literature but at some point, you are going to exhaust it. Next up, we consider the proximity of Portuguese to most of the languages spoken in India. When we consider The North Indian languages, most of them are very similar to the language of Hindi. In turn, Hindi is nowhere similar to Portuguese. If anything both are completely alien to one another. Now, if you consider The South Indian languages, you must understand that the South Indian language is itself differ from one another. While there are some similarities between languages like Kannada, Tamil and Telugu they definitely do not have many similarities with Marathi and Malayalam.
Neither of these languages has any similarities with Hindi or even English. Therefore, these are much farther away from Portuguese when compared to Hindi. While I do not wish to discourage you in your journey to learn Portuguese, the reality is much different than what you would have imagined. Portuguese is definitely not an easy language to learn in India. Fortunately, those who have mastered the language of English in India have some hope in learning this language. This is due to the similarities between English and Portuguese, which are rare to come by but still make your work easy. But without the knowledge of English, it’s almost an impossible task.
Finally,
The Portuguese culture, which is a host of 24 World Heritage sites, is defined by numerous traditions, such as traditional Fado music, Architecture Marvel- Manueline and world-class cuisine. The long-standing student traditions of Praxe will give you first-hand insight into Portuguese student life and help you to make friends with other international students and Portuguese students before the academic year of Portugal in case you were to learn through immersion.