Portuguese (Basic Level)

In the world of languages, Portuguese is an up-and-comer. No longer stuck in the shadow of Spanish, it now has too many speakers and too much economic muscle for global businesses to ignore. Portuguese is the 6th most spoken language in the world. Portuguese has around 215 million native speakers.

It is the most spoken language in South America and the 2nd most spoken language in Latin America. The Portuguese Empire was Europe’s first colonial empire. As a result, Portuguese is an official language in 9 countries in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America. There are also around 1,228,126 Portuguese speakers in the United States.

The three largest Portuguese-American communities in the US are located in Providence, Rhode Island; Boston, Massachusetts; and the New York/Northern New Jersey area. Only 5% of Portuguese speakers live in Portugal.

Most live in Brazil. In fact, São Paulo, Brazil has the most Portuguese language speakers in one place in the entire world. According to UNESCO, the language has high growth potential as an “international communication language in Southern Africa and South America.” And while the Brazilian economy is currently struggling to emerge from a recession, it’s still the eighth largest in the world and largest in Latin America.

If you know Spanish, Portuguese probably looks familiar. That’s because Portuguese is closely related to Spanish. In fact, the two languages share 89% of their vocabulary and grammar. Despite the resemblance, however, Portuguese and Spanish are not mutually intelligible.

Basic Level

• A1: Minimum level of knowledge of the Portuguese language, enough for a limited number of situations in everyday life.

• A2: This is the beginners’ level of Portuguese in which you will learn to conversate on familiar and routine matters. After the successful completion of this level, A learner is sufficiently proficient to appear for the Level A2 Exam.