A beautiful language, coming from the Indo- European language family, spoken by the Portuguese people.
Portuguese is not only one of the most popular languages on the globe but also the sixth most spoken foreign language as well as the third most spoken European language. Moreover, it still is in pretty much use with around 200 million to 270 million speakers worldwide. It is just like French and Spanish, a Romance language descending from the Indo – European language family. The popularity of this language over the globe can be well described by the numerous invasions that had been carried out by the Portuguese in history, resulting in a spread of the language and its culture. Learning Portuguese is not a tough task, as it is very similar to Spanish, all thanks to their shared origin and language families. It is commonly spoken in the regions of Portugal, Mozambique, Angola, Brazil etc. But is it included as a popular language program in US schools? Let us see this in the blog.
Are Portuguese language programs popular in US schools?
Popular languages in the US
English is the native language of the US, other than that the most commonly spoken and taught languages are Spanish, French and German. Apart from these we can also see a trend of learning and teaching Chinese, Japanese and Italian. However, various popular world languages such as Portuguese, Hindi, Russian, Arabic, etc are yet to become a popular program in the US schools.
Scope of Portuguese in US schools
Portuguese as mentioned above, as of now is not the most important language in the US, Even though we can see such a huge number of speakers and Portuguese being the sixth most popular language, it is not very popular in the US. The reason being, no Portuguese speaking country is in the world wide game of building the economy or helping the US in building the economy. Portuguese speaking countries like Mozambique, Brazil, etc are powerful countries in South America, but their influence can only be seen limited in their neighbourhood and does not reach up to the US.
Future in the US
Even though it is not very popular, Portuguese can be the next popular foreign language in the US. That is because Portuguese is very similar to teaching and learning when compared with Spanish. Learning Portuguese will be more easy and accessible because of its similarity with Spanish.
This was the scope of Portuguese in US schools.
It is quite evident that Portuguese, despite its large number of speakers, is not a very popular language program in schools in the US. However, we do see a rising trend and inclination towards learning Portuguese. And it will surely be the next popular language in the US. Apart from this one can also see that Portuguese is highly popular in South America, and if interested can look up for schools there in order to achieve their desired goals in learning Portuguese.
