Should you learn French or Portuguese? Which language is more useful? This article will answer your questions.
Both French and Portuguese are Romance languages and they share the same roots. A lot of French words are similar to Portuguese ones and vice versa, but the pronunciation is different. Grammar rules are very similar. If you learn French, then it will be easy for you to learn Portuguese and vice versa. Both French and Portuguese languages are popular but French is more popular than Portuguese. It’s the official language of 29 countries including France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Monaco, and more African countries.
So let us see which language is more useful to learn
More popular
If you want to select one of the most popular foreign languages to learn, then you need to learn French. French is spoken in nearly 29 French-speaking countries, across five different continents, and is the second most studied language across the world, this language is more popular than the Portuguese language.
A valuable language to know
Portuguese is always considered to be a very valuable language to know and this is the reason for not being widely taught foreign language, it is not spoken as other languages like German or French. As Portugal grows in popularity as a tourism destination, more and more technology startups move their businesses and this language is a more important economy within Europe.
Multinational companies
Many corporate sectors use French as their language in their working place in many industries. French is also one of the best foreign languages to learn for jobs when compared to Portuguese. By learning French you can get your career growth in several sectors such as banking, export and import, education, tourist guides, luxury goods, etc.
Less competition for language jobs
When considering the number of Portuguese speakers, there are only a few speakers compared to the French speakers in the world, and Portuguese is associated with a number of rapidly growing economies, so only a few people decide to learn Portuguese. Thus there are more and more Portuguese-speaking jobs and, there will be less competition for those roles.
Similar to English
If you are an English speaker then learning French will be easy, because a lot of words of the English language are of French origin and you can reach your fluency soon. Thus in this case learning French will be useful to you.
Portuguese is a great base language
Portuguese is a great base language. It sounds similar languages to Spanish and Italian. So learning the Portuguese language will allow you to understand Spanish or Italian without really learning them, but Spanish and Italians have to learn to understand Portuguese.
It is not that difficult to find ways to learn French or Portuguese.
There are many resources out there, a lot of major cities that conduct language classes that you can connect with, and you could take some time off to find an intensive language course. Some of the platforms like Multibhashi offer online classes that allow you to learn French or Portuguese from anywhere in the world. Selecting a language can be varied based on your career prospects, abroad studies, etc. Decide your language and join your classes now. All the best!!