Learning Portuguese: between language and history

Whether as private lessons, summer courses or through a free course on the Internet, learning Portuguese also means discovering the origin of this Latin language.

Thanks to the influence of the Roman colonists, Portuguese seems, in phonetic, etymological and lexical terms, a true vulgar evolution of the more popular Latin. By mixing with other languages ​​and dialects, this linguistic popularization that we call Galician-Portuguese developed from the fall of the Roman Empire (5th century). Thus, in the 13th century, it became the official language of the Kingdom of Portugal (thanks to King Dionysius I) and played the role of the prestigious language of medieval European lyricism.

The history of Portugal is closely related to its maritime explorations.

In addition, Portugal was one of the most powerful colonial empires and learning Portuguese will allow you to become familiar with this forgotten phase in the history of Portugal, with facts such as:

• The Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, which consisted of the division of the “New World” between the Portuguese and Spanish empires.
• The exploration of sailors, led by sailors and explorers such as Magellan or Vasco da Gama.
• The Age of Discoveries with Magellan’s trip to the Moluccas Islands and his round the world, which left geographers, explorers and merchants with their mouths open.

In fact, historically, the Portuguese people have always been a people of emigrants. Therefore, it should not be surprising that there are Portuguese-speaking personalities in all fields of knowledge and in most countries of the world. We think, for example, of:

• The movies: Forrest Gump actor Tom Hanks.
• In music: the Cape Verdean singer, Césaria Évora or the American Nelly Furtado.
• In literature: José de Sousa Saramago, writer and only Nobel laureate in literature in the history of Portugal.

Learning Portuguese: between language and history