One of the five major Romance languages — along with Spanish, Italian, French, and Romanian — Portuguese has constantly expanded its reach ever since it started off as a provincial dialect of Latin and came into its own around the 12th century.
Here, in Qatar, with the Translation and Interpreting Institute (TII) opening the registration for the Portuguese courses — the new batch begins today and ends on December 14 — this is a good chance for you to learn this fascinating language. The Portuguese courses will meet twice a week and each session is 1 hour and 40 minutes long. To know more, you can check out the course details on www.tii.qa.
“Would you like to embark on learning the 4th most spoken language in the world, or to go back to your roots? Whether you are of Portuguese descent from Goa or your parents or grandparents came back to Lebanon from Brazil, or whether you just love Brazilian football this is the right course for you,” says a note by TII on the courses. “Within contextualised everyday settings, you practice sharing personal information, meeting people, interacting in a café or a restaurant, getting around town, asking and answering questions. The focus is on all four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing.”
As for the romance language bit, of course, the term romance has nothing to do with how romantic the Portuguese or Brazilians are, but instead refers to the Latin phrase “romanica loqui”, meaning “to speak in Roman fashion,” explains the language-learning website Babbel.
“When Latin speakers first began settling in the far corners of the Roman empire, their language collided with indigenous languages and the resulting mix formed new Latin dialects. When the Roman empire was in decline and Rome finally lost control over the provinces, these dialects finally diverged into distinct languages.
Beginning in the 16th century, explorers and merchants left Portugal to expand their empire’s reach, bringing their language to new colonies far from Europe. In the same way that Portuguese first emerged from Latin, distinct Portuguese dialects are now spoken around the globe: most notably in Brazil, but also in Mozambique and Angola. Portuguese is also spoken by communities in North America, Uruguay and Paraguay, India, China, Indonesia and Australia.”
With the embassy of Portugal firmly backing the Portuguese language courses, Community spoke to Antonio Tanger, the ambassador of Portugal to Qatar, to know more.

What are some of the interesting aspects of Portuguese as a language?
Nowadays, the Portuguese language is being said to be the fourth most spoken language in the world (as a first language). Portuguese is a mother tongue in the five continents, parallel only to the English language. The number of native Portuguese speakers is around 250mn and Portuguese is the most spoken language in the Southern Hemisphere. It also has one of the highest growth rates as a second language in the Internet, in social networks, and in learning as a foreign language. The president of the Portuguese Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, announced on November 1 that the Portuguese language was approved as an official language at the United Nations.
 
Why are the TII’s Portuguese courses an important avenue for those seeking to learn the language?
How can you understand a culture without knowing the language?
 
In what way is the Portuguese embassy involved in promoting the language and culture of Portugal, here in Qatar?
Since I arrived in Qatar, which was in September 2015, I have been committed to develop the teaching of the Portuguese language. One of the first meetings I had was with Dr Amal al-Malki, Executive Director in the TII – Translation and Interpreting Institute. From the first meeting, we started to work together and in less than a year TII began teaching Portuguese. The embassy also started to teach Portuguese for Portuguese children living in Qatar.
In the cultural field, I can say that the embassy of Portugal is making a lot of progress. We just started promoting cultural events and we have already organised seven of them.

As a language, how difficult would you say Portuguese is to learn?
Portuguese is a Latin-based language similar to French and Spanish and one of the richest languages in terms of vocabulary. The learning of Portuguese has a high complexity of grammar but having said that, I think it is not a very difficult language to learn.