Portuguese Dual Language Immersion
Why Portuguese?
· With over 250 million speakers, Portuguese is the sixth most widely spoken language in the world, and is the official language of nine countries, including Angola, Brazil, Mozambique, and Portugal. The size of Brazil makes Portuguese the most widely spoken language in South America.
· In 2011, the United States government declared Portuguese a critical language for learning due to a low supply and growing demand for American Portuguese speakers.
· Utah boasts a large Portuguese-speaking community composed of native Brazilians and LDS returned missionaries who have served in over 35 Portuguese-speaking missions around the world.
· Portugal has produced some of the world’s greatest explorers and literature. Brazil is famous for samba and bossa nova music, Carnaval, capoeria, and its five World Cup titles in soccer. Brazil is also a major tourist destination, boasting the Amazon rainforest and some of the world’s most beautiful beaches.
· Portuguese is a good springboard to learning other Romance languages. Students who speak Portuguese can generally understand and learn Spanish with little difficulty. Similarly, Spanish-speaking students thrive in Portuguese immersion classrooms.