New York: Portuguese, Anyone?

[Harold Schiffman]

 Forwarded From: edling at lists.sis.utsa.edu


Brazil



Portuguese, Anyone?



New York language schools are surprised by the interest that Wall
Street businessmen have recently been taking into Portuguese, Brazil's
official language. What is going on? The Brazilian press has been
making a huge fuss over a recent proposal by Communist party
congressman Aldo Rebelo which could create laws "protecting" the
country's official language, Portuguese, from excessive influence from
foreign tongues, especially English, as has recently been done in some
European countries, such as France.
Rebelo, in his proposal, wants to stop the so-called abuse of
English-language words in situations when there is a suitable
translation, such as in "cash"(dinheiro), "teen" (adolescente) or
"delivery"(entrega). The controversy has generated a reasonably heated
debate in Brazil, and no one sees an ending of the ongoing discussion
over the issue in the near future.



In the meantime, U.S. businessmen have recently flooded New York
language schools demanding to learn Portuguese, to a point that most
of them cannot find suitable instructors to comply with the current
demand for Portuguese, as related to me by a foreign language program
coordinator at a popular school in the Wall Street area. In an
informal conversation, he told me that the demand has been troubling
for them, since it is hard to find fully qualified native speakers of
Portuguese who are not looking to work illegally in this country. I
wonder why those centers don't make the move to sponsor
Portuguese-speaking immigrants if the need is so great.



Full story:

http://www.brazzil.com/p23mar01.htm

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