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Why learn Portuguese?
- Spoken by over 210 million people over the world;
- One of the world’s major languages, ranked 6th according to number of native speakers;
- The language with the largest number of speakers in South America, spoken by nearly all of Brazil’s population;
- Major lingua franca in Portugal’s former colonial possessions in Africa;
- The official language of ten countries;
- Sizable communities of Portuguese-speakers in various regions of North America, notably in Canada(Ontario) and the United States (New Jersey, New England and south Florida);
- Co-official with Spanish and French in Equatorial Guinea, with Cantonese Chinese in the Chinese special administrative region of Macau, and with Tetum in East Timor;
- Miguel de Cervantes (Spanish writer) once called Portuguese “the sweet language”;
- Olavo Bilac (Brazilian writer) poetically described it as a última flor do Lácio, inculta e bela: “the last flower of Latium, wild and beautiful”.
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