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Portuguese 365 – Launching a Year-Long Learning Project!

porto where portuguese is spoken
The World Cup 2014 finished but my reasons to be excited about Brazil and Portugal are only just building up. My recent trip to Porto confirmed what I felt long ago: here is a language worth learning today! I’m sharing my plan with you in this post – along with some ideas I already came up with.

1. Why Learn Portuguese?

This is a really important question. If you’re me, every foreign language is worth learning and using at some point – but we all only have time for a few of them in our lives. So what’s special about Portuguese?
Even looking at statistics will how you it’s worth the effort. Almost 300 million people speak it across the world. A lot of this is Portugal and Brazil – but there are many other countries across the globe.
This, for me, is its next appeal: a bit like English, it is used in different random areas of our planet. Countries which once fell under Portuguese rule – or had intense trade contacts with merchants from Portugal – now speak the language in one form or another.
Portugal itself is a great reason to start learning! It is a friendly country with amazing culture and the most inspiring people on the planet. We’ve already visited twice, and we’re definitely coming back – possibly for a bit longer/
Finally, Portuguese can be a sound investment for the future: Brazil is likely to play a vital part in shaping the planet’s economy soon, and other Portuguese-speaking countries are probably going to be interesting places to work, live and explore.

2. But what about my Guerrilla Language Challenge?

It continues! I still try to learn German every day and I’m actually getting ready to take the exam and move on. Remember: the Guerrilla challenge has no timeline, only financial restrictions. This means I can take however long I want – which is perfect for having intensive one-year projects such as these.

3. Launching Portuguese 365: a One-Year Language Learning Project.

Okay, here are the rules. Look through this and see if you can help me out (all suggestions and tips welcome):
  • The challenge continues from my birthday to my next birthday (it started yesterday and will finish next year).
  • There is no proficiency level to attain, no exam to pass. I’m trying to find how much I can learn in one year.
  • I will learn something every day – ideally for at least 25 minutes a day.
  • Every week, I will post a status update here on my blog – explaining what I did and how I did this.
  • More frequent updates on Twitter: follow #portuguese365 for easy access.
  • There’s no budget limitation here: I can spend what I want, how I want. However…
  • The Guerrilla Learning still works: if there’s a free option, or an open-source one, I will explore this first before parting with money.
  • I may not be alone doing this! Marta Dziurosz (a translator, photographer, dancer and my wife) will possibly join me now and then. Fun!

4. Tudo bem?

How does this sound to you, guys? Feel free to shout out any ideas you have that will help us.
I can’t wait to see how this goes!
Tchau,
Wiktor

 

2 replies on “Portuguese 365 – Launching a Year-Long Learning Project!”

Wiktor… tudo bem, e com você? Yes, I´m brazilian and just last friday I found this website… First of all, congratulations for this job, it´s really very good!
My job with language or which languages I study is: english and french. In both of them I can speak and understand in intermediate level… For me, it means that I´m able to keep some conversation easily, of course that I have a lack of a lot of vocabulary, but It´s not a problem do it trying anothers options. My writting skylls maybe are not in the same stage… I´ve been in France and Canada to study the languages, but it was a short term and long time ago. There is 3 years that I´m not studying regularly the languages, but now I come back to the activity and, because of this, I have a huge job in front of me. Like your “portuguese”, I dont want any level to achieve, its just for my pleasure, just to be able to read things in other language, to watch movies, videos, to know people of other countries, etc… I think in this kind of study, “without commitment”, it´s more funny.
Ops…. I guess I extrapolated the purpose of this topic… I´m sorry!
Finnaly, if you want some help with your portuguese learning, please, count on me!

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