Language Can Be Fun!

There's a fun little article on the Portuguese language and a popular new linguistic museum in Brazil in today's New York Times that's worth checking out. One of the finest things about the article is its efforts to deflect the notions that Portuguese is a "second-rate" language in the world behind languages such as English, Spanish, French, German, etc. (a notion that's very common in the U.S., given partly to the fact that we don't deal with Brazil economically and politically to the extent that we do with Europe or Japan, and partly due to the fact that Spanish in the STates is rising so quickly that it receives the majority of our attention).

Anyhow, it's worth checking out, and has some important and fun factoids about the Portuguese language (including delightful differences in words between Portugal and Brazil, not unlike the difference between "pissed" in England and in the United States).

Anyhow, it's worth checking out, particularly if you know little about the POrtuguese language or cultural differences in the Portuguese-speaking world.