Why should I learn a language?

Learning a foreign language takes time and dedication. The reasons below may help to convince you to take the plunge if such persuasion is needed.
Emigration
When you move to a different country or region, learning the local language will help you to communicate and integrate with the local community. Even if many of the locals speak your language, for example, if your first language is English and you move to the Netherlands, it’s still worth your while learning the local language. Doing so will demonstrate your interest in and commitment to the new country.
Family and friends
If your partner, relatives or friends speak a different language, learning that language will help you to communicate with them. It can also give you a better understanding of their culture and way of thinking.
Work
If your work involves regular contact with speakers of foreign languages, being able to talk to them in their own languages will help you to communicate with them. It may also help you to make sales and to negotiate and secure contracts. Knowledge of foreign languages may also increase your chances of finding a new job, getting a promotion or a transfer overseas, or of going on foreign business trips.
Learning other languages gives you access to a greater range of information about your subject and enables you to communicate with students and researchers from other countries. If much of the information and research about a subject that interests you is in other languages, learning those languages will be very useful. For example, if you’re interested in the minority languages of Brazil, you will probably find the most information about them is in Portuguese.
Travel
Many English speakers seem to believe that wherever you go on holiday you can get by speaking English, so there’s no point in learning any other language. If people don’t understand you all you have to do is speak slowly and turn up the volume. You can more or less get away with this, as long as you stick to popular tourist resorts and hotels where you can usually find someone who speaks English. However, if you want to venture beyond such places, to get to know the locals, to read signs, menus, etc, knowing the local language is very useful.
Americans who travel abroad for the first time are often shocked to discover that, despite all the progress that has been made in the last 30 years, many foreign people still speak in foreign languages…
Learning Portuguese
To learn Portuguese, language students of Portuguese spend years building up their confidence by studying with textbooks, rules, and super expensive E-learning platforms. However, once they arrive in Portugal, Brazil or other countries that speak Portuguese, their confidence is shattered when they can’t communicate with native speakers. We understand this problem we are here to help!
We have hundreds of FREE online materials for you! Try this one!
Learning Portuguese can make a difference!
Mastery of the language of Camões can be the difference between getting or not getting the job you want!
Learning Portuguese in Lisbon can give you the opportunity to acquire competence for your short and medium-term.
Did you know that when you learn a language your brain becomes more agile? The decision to learn Portuguese will give you two important advantages:
1st advantage: you will be able to speak Portuguese!
2nd advantage: your brain will think faster!
According to many studies, being bilingual has a major impact on the way our brains work!
When we increase our cognitive skills, we are also able to combat brain aging and health problems like dementia.
Your brain will be more responsive and these benefits, help even more people who learn a second language later in life!
Usually, people decide to learn Portuguese (or a second language) for 5 different reasons:
Professional reasons
Learning a second or a third language will give you more skills and will make you more competitive in the job market.
learn more about the culture of a country
If you can´t speak a language you can´t fully understand the culture of that country. If you can´t understand Portuguese, you won´t be able to understand fado or read Fernando Pessoa (the most famous Portuguese writer).
For love reasons
When two people of different nationalities (with different languages) fall in love.
The love of learning languages
Some people have a real pleasure in learning languages. It is important to know that learning a third (or fourth, or fifth,…) language is always a faster and easier process than learning a second language.
To fight dementia and other brain diseases
LearnING Portuguese – Strategies

Portuguese idiom is considered to be the sixth most spoken language on the planet. Many people don’t know that in Brazil, people speak Portuguese. There isn’t a Brazilian language, Brazilian people speak Portuguese (from Portugal).
If you’re planning to go to Brazil or Portugal, you will need to learn a few words and expressions to help you. You will probably need to buy a phrasebook and you will probably try to memorize a few phrases in Portuguese.
If you want to get into the idiom, which I truly recommend, you should know that 300 million people speak Portuguese in the world and 200 million in Brazil.
The Portuguese language is an important idiom. It is similar to Spanish. If you already speak Spanish, Portuguese will be easy for you because vocabulary and grammar are very similar.
If you want to get more info (dates and prices) about our Portuguese courses please click HERE!
LearN portuguese – Get a simple grammar book

The first tip on learning Portuguese? I suggest a very simple grammar book. How should you pick the right book for you? If you’re starting from scratch just keep it simple. The smaller and simpler the better!
The book will be a resource that you go back to again and again to check the rules and clarify your doubts. You can’t absorb everything, you need to go back and pick a bit more every day.
If you decide to learn Portuguese you need to know that there are funny things that Portuguese speakers do. For example, ‘to think’ is not only “pensar”. Very often they use ”achar”. They also have verbs like “ficar” which is “ to stay” or ‘to be’ or ‘to get’. You have to analyze the context and decide what is the best translation.
Portuguese is a very interesting language for several reasons. They have interesting uses of the infinitive that we don’t find in other languages (they “bend” verbs). They have a personal infinitive (“infinitivo pessoal”) and then they have future subjunctive that, very often looks like the infinitive.
All these topics can be found in our books and our FREE E-learning platforms. However, it is very hard to learn parts of the Portuguese grammar without the help of a teacher that will also expose yourself to the Portuguese sounds.
If you want to try this, use for FREE our online materials click HERE!
Should I learn european or brazilian portuguese?
There are students who wonder before they start studying Portuguese, should I study European Portuguese or Brazilian Portuguese?
Our opinion is that it doesn’t really matter. The pronunciation is quite different. It will be easier for you to understand people in Brazil because they pronounce all the vowels. Portuguese people “swallow” the words, they kind of chew them.
The differences are hard to notice when you’re a beginner. Here what you should do: just start!
If you can already speak Spanish or if you are a Spanish native speaker, you have to change your habits. The way Spanish people use their vowels is very different from Portuguese. The sound of the vowels is much more “closed” in Portuguese and it is very hard to change the accent from Spanish to Portuguese.
Learn portuguese – use interesting content
You should be interested in tuning yourself to how they structure the language, how the language works. In Portugal, they use “tu – you informal” and in Brazil they use “você – you formal and informal” – third person of the singular.
Try both (European Portuguese and Portuguese from brazil). Listen, read and explore these two possibilities. At some point, you will choose one of the routes.
Which are the things that motivate you to learn this language?
The most important tip I have on learning Portuguese (or any other idiom) is, you have to be motivated! Every single person has to find out the best route to learn the idiom. You can achieve fluency, but at the same point, you need to understand that learning a language is not a 100 meters race, it a marathon!
If you want to be fluent in Portuguese, just go for it! Read, study, listen, speak! Portuguese for someone that speaks English is more or less easy to learn. If you can speak Italian, French or Spanish it will be even easier. We are not saying that learning a language is a “piece of cake”, it is not. But it is definitely achievable. What are you waiting for?
– Click HERE to know everything about our Portuguese lessons.
Learn portuguese – Our materials
All these topics can be found in our books and our E-learning platforms. However, it is very hard to learn parts of the Portuguese grammar without the help of a teacher that will also expose yourself to the Portuguese idiom.
Listening to our Audio Podcasts and watching our videos is a great way to expose yourself to the language that Portuguese native speakers speak. With our materials, you will learn our local expressions and you will discover our culture.
You can use our materials to supplement a course that you are doing or as an entertaining way to expand your vocabulary. We have materials for A1, A2, and B1 students. You will be surprised by how much you will learn about our materials!
Click HERE if you want to get more information about our Portuguese classes.
10 Psychological Benefits – Learning a New Language

It used to be common to believe that learning two languages created confusion in the mind. However, a closer look shows that there are several advantages to studying a second language.
Several studies have shown that a second language can benefit your brain in many ways. Check it out:
- Brain growth: As a result of successful learning, the language centers of the brain usually grow, according to research published in 2012. So the more you learn, the more vital areas of your brain develop.
- Away from dementia
According to a study conducted in 2012, bilingualism delays Alzheimer’s disease by up to five years in the most susceptible people. - Development of listening skills
Being bilingual can lead to better listening skills, as the brain needs to work harder to distinguish different types of sounds in two or more languages. At least this is what a study conducted during 2012 shows. - Development of sensitivity to language
Children from bilingual families can distinguish languages they have never heard of before, according to a study published in 2011. In this way, exposure to different sounds, such as Catalan and Spanish, helps to perceive the difference between other languages, such as English and French. - Improved memory. A study published in early 2013 shows that babies raised in a bilingual environment have a stronger working memory than children who are familiar with only one language. This represents better performance in mental calculus, reading, and other skills.
- Increased multitasking capacity. People who speak two languages can switch from one task to another more easily, as shown in a study published in 2013. They tend to have more cognitive flexibility and believe that it is easier to adapt to unexpected circumstances.
- Increased attention span. Bilingual people have greater control over their attention and are more able to eliminate distractions, according to a 2010 study.
- Duplication capacity activated. The increase in cognitive functions, such as increased attention and the ability to multitask, is presented in bilingual people because of the ability to keep two languages activated at the same time, in addition to continuous monitoring of which is more appropriate for the moment. According to a 1999 study, change brings mental benefits.
- Development of multiple points of view. Learning a new language can literally change the way you see the world. A study published in 2010 shows that learning Japanese, which has basic terms for light blue and dark blue, for example, can make you perceive colors in a different way.
- Development of your first language. Since learning a second language increases your attention to abstract rules and language structure, it can improve your mother tongue.