[Extract Translation, my exercise] When I came to Macau, the transition of administration was about to take place. There was a lot of discredit in relation to Portuguese: some people thought that Portuguese was going to decline, people would no longer have interest in Portuguese. Besides, with the disappearance of the language, it would also affect the culture of Portuguese matrix. I was always against this idea a lot and always believed that the Portuguese language was a language of great international influence. It’s a language spoken in four continents: Europe, Africa, Asia and America. There are eight countries that have Portuguese as official language spread out the world. And then we see the learning of Portuguese all over the world; therefore, I always believed that the Portuguese language was going to return. In Macau, it’s not a language spoken on street, the first language is Cantonese and then English [the second should be Mandarin now, English and Portuguese thereafter], which is the international language. The role that, by the way, Portuguese once had. Portuguese already took this role to be the international language in the 16th, 17th centuries, until the middle of the 18th. Afterwards it was substituted by French, which was the international language until the middle of the 20th century. After the World War II, with the emergence of the United States, English captured the role of international língua franca [indeed, the British Empire had contributed to this goal before the US]. However, to go directly to your question, Portuguese continues present as the official language here. Your newspaper [Plataforma Macau] is a piece of evidence. Here is a situation of bilingualism in which Portuguese is a language of administration and the servants of administration understand it. In addition, there are institutions where Portuguese is taught, many students are learning Portuguese.
Posted on: Sun, 22 Jun 2014 06:51:32 +0000
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