Portuguese

Minha terra tem palmeiras,
Onde canta o sabiá
As aves que aqui gorjeiam
Não gorjeiam como lá...

Gonçalves Dias
(Canção do Exílio, Coimbra 1853)

Officially there are eight Portuguese-speaking countries in the world today, a legacy from the old colonial empire. They are Portugal, Brasil, Angola, Moçambique, Cabo Verde, Guiné Bissau, São Tomé and Príncipe and Timor Leste. Altogether there are over 230 million Portuguese speaking people throughout the world today.

The Portuguese courses at Rice University concentrate more on the language spoken in Brazil.

Brazil is a country of amazing complexity and beauty. It is the world's fifth largest country with an area of 8,547,403.5 km² . The last census has estimated the Brazilian population to be close to 170 million people today. It is a nation with a vigorous economy offering great opportunities as well as boasting some of the world's richest and most luxuriant ecosystems.

It is neighbor to all the countries in South America except Ecuador and Chile. It has an extensive Atlantic Ocean coastline, which covers the entire eastern side of the country. Brazil can be divided into 5 main regions: the north, northeast, southeast, south and west central regions - each with its individual climatic, economic and cultural characteristics. The country's major cities are São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Brasília, Belo Horizonte, Recife, Curitiba and Porto Alegre. Modern and extensive highways cover the entire country. Racially, the three basic sources of the Brazilian population are the Indians (originally living on the land), the Europeans (mostly Portuguese and later immigrants from other European countries) and the Africans (brought as slaves). Economically, Brazil's agricultural products played and continue playing a significant role, but in the last quarter of a century, its industrial sector has developed and expanded.

From a cultural point of view, Brazil offers a great variety of self-expression in music, architecture, cinema, theatre and the plastic arts. From Brazil come the samba (which dominates during the lively days of the carnaval), the bossa nova movement, and other original rhythms, which make use of the African beats. Architecturally, there are colonial churches and monasteries in the older cities as well as modern examples of Brazilian architecture-especially in the new capital city of Brasília, inaugurated in 1960. Brazilian literature, first influenced through Portugal by the European Romantic movement, developed its own innovation, often portraying the social realities of the country. It is interesting to point out that Brazilian fiction, poetry, and drama account for about half the literary output of Latin America, calculated by the number of titles of individual books.

Suzana Maria Campos Pinto Bloem teaches Portuguese at Rice University in the Center for the Studies of Languages in the  School of Humanities. Rice University offers 2 years of Portuguese:

Port 101/102 - The first year (fall/spring) consists of an introduction to the language with emphasis on the development of audio-lingual skills and language lab work.

Port 201/202 - The second year (fall/spring) is an intermediate level course with emphasis on the development of reading and writing skills and achieving functional proficiency in the spoken language.

Port. 101 and 201 in the fall semester

Port. 102 and 202 in the spring semester

Port. 400 is an Independent Study course open to qualified students interested in a topic not covered in other courses by permission of the Center for the Studies of Languages.