The man responsible for promoting Brazilian culture and the Portuguese language abroad told Lusa that Brazil was interested in making Portuguese an official language of the United Nations, but warned of the high costs.
“It’s actually extremely expensive because it’s very expensive to have Portuguese as a working language at the United Nations,” the director of the Guimarães Rosa Institute, Brazil’s equivalent of the Camões Institute, said in an interview with Lusa in Brasilia.
According to Marco Antonio Nakata, at this first moment it is necessary to “really evaluate what value this will have for Brazil and whether this volume of resources will not be more useful” in other areas of the spread of the Portuguese language, such as the existence of “more readers, more teachers investing into new teaching technologies.”
In other words, there is interest so far, but the focus has been on “experimental expansion in some international organizations” such as UNESCO, where in specific cases it is already a working language.
“The idea is that we will begin to expand. The government of Brazil, together with the government of Portugal, has already spoken in favor of expansion, including at UNESCO,” emphasized the head of the Guimarães Rosa Institute.
In an interview with Lusa in Lisbon on April 26, Brazil’s foreign minister said he wanted to “move forward” with the project to make Portuguese an official language of the United Nations, adding that it is “one of the languages of the United Nations.” a topic that is very dear to President Lula is the Portuguese language.”
“He [Lula das Silva] insists that he would very much like to see Portuguese become an official language of the United Nations.”
The minister said the project of Portuguese as an official UN language is an issue that the Brazilian government is considering “seriously.” And “we would like to see progress,” he concluded.
Because “this is a long-term issue because it is not something that can be resolved directly at the United Nations. This affects the budget of the United Nations,” he said.
International Portuguese Language Day, celebrated on 5 May, was proclaimed by the 40th General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in November 2019 and is celebrated for the fifth time this year.
Portuguese is the fourth most widely spoken language in the world, with more than 260 million speakers on five continents. The UN estimates that almost 400 million people will speak Portuguese by 2050, and more than 500 million by 2100.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
I am Michael Melvin, an experienced news writer with a passion for uncovering stories and bringing them to the public. I have been working in the news industry for over five years now, and my work has been published on multiple websites. As an author at 24 News Reporters, I cover world section of current events stories that are both informative and captivating to read.