Portugal

The official language of the Republic of Portugal is Portuguese. This is stated in Paragraph 3 of Article 11 of the Constitution of the Republic of Portugal.

The Portuguese State, however, also recognises Mirandese in law 7/99 of 29 January, as well as Portuguese sign language, in the 1997 revision of the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic, Clause h, Paragraph 2, Article 74.

Mirandese, a Romance language from the north of the Iberian peninsula, is spoken by around 15,000 people in the vicinity of Miranda do Douro. Since 1986-7, Mirandese has been officially taught in the schools of that region, as an optional subject.

It should be noted that the measures taken to protect Mirandese include financial support for the translation of literary works (including a volume of Asterix) and the establishment of the local toponymy in Mirandese.

Portugal signed the convention framework for the protection of national minorities on 1 February 1995 and this was approved by the Assembly of the Republic and ratified by decree of the President of the Republic in 2001 (cf. Article 5 on protecting the language and culture).

The 22 August law on television 32/2003 states in Article 2 that television must "promote the Portuguese language and culture" and in Article 40 that it must "defend the Portuguese language", that broadcasts must always be "spoken or subtitled in Portuguese" and that at least 50% of broadcasts must be original Portuguese language programmes. A maximum of 25% of these programmes may come from other Portuguese-speaking countries.

Consumers
Consumer protection is ensured by law no. 24/96 of 31 July. Legal decree 238/86 of 19 August and legal decree 42/88 of 6 February further specify that all commercial information must be provided in Portuguese and that packaging and manuals for all products must “always either be in Portuguese or translated into Portuguese”.

Advertising
Advertising must be in Portuguese, but the use of other languages is permitted in situations where the main target audience consists of foreign nationals (cf. advertising code, included in legal decree 330/90 of 23 October, amended in 1993, 1995 and 1998).

This is currently under review by the Portuguese Ministry of Education, which organised on 7- 9 May 2007 an International Conference on Portuguese Language Teaching in the Cultural Centre at Belém. It was decided to reinforce the teaching of Portuguese, as insufficient numbers of college and higher eduction students were able to master the language correctly.

The measures taken by the national programme for Portuguese language teaching include:

• making it compulsory for eight hours per week to be spent learning Portuguese in the first two years of primary school;
• launching an intensive teacher training programme;
• creating a national reading plan;
• reporting on an experimental simplification of the grammatical terminology used in schools (TLEBS : terminologie linguistique pour l’enseignement de base et secondaire or linguistic terminology for teaching at primary and secondary level), which has been in place since 2004, surrounded by strong media coverage and a lot of debate.

In public further education institutions, most lessons are taught in Portuguese. However, the Ministry of Further Education has recently proposed in a Parliamentary debate that “emphasis should be placed on English language programmes” (December 2006).

There is no administrative structure with specific responsibility for matters of linguistic policy, but both the Portuguese Ministry of Education and the Camoes Institute take an active interest (even though the latter is only responsible for spreading the Portuguese language abroad).

This interest is evident in the significant presence of the Ministry and, most notably of its Department for Innovation and Curricular Development, at the first ‘Language and power I, national linguistic strategies in Europe’ conference, which took place in Lisbon in November 2006, organised by a number of different foreign bodies.

The Scientific Council of the Society for the Portuguese Language is also much more preoccupied by spreading Portuguese abroad than it is in the defence and illustration of Portuguese within Portugal.

They have however implemented an Internet-based linguistic service Ciberdúvidas, together with very popular national and international dictation competitions and language-related broadcasts on the radio and television.

The 1981 law on nationality states that a foreign national who has been married to a Portuguese citizen for more than three years can acquire Portuguese nationality simply by making a declaration as to how long they have been married. While most candidates for citizenship are required to prove their mastery of the Portuguese language, this is not required of those who acquire Portuguese nationality by virtue of their declaration.

The new law on nationality (constitutional law 2/2006) of 17 April, regulated by legal decree 237-A/2006 of 14 December, came into force on 15 December 2006. Its main aim is to ensure that all who obtain Portuguese nationality have reached at least level A2 of the Council of Europe’s Common European Language Reference Framework in Portugal (elementary level), by means of a test managed by the Portuguese Ministry of Education and administered in an authorised school or one of the Camoes Institutes abroad.

Decree 1403-A/2006 of 15 December 2006 on the application of this law stipulates in Article 1 that “diagnostic tests as to the level of understanding of Portuguese” will be implemented in two different types, one for 10-14 year olds and one for those over 14. It describes in great detail how the tests will be administered and gives model exams in reading comprehension and written language in the annexes.

Since the start of the wave of immigration over the last few years, both from Portuguese-speaking countries such as Brazil, Angola and Mozambique and from Central Europe, the Portuguese Government has implemented classes in Portuguese as a Foreign Language in most schools, both for school pupils and through evening classes for adults.

The development of this new specialism (PLE, portugais langue étrangère or Portuguese as a Foreign Language) has been nothing short of remarkable. It can now be studied at Masters level and includes an excellent evaluation and certification system (SACPLE) run since its inception in 1999 by the University of Lisbon and based on the different levels of the Council of Europe’s Common European Language Reference Framework.

In Autumn 2006 English was taught in most schools (96%) from the first cycle of primary school (from eight years old). Other languages are not financially supported in the context of this programme for starting foreign languages early, which does not, incidentally, form part of the main curriculum.

English is equally popular (once again, 96% of schools) as the first foreign language to be taught from the second cycle of primary school (from 10 years old), although there is nothing in the legal texts to prescribe this.

The second foreign language, which is begun in the third cycle of primary school (at 12 years old) is not really a matter of choice for families as most schools only have French teachers with a few also having Spanish and German teachers.

French is therefore generally the second foreign language (in 81% of schools) but is now in fierce competition with the demand for Spanish, which is growing at a tremendous rate. The second language is however rarely well mastered, since it is only studied for three years, which barely allows pupils to achieve level A2 (elementary) of the Council of Europe’s reference framework.

Finally, at ‘secondary’ school (from 15-18 years), where a second foreign language is no longer compulsory, most students study only English (85 %) or French (15 %) to level B1 or B2 of the Council of Europe’s Reference Framework.

However, it should be noted that foreign languages do not form part of the national exams at the end of primary or secondary school.

The national language is an important issue which receives frequent media coverage and is appreciated by Portuguese citizens, who are conscious that they speak a language of international communication (200 million speakers) which is nonetheless rarely taught abroad.

(2009)