By Sita Sebastião
“Angola and Mozambique will make Portuguese the most spoken language of the African continent, after English,” the forecast is from the president of the Portuguese Language Observatory (OLP), Lauro Moreira, speaking in Lisbon on the sidelines of the launch of the book “On the 25 years of the CPLP – Studies in honor of José Aparecido de Oliveira and Ricardo Arnaldo Malheiros Fiuza.”
“Angola and Mozambique have giant populations, but the main factor in the expansion of the Portuguese language in Southern Africa is the businessmen from various countries coming in and many taking up residence.”
“There is no way that people will not take Portuguese further into Africa,” said the book’s co-author, Lauro Moreira.
According to Lauro Moreira, today, more than 400 million people in the world speak Portuguese.
“This was not the case in the 1960s,” he recalled.
Meanwhile, the president of the Observatory of the Portuguese Language stresses that the nearly 1.5 million Brazilians scattered in the diaspora show that Brazil is the CPLP country with the most citizens in the diaspora who take the Portuguese language to various parts of the world.
“Angola has about 440,000 citizens living in the diaspora, Mozambique 650,000, and Cape Verde comes next with about 180,000, reinforcing the number of Portuguese speakers worldwide.”
“Just so we have an idea, Portuguese is the fastest growing language in the world, more than Spanish and English,” he said.
“The issue of Portuguese one day being an official language of the United Nations is very important and should be a goal we should all pursue,” he added.
THE TRAJECTORY AND CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE CPLP
The book, launched this Wednesday, 12, at the headquarters of the CPLP in Lisbon, reflects the trajectory of the organization and the contributions it has been able to make in recent years.
The work is divided into two parts, the first of which contains “texts on the historical background of the CPLP,” “cooperation within the CPLP,” “the evolution of the CPLP and Brazil’s position,” “the International Institute of the Portuguese Language” and “cooperation in Education and Culture.
The second part is signed by authors from countries that make up the Community of Portuguese Language Countries, including Maria Angela Carrascalão (East Timor), Maria do Carmo Trovoada Silveira (São Tomé and Príncipe), Vera Duarte Pina (Cape Verde), Pepetela (Angola) and Murade Murargy (Mozambique).
All of them reflect on the relationship between their countries and the CPLP.
With information from Forbes