Portuguese course for UN officials exhausts vacancies in less than 24 hours

A portuguese language is being taught today, for the first time, to officials of the organization, in the regular course of UN foreign languages in New York, alongside the six official languages of the organization: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish.

The initiative is aimed at diplomats, officials and associates of the organization and the number of registrations in record time surprised even teachers of the Camões Institute, who will teach classes, according to the UN News platform.

“ From what we've been told, there's even a waiting list. At this moment, we would start with 15 students for each class, and we will start having 18 students”, said the professed Carla Gomes da Silva, who will take over the classes of Portuguese Level 1, for beginners, admitting the possibility of widening the classes in the future.

“There’s really a lot of interest. And I think the interest will come from the professionals here at the UN, who really want to have another tool, which is the Portuguese language, to work in cooperation, to talk to each other”, added the professor.

According to the organizers, this is the first time that an unofficial UN language will be shared by the UN Language and Communication Training Unit.

The representative and coordinator of Camões, Institute for Cooperation and Language in the United States, João Caixinha, explained that the project arose from the strategy of implementing more Portuguese courses in international organizations.

“ It is very important that Portuguese has an increasingly strong presence with the United Nations. Also because it is not yet an official language [of the UN], and this also allows us to leverage the level we want to promote the Portuguese language with international organizations,” Caixinha said in an interview with UN News.

The Portuguese language has been taught to children for several years as an optional discipline at the United Nations School in New York, open to children of diplomats and other students.

This first Portuguese course for adults at the UN is co-organized by the Office of the United Nations Department of Operational Support. The Portuguese Government has already delegated the task of teaching the language to Camões, Institute of Cooperation and Language.

Efforts to make Portuguese one of the official languages of the United Nations continue to march, but the financial investment required “is immense,” Lusa told former Portuguese ambassador Ana Paula Zechariah in 2023.

Also in 2023, the Central American Court of Justice had already proposed to the UN Security Council to incorporate Portuguese as the official language of the organization, alongside English, Spanish, French, Chinese, Russian and Arabic.

In 2024, UN Secretary-General António Guterres welcomed the creation of a section dedicated to Portuguese-speaking books in the United Nations library, highlighting the importance of language as a “unifying force” that transcends borders.

On the occasion, Guterres indicated that Portuguese is already a working language in some UN agencies, highlighting the UN News Portuguese language service, together with the social networking teams and the UN Lusophone Regional Information Centers and Offices, highlighting “the growing demand for information in Portuguese”.

Not only is the Portuguese language one of the most widespread languages in the world, with more than 260 million speakers spread across all continents, but it is also the most widely spoken language in the southern hemisphere, according to UNESCO data.