CPLP: World Portuguese language day on May 5 with 150 events in 44 countries

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CPLP: World Portuguese language day on May 5 with 150 events in 44 countries

9:30 CAT | 27 Apr 2021

Photo: Lusa

The World Day of the Portuguese Language on May 5, will be celebrated in 44 countries with more than 150 activities, it was announced on Monday in Lisbon.

Coordinated by Camões – Cooperation and Language Institute (IC), the celebrations will take place “in all regions of the world” and cover geographic aspects, research, translation, links with other arts and involvement of people ” in a set of over 150 activities in 44 countries” explained the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Augusto Santos Silva, at a press conference.

With an agenda that includes conferences, colloquiums, concerts, literary and poetry contests and academic initiatives, the second World Day of the Portuguese Language will take place in a mixed face-to-face and virtual format.

World Portuguese Language Day will also include a commemorative session in person, from Lisbon, which will celebrate the “global projection” of a “language that belongs to the Mozambicans, Brazilians, Angolans, São Tomense, Guineans, Cape Verdeans and Timorese,” he said.

“On 5 May, in all the major regions of the world, in Africa as in the Americas, in Asia and Oceania as in Europe and in the Middle East and North Africa there will be initiatives around the Portuguese language,” Santos Silva added.

According to the minister, Spain, Germany, the United States, China, Italy and Mozambique will be the countries with the most activities to commemorate World Day of the Portuguese Language.

“Portuguese in Portugal today is greatly enriched by the flows and contributions that Portuguese speakers in other varieties, residing in Portugal, are giving to the European variety of the Portuguese language,” he said.

The commemorations intend to show beyond the global projection of the language, the multifaceted nature of its uses.

In this context, Santos Silva highlighted the holding of colloquia, conferences, exhibitions and language weeks in Germany, Argentina and Finland, as well as the publication of Portuguese works in Mandarin, in China, and a bilingual edition of the work of Ilse Rosa, in Germany.

He also mentioned the opening of an exhibition of Portuguese-speaking artists in Germany and the screening of the film Pedro e Inês, by António Ferreira, with a round-table discussion on the film and the presence of the director in Serbia.

The head of diplomacy also underlined the fact that many of the programme’s activities are not “carried out only by Portuguese” and involve diplomatic missions from other countries, as well as institutes and cultural networks of these countries, namely the Brazil Cultural Network.

Santos Silva also considered the programme’s component of mobilising people to use the language to be “very important,” giving as an example the competition #escreveumpoemacamoes in Angola, which challenges people to write or recite a poem in Portuguese and publish it on the Camões Institute’s social networks, and a literary competition in Mozambique, which challenges students to write “short pandemic stories.

This year’s programme also repeats last year’s initiative involving the Camões institute network in which each student or teacher from Portuguese departments abroad chooses an outdoor space, a garden or a square, to read a text in Portuguese.

An idea that last year, due to pandemic restrictions, was limited to windows, but that this year, may return to outdoor space in various places, said Santos Silva.

The programme of commemorations for the World Day of the Portuguese Language was presented today in Lisbon at a joint press conference held by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Augusto Santos Silva, and the Secretaries of State for Cinema, Audiovisual and Media, Nuno Artur Silva, for Higher Education, João Sobrinho Teixeira, and Deputy and Education, João Costa.

The programme of commemorations of this event includes initiatives promoted by the areas of Foreign Affairs, Culture, Science, Technology and Higher Education and Education in Portugal and is available on the Camões – Institute for Cooperation and Language website.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) proclaimed, in 2019, May 5 as World Day of the Portuguese Language, following the proposal of all Portuguese-speaking countries, supported by 24 other states, including countries such as Argentina, Chile, Georgia, Luxembourg and Uruguay.

Source: Lusa