Doing business in Portugal
Portuguese is a romance language derived from the Latin spoken by the peoples of the Roman province of Lusitania. It spread worldwide in the 15th and 16th centuries as Portugal established a colonial and commercial empire extending from Brazil in the Americas to Goa and other parts of India, Macau in China and Timor. It is currently ranked 7th in the world of the most common languages based on number of native speakers (around 230 million).
The Spanish writer, Miguel de Cervantes, called Portuguese the “sweet language” as it sounds more like Catalan or French than Spanish or Italian. Most of the lexicon of Portuguese is derived from Latin, but due to the occupation of the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages by the Moors, and the participation of Portugal in the Age of Discovery, (the intensive exploration and mapping of the globe by Europeans) it has adopted loanwords from all over the world.
Tips for working with people from Portugal:
· Appearances matter, especially in the cities. People are fashion conscious believing that clothes are a sign of social standing and success.
· People respect authority and seek/expect guidance and decision-making from people senior to them. Decision making and problem solving tend to be directed from the top with little attention to building consensus or involving junior colleagues.
· In written communications, maintain a sense of formality and be mindful of the status of the person you are communicating with. English is not widely spoken beyond a basic level, so have brochures or contracts available in Portuguese.
· In face to face communication, expect to invest time developing the relationship which means that speaking Portuguese will ease your progress.
“A falar é que a gente se entende.” - Talking is the way for people to understand each other.
