do americans really 'feel' that way about portugal?

> With over 260 million speakers, Portuguese is the fifth most spoken language
> in the world, the most widely spoken in the southern hemisphere, and the
> third most spoken in the Western world

Portuguese will receive more prominence in the next decade because Brazil is now a major economic power. We're seeing the same thing with Mandarin Chinese. Its popularity skyrocketed because the Chinese economy skyrocketed,, and many Americans now think that learning Mandarin will give them an edge in the job market. In fact, many high schools and even kindergartens are now offering Mandarin classes. Prior to this period of Chinese economic growth, the culturally dominant dialect was Cantonese, not Mandarin. That's because it's the dialect of Hong Kong, Singapore and most Chinatowns around the world, i.e. Australia, the UK, Canada, Jamaica (which a huge Chinese population) and the US. Even though many more people have always spoken Mandarin (because of the huge mainland Chinese population), Hong Kong cinema's influence was huge in disseminating Cantonese. Whether China can do the same with Mandarin is questionable. As an example, because virtually all DVD players are manufactured in China, they tried to assert some influence by introducing the competing SVCD format when DVDs were still expensive. SVCD used then-cheaper CDs to store data. It didn't work, and both VCDs and SVCDs only gained popularity in Asia.

The US obsession with learning Mandarin is misguided. While a huge number of people do speak Mandarin, they're mostly in a single country, China. That's because China was never an imperialistic country, and didn't expand beyond their own borders. All the expansion was contiguous within Asia. Even exploration did not lead to conquering, i.e. there is evidence that the Chinese arrived in America before Columbus, but they lost interest. One reason was the Chinese belief that that outsiders were barbarians, and not worthy of their interest.

Because Mandarin is spoken mostly within China, it's not a useful language to learn unless you plan to work in China. Even dealing with Chinese companies doesn't require a knowledge of Mandarin because most younger Chinese know English. Indeed, many of their pop songs are littered with English phrases like, "Oh baby" and "I love you," and American rap is quite popular in China. As for the US, Mandarin won't be very useful because there is unlikely to be a large influx of Mandarin-speaking immigrants. The Chinese immigrant population will speak mostly Cantonese (many in HOng Kong still want the "American Dream") and Fujian (among the poorest region in China), not Mandarin. The reason is simple: as mainland China become more wealthy, there will be no reason to emigrate to the US. The fact is, most Chinese immigrants are here not here for political freedom, but economic opportunities. I worked in Columbia University's Biostatistical program, where 70-80% of the grad students were from China. Virtually all of them planned to return to China upon graduation.

Since there won't be a major Mandarin-speaking immigrant population, and Mandarin is spoken mostly in one country (albeit by a lot of people!), learning the language for professional purposes is misguided. Spanish is still the best bet for American students because of the huge and growing Latino immigrant population, and the number of countries that speak Spanish.

Wow ... I really digressed into a rant that has nothing to do with Portugal! Sorry ... this is a topic I've been researching and it somehow seeped its way into this thread. In my defense, I did write a long response to the original question (Do Americans know much about Portugal) about an hour ago.