Portuguese literature was Jarmila Svatosova’s passion.



A high school teacher of French and German in the Czech Republic, she decided to study Portuguese a few years back so that she could read Portuguese literature – which has a big following in her country – in the original language.



Jarmila studied the language on her own for three or four hours a day – or at night, rather, when she couldn’t sleep.



Four years later, she received a surprise birthday gift from her husband: a summer language course at the University of Coimbra, Portugal’s oldest institution of higher learning.



“I thought he was joking,” Jarmila said.



“I was angry at first! I couldn’t imagine leaving my three children and all of my duties for such a long time. But finally I felt happy. In the end, I relaxed the whole time and enjoyed every minute of it.”



Jarmila is one of the hundreds of students from around the world that descend on Portugal each year to take summer language courses at Portuguese universities.



Included are high school students from the former Portuguese colony of Macau, university students from the United States, doctoral candidates from Japan, and retirees from Western Europe.



Despite their varied backgrounds, the participants share one thing in common: a love of Portugal and its beautiful – if somewhat eccentric – language.



Several Portuguese universities offer such programmes.



With three sessions running for three consecutive months – July, August and September – the University of Lisbon’s is by far the largest.



The programme at the University of the Algarve - situated in the heart of Portugal’s premier tourist destination – is popular with linguistically inclined travellers wanting to combine a summer at the beach with language studies.



Many students prefer to study further off the beaten track at universities such Porto, Minho, Aveiro, Tras-os-Montes and the Azores, among others.



The oldest programme by far is the one offered by the University of Coimbra, which will hold its 84th annual summer Portuguese language programme in 2008.



Many of the students in Coimbra’s programme last summer – especially those at the advanced level – were born in Portugal, having immigrated to other countries in their youth.



Take Helena Santos, a self-described Luso-Americana that teaches Portuguese as a Foreign Language at New Bedford High School in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in the United States.



She attended elementary and secondary school in Portugal before moving with her family to the Land of the Free.



“I wanted the experience of attending a university in Portugal,” Helena said.



“I chose the University of Coimbra for its prestige and because it was closer to my hometown. I enjoyed the experience!”



As with many students, Helena found that what took place after class was almost as important – if not more important - as what took place on campus.



“I enjoyed the field trips,” she said enthusiastically.



“We visited certain monuments that I wanted to see, which is important because [in addition to teaching the Portuguese language] I [also] teach the history of Portugal.”



Joana Costa, a student at Rutgers University in New Jersey, also in the United States, emigrated from Portugal at an even younger age.



When she learned that several Portuguese universities were offering summer language courses, she jumped at the chance to spend the summer in her homeland, where she still had family and friends.



Going on line, she considered her options and settled on Coimbra for the same reasons that attracted Helena - its prestigious history.



“Both my parents are Portuguese and I was born in Portugal,” Joana said.



“Therefore, I'm really interested in the language as well as in the culture. I wanted to finish my Portuguese minor in college, and by taking this summer course, I was able to finish it up. I also wanted to meet new people, and see how much different the universities in Portugal were from the ones in the USA.”



Owing to her already fluent Portuguese, Joana said that she did not learn a great deal in class. Still, she found it a rewarding experience.



“It was worthwhile because I got to finish my minor in college,” she said. “The fact that I met so many people from so many countries was a big plus!”



Not all of the students in the advanced level classes were born in Portugal.



In addition to Jarmila, who said she was excited to be sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with native speakers, were a university student from the Netherlands hoping to pursue a career as a journalist in Latin America, a French student that had spent several years living in Brazil, an Italian woman that spends her summers in Portugal because of her love of the country’s literature, and an American freelance writer who – despite many years studying the language – still gets tripped up over Portuguese verb conjugations.



“I always considered Portugal, its language and its history an interesting subject,” said Jan-Albert Hootsen, a 25-year-old Dutch Latin American Studies major at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.



“And though I never spoke a word of Portuguese before, the language had an attraction to me as one of the more ‘exotic’ languages of Europe.”



Nobuhiko Tazoe, a PhD candidate in linguistics at the University of Tokyo, speaks fluent Chinese Mandarin after studying the language for several years in mainland China.



He is currently conducting research on the socio-linguistic situation in Macau at the University of Macau and needed to acquire a basic knowledge of Portuguese to facilitate his research.



After learning the basics on his own, he enrolled in classes at beginning level. He said that he had made excellent progress.



“I decided to do a summer course in Portugal because I like the country,” Nobuhiko said.



“I traveled around the southern part of the country in 2003, and I liked it very much.”



Many students in the programme – especially those at the most advanced level – voiced disappointment with both the curriculum and the pedagogy, finding it to be lecture-based and not interactive enough.



But the extracurricular activities – many of them organized by the students themselves – got an overwhelming thumb’s up.



“I went to many cultural events - fado and folklore concerts, theater and the Festa dos Tabuleiros in Tomar,” Jarmila said.



“I traveled a lot all over Portugal – from the North to the South. I met many people and talked to them, ate wonderful Portugese food and stayed in a flat with a Portuguese girl. And now I have many new friends!”



While having the chance to practice speaking Portuguese outside class was a clear plus, some students felt that the classes themselves left a lot to be desired.



“It is interesting to note that my Portuguese classes in the Netherlands were much better than the ones at Coimbra,” Jan-Albert said.



“I started from scratch and obtained (in my opinion) a very decent level of Portuguese in only nine months' time. I found the courses in Portugal somewhat chaotic and poorly structured. Apart from that, all students in the Netherlands started off at the same level and developed the same skills. In Coimbra, students of different levels were put together into the same classes, and I think that seriously obstructed our [progress] at times.”



Owing to strong ties between the University of Coimbra and his own university in the Netherlands, Jan-Albert paid less for tuition and housing than if he had been on his own.



What he described as the “cheap lodgings” were, in fact, one of the programme’s main draws.



“I would recommend it to students from Utrecht University as the course was very cheap and we benefited a lot because of the low price,” Jan-Albert said.



“To independent students, I would say: if you have money to spend, try and see if you can find a smaller, private school first. If you are going to spend your own money, the University of Coimbra might not be the best choice.”



Reflecting the same disappointment with classes that many participants in the programme expressed, Jean Magali, a French student that had spent six years in Brazil, did not learn as much as she had expected.



But she was enthusiastic in her endorsement of Portugal and its people.



"I love Portugal," she said.



"It is a marvellous country with marvellous people. It is a country worth visiting from the point of view of its scenery, its monuments, its culture, its food and its people."



Now that she is back in France, Magali expressed that uniquely Portuguese emotion - saudades - that almost all of the students in the programme must now be feeling.



"I miss all of the things that I experienced and the people that I met," she said.



"I decided to do this course for two reasons: on the one hand, to improve my Portuguese; on the other, to get to know a new people that I had learned about at college - as well as another culture and cuisine. I am learning Portuguese because I like the language very much. What's more, I like the Portuguese-speaking countries such as Portugal and Brazil."



One of the world’s oldest institutions of higher learning in continuous operation, the University of Coimbra was founded in 1290 by Don Dinis, the fifth king of Portugal and the Algarve.



It was confirmed in 1290 by Pope Nicholas IV. Its first faculties were in arts, canon law, law and medicine.



Additional faculties have been added over the centuries, with its current lineup running from economics and law to letters, medicine, pharmacy, psychology and education sciences, sciences and technology, and sports sciences and physical education.



The university was originally located in Lisbon and moved back and forth between that city and Coimbra until 1537, when it moved to its current location for good.



It was ranked by the Times Higher Education Supplement in 2006 as the number one university in the Portuguese-speaking world and 266th best overall.



Coimbra itself is one of Portugal's most beatuiful and interesting cities. Straddling the Mondego River, it is built on a series of hills.



With a population of nearly 150,000 people, it is the country's third largest city after Lisbon, the capital, and Porto, world renowned as the home of Portugal's most famous export, port wine.



The city itself is replete with churches, gardens, libraries, monuments, musuems and shopping centres.



As with most university towns, Coimbra is strangely quiet during the summer, making this a perfect time to visit the city.



In the absense of the 35,000 students that further their studies during the academic year, accommodations during the summer are easy to find and highly affordable.


Located rougly halfway between Portugal's two largest cities, Porto and Lisbon, Coimbra is close to many of the country's most interesting sites.


And thanks to the country's excellent - and reasonably priced - railways and buses, getting around is a breeze.


The beach resort of Figueira da Foz is a leisurely one hour's trip by train.


Other nearby attractions include Alcobaca, Aveiro, Batalha, Fatima, Leiria, Nazare and Viseu.


Interest in learning Portuguese, has been growing in recent years.



A romance language, it evolved from Latin, which was brought to the Iberian Peninsula during the Roman occupation more than 2,000 years ago.



Spread during the Portuguese discoveries and conquests during the 15th and 16 centuries, it now has the sixth largest number of native speakers in the world.


An estimated 200 million people speak it around the world.



Thanks to Brazil, there are more Portuguese speakers in South America than Spanish speakers.



In addition to Portugal and Brazil, it is the official language of Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and Sao Tome e Principe.



It enjoys official status along with Chinese in Macau and Tetum in East Timor. It was recently made the third official language, after Spanish and French, of Equatorial Guinea.



Portuguese is widely spoken in Andorra, Namibia, and the American states of California, Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island.



There are significant Portuguese-speaking communities in Bermuda, Canada and India as well as scattered communities in various parts of the world speaking creoles based on Portuguese.



If Portuguese is widely spoken, there are substantial differences in the way it is spoken in different parts of the world, as Jean Magali found out.



"What I discovered was that the Portuguese in Portugal is different from Brazilian Portuguese," the French student said.



"The differences for me were above all in terms of the accent and the vocabulary."



Most students at the University of Coimbra last summer were able to find comfortable accommodation with shared kitchens and bathrooms for between 150 to 250 Euros per month.



The cost of living in Coimbra is inexpensive compared to other European cities, and most places can easily be reached on foot - assuming you don't mind climbing steep hills.


Fees run between 455 and 555 Euros, depending on your nationality.



Next summer’s course will run June 25th to July 31st.



Other Portuguese universities will be offering summer language courses next summer, as well.



Fees and living costs tend to be higher in the South and in larger cities and lower in the North, the interior, and the mid-Atlantic islands of the Azores and Madeira.



Students usually have to find their own housing off campus.



It is a good idea to arrive a few days early, staying in a hotel or guest house for a few nights while you find a suitable place to stay.



An exception would be the University of the Algarve which, owing to the high summer rents in that part of Portugal during the summer, allows students enrolling in its summer courses to stay in dormitories on campus.



Courses generally run four weeks, spanning July, August and/or September.



With careful planning, it would be possible to enroll in two or even three successive programmes at more than one university.