Beginners' Portuguese and Modern Greek

Portuguese and Modern Greek is an unusual and rewarding language combination, pairing one of the world's most widely spoken languages with one of Europe's most historically significant tongues. Portuguese is the native language of around 250 million people, spoken not only in Portugal but across Brazil, Mozambique, Angola, Cape Verde, and other communities on every continent, and it carries with it literary traditions of remarkable richness, from the medieval lyric poetry of the Cantigas to the modernist experiments of Fernando Pessoa and the magical realism of Brazilian fiction. Modern Greek connects you to a living language with one of the longest continuous literary traditions of any language in the world, linking the contemporary Hellenic world to the classical past while standing as its own modern literary and cultural tradition.

At the University of Oxford, this four-year full-time programme takes students who are beginning Portuguese from scratch, making it one of the entry routes for students who have not studied the language before. Oxford's approach to modern languages is characterised by depth: the tutorial system gives you intensive engagement with expert academics, and the combination of language acquisition, literary study, and cultural and historical analysis develops both linguistic competence and intellectual breadth. You will work with texts from across the Portuguese-speaking and Greek-speaking worlds, developing the reading skills and critical frameworks to engage with literature in both languages at a high level.

Oxford's connections with European universities and with institutions in Portugal, Brazil, and Greece give students in this programme good opportunities for academic exchange and immersive language experience.

Graduates of Oxford modern languages programmes move into careers spanning diplomacy, international business, translation and interpreting, journalism, publishing, academia, education, and cultural institutions. The combination of Portuguese and Greek is a particularly distinctive qualification.