10- It was declared one of the six critical languages by the National Defense Education Act of 1958.

9- One in three South Americans and one in five Americans speaks it.

8-Spoken by over 200 million people, it is the seventh most widely spoken language in the world, well ahead of German (10th), French (11th), and Italian (15th).

7-It is the official language of seven countries in Europe, Africa, and South America and an unofficial one in numerous linguistic islands in China, India, and North America.

6-Since it is so important and so rarely studied, knowledge of Portuguese is actually a marketable skill, especially in commerce and banking.

5- The astonishing richness of literature in Portuguese--everything from The Lusiads, the greatest epic poem of the European Renaissance, to the modern Brazilian novel, the best-kept secret in the Western Hemisphere.

4-The Brazilian Superlative syndrome, or something for everybody. Brazil has the world's most voluminous river (navigable for all 2100 of its miles in Brazil), the world's largest oxygenating forest, the world's largest wetland, two of the ten largest cities in the world, the world's largest fluvial island, the world's largest soccer stadium, the world's largest hydroelectric project now in operation, the world's longest continuous box and plate girder bridge, a third of the world's iron reserves, and a population which will overtake that of the U.S. in the foreseeable future.

3- Brazilian music.

2- Ronaldo (soccer), Guga (tennis), Ayrton Senna (F1).

1- It's fun.