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NSSCO Portuguese Foreign Language 6113 study materials
NSSCO Portuguese Foreign Language 6113 study resources

NSSCO Portuguese Foreign Language 6113: Cultural and topical knowledge of Portuguese-speaking communities

NSSCO Portuguese Foreign Language 6113 · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.

All guide sections

Cultural and topical knowledge of Portuguese-speaking communities

Cultural and topical questions appear inside reading and listening texts and in the oral discussion: geography, festivals, institutions and everyday life in Portuguese-speaking communities. You are not expected to be an expert, but knowing the reference points stops a text from becoming unreadable.

The Lusophone world

  • CPLP (Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa) was founded in 1996 in Lisbon; members are Angola, Brazil, Cabo Verde, Guiné-Bissau, Moçambique, Portugal, São Tomé e Príncipe and Timor-Leste, with Guiné Equatorial joining in 2014.
  • Currencies differ: euro (Portugal), real (Brazil), kwanza (Angola), metical (Mozambique), escudo (Cabo Verde), dobra (São Tomé).

Dates worth knowing

  • 25 de Abril de 1974: the Revolução dos Cravos in Portugal, ending the Estado Novo.
  • 5 de Outubro de 1910: the Portuguese Republic.
  • 7 de Setembro de 1822: Brazilian independence.
  • 1975: independence for Moçambique (25 de junho), Cabo Verde (5 de julho) and Angola (11 de novembro).

Culture and everyday reference

  • Music: fado (Lisbon, UNESCO intangible heritage), samba and bossa nova (Brazil), morna (Cabo Verde), semba and kizomba (Angola), marrabenta (Mozambique).
  • Food: bacalhau and caldo verde (Portugal), feijoada and pão de queijo (Brazil), cachupa (Cabo Verde), funge (Angola), xima (Mozambique).
  • The 1990 Acordo Ortográfico removed silent consonants (acção → ação) and changed hyphen rules; older spellings still appear in texts.

Worked example

A text mentions 'o 25 de Abril'. Question: what does the date commemorate? Answer: the 1974 revolution that overthrew the dictatorship in Portugal. Reasoning: 25 April belongs to Portuguese national history, not to any colony's independence; 5 de Outubro is the Republic and 1 de Dezembro 1640 the Restoration. Such dates are designed to catch candidates who guess.

Traps

  • Mixing PT and BR vocabulary: autocarro/ônibus, telemóvel/celular, gelado/sorvete.
  • Assuming one currency or one accent across all nine countries.
  • Treating Brazil as the default: NSSCO texts also use European and African Portuguese.