The Portuguese language classes started off slowly. Interest was there, but many families with ties to Portugal were focused on the big picture: integrating their children into the Bermudian culture. Learning how to speak Portuguese took a back seat.

In 1981 things changed. Courtesy of an accord between Bermuda and Portugal, the Portuguese Cultural Association became administrators of the Escola Portuguesa/Portuguese School, offering lessons to anyone who was interested.

“There's an effort that has been made for many years to ensure that the children of Portuguese work permit holders have access to instruction in Portuguese so that, if they ever have to go back to their ancestral homeland, they won't have missed a beat during their time in Bermuda,” said Richard Ambrosio, the Association’s chairman.

“We’ve been teaching Portuguese for 40-plus years now under the guise of the Portuguese Cultural Association affiliated with Vasco da Gama Club. Last year we had 37 children in our programme. We also are slowly rolling out an adult programme that last year had about just shy of 30 adult participants.”

The classes are held in accordance with Quadro de Referência para o Ensino Português no Estrangeiro, the official framework for teaching Portuguese as a foreign language.

Sponsorship of the programme came through a relationship established last year with Camões – Institute of Cooperation and Language, IP, an organisation that promotes Portuguese language and culture worldwide.

“That was a pretty big deal for us. It took us about three years to negotiate – not helped by the intervening Covid-19 crisis – but we got there in the end and the Portuguese government will be supporting us in our mission to teach the Portuguese language in Bermuda,” Mr Ambrosio said.

“We will be working with Camões, IP to examine every aspect of our teaching, including, but not limited to, the curriculum, continual professional development for the teacher, and the number of contact hours with students.

“In the longer term, we will work to develop a form of international recognition for certificates of completion, which may include working towards sitting older students for their GCSE in Portuguese."

Classes for primary school-aged children are held after the school day ends.

There are myriad reasons why people register, although roughly half “have Portuguese roots going back two or three generations”.

“They just want to learn the language of their forebears; their sort of ‘homeland language’ that maybe got lost through the passage of time,” Mr Ambrosio said. “And then the other half are Bermudians of all stripes, of all races, of all ethnic backgrounds, who just have intellectual curiosity to learn the Portuguese language.

“They don't necessarily have any immediately obvious connections to Portugal, to the Azores, other than an interest.”

That Portuguese is unofficially Bermuda’s second language pulls some people in.

“Others have their eye towards, maybe, retirement in Portugal,” Mr Ambrosio said. “There's all sorts of motivations for that second cohort wanting to learn Portuguese.”

With more people taking advantage of the direct flights between Bermuda and the Azores, there are also travellers who want to be able to engage in basic conversation once there.

The school has “absolutely” seen an uptick in registration since Azores Airlines started its flights to LF Wade International Airport.

“In terms of registration for the adults, because we only have the one teacher, we have to roll it out in a sustainable manner that doesn't burn her out.

“I would love to, at some point in the near future, recruit a second teacher just to help with the demand,” Mr Ambrosio added.

About 70 people are on a waiting list; a further 500 or so have expressed interest in the last five years.

“We try to keep all of our classes under 20 people. It's a balance. On one hand, you want to be responsible to people who want to learn the language knowing that you have limited capacity to offer it, but on the other hand, you don't want to dilute the experience for the people that do find a way into the classroom.

“I would love to be able to have a stable of Portuguese teachers so that I could just let the floodgates open and maybe have a class size of ten. We're not quite there.”

It’s a switch from times past when there wasn’t such a public celebration of Portuguese heritage

“There was definitely, maybe a generation ago, maybe a sense of, let's put our head down.

“Let's just get our kids to integrate into the new host society. Let's get them to learn the language.

“Let's get them to enter into these different economic realms, that perhaps, the Portuguese were not necessarily welcomed into in the past,” Mr Ambrosio said.

“A lot of times that desire to integrate and get ahead was often paired with, maybe you should forget where you came from – to a certain extent. And with that disconnection, you obviously see a lack of interest in the language: am I ever going to go back to the Azores?

“So what practical use do I have for learning a language that is not really needed in Bermuda?”

It’s an attitude that “has definitely changed”, he said.

“I think Bermuda as a society has become a bit more open, a bit more cosmopolitan, and has made that shift to being more embracing of the language.

“You see a corresponding increase of interest at an intellectual level in the language itself as well as all those practical reasons that we talked about earlier,” he said.

“There’s definitely been that shift in embracing Portuguese heritage. Now, you're much more full-throated in your advocacy for it.”

His hope is that one day all of Bermuda’s students will learn Portuguese. He has broached the idea with some schools and is hopeful of it happening, initially “on a very experimental basis”.

“It's still quite early in the process, so I don't want to share too many more details until it's quite solidified, but I think it would be great to see Portuguese taught more broadly,” he said.

• Registration for the Portuguese School is now open. Classes start Monday, September 23 and will take place on the ground floor of the Vasco da Gama Club. To register, or for more information, visit portuguesebda.com or send an e-mail: info@portugueseBDA.com