In Brazil, where they call English "the language of Shakespeare, the importancia of ingles has been reducido. That is, their president has just decreed that prospective diplomats no longer need to be fluent in English. In fact, recently a Brazilian congressman tried to ban English in public places. That move was apparently sparked by the fear that English was becoming too common, to the embarrassment of those who couldn't read signs such as "personal banking," "sale," or "express delivery." The law wasn't passed.

Hmmm, is English becoming less important across the world?

This looks like another finger-in-dyke-type of attempt to hold back the flood of English loan words, rather like L'Academie Francais, as is discussed in another thread. I suspect it will be similarly doomed to failure.

It's rather ironic that much of English is made up of loan words from other languages (part of what makes it so rich and diverse), so it would really make me laugh if some of these places ended up banning words that derived at least in part from their own language!

And having attempted to learn some Portuguese (a beastly difficult language - nothing at all like Spanish) I would suggest that the idea of encouraging diplomats to eschew English in favour of Portuguese is a particularly daft one.

so it would really make me laugh if some of these places ended up banning words that derived at least in part from their own language!
Cat, how true!

I wonder what the hardest language to learn is.