Portugal People !?

in portugal do more people speak english than portugese or the other way around

Well, obviously the portuguese people speak more portuguese than english, why would it be the other way around?... Our only official language is portuguese, in case you were wondering we had another.

But Portugal is one of the european countries with more people speaking english because of our education system. When I was in school, we started english mandatory in the 5th grade. Then in the 7th grade we had to had a second foreign language, also mandatory, usually french or german. Both those 2 foreign languages were required all the way to the 12th grade.
And in most university courses english is mandatory too.
So most portuguese have 12 years of english and 6 years of french or german.

But currently, as of 5 years ago, the government decided than english was to be introduced in the 1st grade and the second foreign language in the 5th grade, so in the future there will be even more portuguese with high skills in at least 2 foreign languages.

Another thing that helps extraordinarily is the simple but important fact that we have all foreign tv shows, series, films, subtitled and not dubbed like in most european countries, that is, we listen a lot of english through the tv while at the same time reading the meaning in portuguese, that is an extremely effective way of even without noticing, learning a foreign language.

Now if you go to Spain, right "next door", you'll see that very few people speak english, not only because they have less years of english in school but also because everything is dubbed, they don't listen to english or french, it's horrible for me to imagine my spanish neighbour doesn't know the real voice of Al Pacino or Rovert DeNiro...

There are a lot of people that speak English ; I have been there 4 times and have had no trouble but there are people that just speak their native language ; I would say more portuguese than English

You'll find some young people and business people speaking English fluently as a second language, but the majority only speaks Portuguese, or knows some words in English.

They all speak Portuguese and perhaps 1-8 speak a little English.

im actully portugese and alot of my friends there speak english so i would say alot of the younger kids

In Portugal people speak Portuguese of course. Most young people speak a second language and understand a couple more. Portuguese people have good linguistics skills and easily learn another language not like British or Americans that think everybody needs to speak their language, even if they travel to another country. Most of them are good people but they are closed minded and that's why sometimes people don't like them.I live in Canada and see that everyday because Canadians are not much different.