On my travels, I have met several people who, after living in Brazil for only a few months, learned to speak Portuguese fluently. This always impressed me hugely, because English speakers normally have a really hard time learning a language that has "gendered" nouns and inflected articles/adjectives/pronouns, for example... but many of them seem to do just fine! But I met enough of them to now think Portuguese must be quite easy to learn (or maybe, due to the fact that they MUST learn Portuguese when living in Brazil, given most people only speak Portuguese there).

What I find interesting (I speak not a word of Portuguese) is the multitude of Portuguese-X creole languages, particularly the ones tha flourished and are some time still spoken in Sout Asia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese-based_creole_langua...

I think many originated as trade languages, but I find it interesting that languages with such very different roots would mix and create a new language (a Creole, more so; not just a pidjin).

I'm Dutch and learned it as a second language, when I moved to Brazil (at age 24). I met some Europeans who did the same.

Well, it's usually the third or fourth rather than the second (second tends to be English or Spanish).

Portugese is a really nice sounding language. I love it. It's on top of my "to learn" list. Spanish on the other hand no, though I like better how it's spoken in the Americas.