A recent article on sportskeeda.com referred to a six-year-old interview with Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) featherweight champion Jose Aldo, in which he stated he had no interest in improving his English as he was deeply patriotic to his homeland and language of Brazil. He went on to say that Portuguese was the language of his heart and “the language of my feelings. It’s the language that I feel I can express myself best in”.
Though he has more recently been recorded speaking very good English, even speaking colloquially, which suggests his English has improved regardless of his strong attachment to his mother tongue, it raises an interesting point about the ubiquity of English and a feeling that its domination is at the expense of other languages.
