Portuguese and Czech

Portuguese and Czech (with Slovak) is one of the most unusual language combinations available at any British university, pairing a major world language with the linguistic heritage of Central Europe. Portuguese is spoken by hundreds of millions of people across Brazil, Portugal, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, and beyond, making it one of the great global languages of commerce, literature, and culture. Czech is the language of a country at the heart of Central European history, a culture that produced Kafka, Havel, and Kundera, and a democracy with a distinctive relationship to its neighbours and to the broader legacy of twentieth-century European history.

Slovak, closely related to Czech and studied alongside it, adds further breadth.

At the University of Oxford, this four-year full-time programme is taught with the rigour of Oxford's tutorial system, developing your linguistic competence in all three languages to an advanced level while also giving you deep engagement with the literatures, histories, and cultures they carry. You will read Portuguese and Czech literary texts in the original, develop translation skills in both directions, and engage with the cultural, political, and social contexts that make each language tradition distinctive. The combination is genuinely unusual, and Oxford is one of very few places in the world where it can be studied at this level.

Graduates with Portuguese, Czech, and Slovak are exceptionally rare, and that rarity is professionally useful. Academic research, translation, interpreting, diplomacy, international journalism, NGO work, and business roles in Lusophone and Central European markets are all potential career paths. Cultural institutions, archives, and international organisations working in these regions also seek people with this profile.

Postgraduate study in Portuguese studies, Slavonic studies, comparative literature, or translation is a natural continuation for those who want to specialise or pursue research careers.