Most Brazilians speak no other language but their own, yet another hurdle for the Olympics

If English is the language of world commerce, Brazil hasn't gotten the memo - only a small fraction of its 200 million people have a basic proficiency. Fluency is also rare for other languages such as German, French and even Spanish, despite Brazil being bordered by seven Spanish-speaking countries.

Many of the hundreds of thousands of tourists expected to descend on Rio de Janeiro for the Olympics in a few weeks could frequently find themselves in a linguistic muddle.