! At the same time, regional variations seem very daunting to foreign learners

Sadly, the Dutch spoken in Flanders (Belgium) is notorious for this. There are a lot of local dialects that influence how people talk, but it’s been less noticeable with younger people :)

As for Portuguese…

I understood that without looking something up yay ^^ I won’t tell anyone you know Portuguese ;)

Canson is an excellent brand for papers. Even their lowest-tier sketchbook is still good, in my opinion.