iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5255 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French)
| Message 9 of 30 27 June 2014 at 10:50pm | IP Logged |
The Eça de Queiroz version of King Solomon's Mines isn't a straight up translation but more of a "spiced up" version of the English original. He just couldn't resist punching it up a bit. It's still a good read.
I think the resources at the Centro Virtual de Camões like A aventura dos descobrimentos and the previously cited Era uma vez um rei will serve you well to start. They both have audio and not too complex language.
Also have a look at Fábulas africanas from Deutsche Welle. These are in a "radionovela" play format. The audio can be downloaded as an mp3 file and the accompanying text is in pdf format. Everything I'm recommending to you, I did myself. Mind you, I did have the advantage of already speaking Spanish. Obviously, keep scrolling down for both the mp3 downloads and the pdf downloads.
Deutsche Welle's Portuguese service to Africa will be ending on January 1, 2015. There are many hours of the Learning By Ear/ Aprender de ouvido series available for free on a variety of subjects. Get them while you can. You can also go to DW's English site for the English Version to make your own parallel text.
Try not to get irrationally exuberant and try to get a good foundation in the basics of the language. Be persistent and consistent. I have seen many a learner crash and burn here by trying to bite off more than they can chew.
There are many more resources available for Iberian/African Portuguese than most people believe. The Centro Virtual Camões is an excellent site to supplement whatever course you may be using. Speaking of which, an excellent monolingual bilingual course from Portugal (with audio) is Português sem fronteiras from Lidel publishers. Now to tempt you further, when you're ready, there are a ton of great links at the IPOR site- Instituto Português do Oriente.
Since you are in Africa and will be visiting Portugal, yes, by all means concentrate on Iberian/African Portuguese, but don't ignore the Brazilian variation completely. I can guarantee you that you will meet Brazilians, Angolans, Mozambicans, Guineans and Cape Verdeans in Portugal. You don't want to be thrown for a loop when you encounter them. Lisbon, especially, is very cosmopolitan. You will see that it is still, well and truly, the capital of the Lusophone world.
Edit: Just remembered that your parents speak the language. This is a huge help!
Boa sorte com seus estudos. Portuguese is fun. I'm looking forward to following your progress. :)
Edited by iguanamon on 28 June 2014 at 3:17am
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migs Diglot Newbie South Africa Joined 3798 days ago 28 posts - 32 votes Speaks: Afrikaans, English* Studies: Portuguese
| Message 10 of 30 28 June 2014 at 10:44pm | IP Logged |
Resource
Portuguese Online
http://www.nativlang.com/po/
Learning materials (Seems a little shallow), and a quick-grammar (looks excellent).
Rádio e Televisão de Portugal
http://www.rtp.pt/
http://www.rtp.pt/play/podcasts/
Portugal Online
http://www.sapo.pt/
Parent of SIC (Television station)
should look up SIC and globo and if there others.
Status since this is a log, I suppose I should record I feel terrible, and could not bring myself to study today. Drowning my sorrows in Chicken soup, and Portuguese Medicinal Coffee.
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migs Diglot Newbie South Africa Joined 3798 days ago 28 posts - 32 votes Speaks: Afrikaans, English* Studies: Portuguese
| Message 11 of 30 30 June 2014 at 2:42pm | IP Logged |
Day 2
http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/portuguese/talk/introductions /
This course is great, the beep has done a great job so far. Pity the video comes out tiny for the "coursey" bits, and the cultural videos do not play at all. As much as I understand the need to monetize things / rights etc., outright banning those outside the UK to access the materials without an option to pay for it is not cool.
I wish I had know about this the first time I started, it would have made things easier.
TYS Chapter 1 Muito prazer.
Progress BBC 2/10 TYS 1/25 = 6% overall
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migs Diglot Newbie South Africa Joined 3798 days ago 28 posts - 32 votes Speaks: Afrikaans, English* Studies: Portuguese
| Message 12 of 30 30 June 2014 at 9:25pm | IP Logged |
Resources
Sale at local bookstore, so picked up some goodies:
Rough Guide to Portugal 2014 Edition
For culture, maps, that sort of thing.
Marco Polo Portugal
With Road Atlas.
The Usborne First Thousand Words in Portuguese aka "The Duck book"
Kids illustrated book with what looks like mostly nouns, though I'm not sure how much of a priority "o equilibrista" (tight rope walker) is. Looks like fun.
Oxford Portuguese Mini Dictionary
Little pocked dictionary bi-lingual. Didn't find a decent “Full-size“ dictionary, but for everyday use, New €5. So I don't care if I lose it or it gets a little dog-eared.
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migs Diglot Newbie South Africa Joined 3798 days ago 28 posts - 32 votes Speaks: Afrikaans, English* Studies: Portuguese
| Message 13 of 30 01 July 2014 at 8:34pm | IP Logged |
Day 3
http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/portuguese/talk/yourself/
Noticed there are at least 3 distinct accents in the phrase bits. Two ladies and a guy. It's a bit weird that they have a lady says the masculine "I am a Scot" etc, in the top bit, but in the revision bit the man says the manly bit, so all is restored to order.
At least I know about this, an absolute beginner from a language without gendered nouns could easily get confused by this.
TYS Chapter 2 Onde é a saída?
Muuuch longer chapter, but looking at the next few seems to be more standard, the first chapter is just super short. Some grammar, and some nice explanations of the literal translations of a bunch of phrases. For some reason this sort of extra stuff seems to help me remember things better.
Progress BBC 3/10 TYS 2/25 = 10% overall
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migs Diglot Newbie South Africa Joined 3798 days ago 28 posts - 32 votes Speaks: Afrikaans, English* Studies: Portuguese
| Message 14 of 30 02 July 2014 at 7:00pm | IP Logged |
Day 4
http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/portuguese/talk/cafe/
TYS Chapter 3 Ida e volta, por favor
Scratched around nearby book stores at local mall for the Audio CD's to match the book, some of the exercises (listening) are impossible to do without it, and they seem worthwhile, no luck though.
Progress BBC 4/10 TYS 3/25 = 15 % overall
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migs Diglot Newbie South Africa Joined 3798 days ago 28 posts - 32 votes Speaks: Afrikaans, English* Studies: Portuguese
| Message 15 of 30 03 July 2014 at 5:29pm | IP Logged |
Day 5
http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/portuguese/talk/shopping/
I know sardines are good but 2 kilo's seems a bit excessive! I hope those prices are current...
TYS Chapter 4 Um quarto simples ou duplo
Very irritating layout in places so a bold heading is the same font and there is no dot so we get monsters like:
a Queria
b O bilhete
meaning
a.) Queria
b.) O bilhete
Not great in a language with "the" being the particle "a" or "o". Very confusing.
Big raspberry for the idiot who did this.
Progress BBC 5/10 TYS 4/25 = 19% overall
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migs Diglot Newbie South Africa Joined 3798 days ago 28 posts - 32 votes Speaks: Afrikaans, English* Studies: Portuguese
| Message 16 of 30 03 July 2014 at 9:32pm | IP Logged |
Resource
http://rumaccc.unimelb.edu.au/readers/east-timorese-language s/portuguese
10 Page readers, very basic, once sentence per page, obviously meant for kids.
For language learning scanning a few some seem overly simple, others seem advanced, more for learning to read than learning a new language, but will feast on these.
http://rumaccc.unimelb.edu.au/other-language-readers
"Chicken little" in Portuguese (Português)
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