jhaberstro Senior Member United States Joined 4370 days ago 112 posts - 154 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Portuguese
| Message 1 of 4 11 January 2014 at 9:16pm | IP Logged |
This will be my TAC14 log for learning Brazilian Portuguese! I'm off to a bit of a slow start, but should be writing
here soon!
Edited by jhaberstro on 11 January 2014 at 9:17pm
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jhaberstro Senior Member United States Joined 4370 days ago 112 posts - 154 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Portuguese
| Message 2 of 4 11 January 2014 at 11:50pm | IP Logged |
So my Portuguese journey begins! To start I plan to use Assimil's Le Brésilien sans peine (thank god my French is at
an adequate enough level that I can approach this book) and the Semantica Portuguese video series/courses.
So far I've made it through the first couple of Assimil lessons (though I think I'll have to go back and do them since
it's been a week or two and I believe consistency in the starting stages is essential) and I've watched the first 12
lessons of the Semantica Series 1 videos.
So far, so good. I'm finding my French helps a lot in understanding written Portuguese, especially Portuguese
messages written here on this forum. My first impression is also that, at least compared to French, word order of
spoken Brazilian is a lot closer to English. My main pain point so far is learning pronunciation. I'm sure it'll come
with time as it did with French, but the main complication is that I'm being exposed to a very large variety of accents
both in the Assimil book and in Semantica. I've noticed a lot variation especially among vowels. For example, even
among the same speaker, sometimes the definite article "o" is pronounced like the English "oh" and other times it's
pronounced "oo" (as in "cool"). Same goes for "o" at the end of words. SomeTIME the Portuguese word "do" is
pronounced like the English "do" and other times it's pronounced like the English "doe". I think I may try listening ti
Tá Falado to see if that can help me demystify Brazilian Portuguese pronunciation.
On an unrelated note, this post represents a small milestone for me -- my 100th post! Woo :)
Edited by jhaberstro on 11 January 2014 at 11:57pm
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WoofCreature Diglot Groupie Canada Joined 4503 days ago 80 posts - 118 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: German, Portuguese, Norwegian
| Message 3 of 4 12 January 2014 at 8:21am | IP Logged |
jhaberstro wrote:
So far, so good. I'm finding my French helps a lot in understanding written Portuguese, especially Portuguese
messages written here on this forum. My first impression is also that, at least compared to French, word order of
spoken Brazilian is a lot closer to English. My main pain point so far is learning pronunciation. I'm sure it'll come
with time as it did with French, but the main complication is that I'm being exposed to a very large variety of accents
both in the Assimil book and in Semantica. I've noticed a lot variation especially among vowels. For example, even
among the same speaker, sometimes the definite article "o" is pronounced like the English "oh" and other times it's
pronounced "oo" (as in "cool"). Same goes for "o" at the end of words. SomeTIME the Portuguese word "do" is
pronounced like the English "do" and other times it's pronounced like the English "doe". I think I may try listening ti
Tá Falado to see if that can help me demystify Brazilian Portuguese pronunciation. |
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It's cool, I had virtually the exact same observations when I started Portuguese, also with a French background. The written similarity with French actually ended up hurting me because I tried to read it with a French or English pronunciation. But I didn't go through an audio course, so you should be fine. Also, though the different accents can be confusing at first, I think it ultimately helps in the long run. I focused too much on Brazilian Portuguese and even now, two years later, I have difficulty with Iberian and African Portuguese.
Boa sorte! (This one can't be guessed from French ;) )
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jhaberstro Senior Member United States Joined 4370 days ago 112 posts - 154 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Portuguese
| Message 4 of 4 13 January 2014 at 2:01am | IP Logged |
I have noticed that sometimes I try to pronounce Portuguese as if it were French, too, but I think that's because I
only know one foreign language so my brain essentially only has two ways to classify words: English or French. It
hasn't yet "reorganized" itself so to speak to accommodate another language.
I agree, I'm betting exposure to a variety of accents will help. However, at least for the moment, all the accents I'm
hearing are regional Brazilian accents. No continental or African Portuguese for the time being.
E obrigado! Boa sorte para vocé tambén!
Edited by jhaberstro on 13 January 2014 at 2:02am
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