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Learning Portuguese as a fourth.. | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| FlorentT Triglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 6321 days ago 119 posts - 120 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Italian Studies: Portuguese, Flemish, German, Hindi | Message 9 of 14 15 April 2008 at 7:24am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
The Assimil Brazilian course from French is pretty well made and efficient. I used it myself to learn Brazilian Portuguese and with serious grounding in French and Italian the job was rather simple (about 30 minutes a day vs. currently up to 1.5 hours for the Hindi method). It also helped me get to a passive understanding level of Spanish, which I had never intended to seriously learn. But I do not believe you can compress the time to go through the course that easily. You surely will be able to do several lessons a day, but I find that the concept of two waves (passive then active) works best if you respect the study plan they recommend. In that sense, Assimil may not be your best choice if you want a blitz course... Edited by FlorentT on 15 April 2008 at 7:25am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6666 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 10 of 14 15 April 2008 at 8:14am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I prefer the Assimil Portuguese over the Assimil Brazilian course. I only did the first three or four lessons to see what they're like and it seems that the Portuguese course progresses faster. But they're more or less equivalent, so the choice is up to you.
It should be possible to complete the course in a week or two. I myself completed the second half of the Assimil Spanish course in about a week just before going to Argentina, because I wanted to be well prepared. The grammar hadn't really sunk in, but at least I had seen all the essentials and could recognize them when people talked to me. I think Assimil is most efficient and enjoyable when you do it more or less the way you are supposed to. I learned Italian by consistently doing one new lesson a day, repeating the lesson from the day before, and doing the second wave after lesson 50, and I was very happy with my progress. How fluent are you in French, Spanish, and Italian? In your profile you say you're intermediate in Spanish and Italian. If that's the case, I don't think it's really a good idea to try to learn Portuguese now. Try to become fluent in the others first! I read Teyssier's book. It is actually written by a group of romanists from different European countries, and Teyssier edited the French version. It is NOT a manual, i.e. it will not teach you the languages, but it explains well how they are related. Especially the detailed explanation of the sound correspondances between the languages will significantly improve your reading ability in the other Romance languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| JW Hexaglot Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/egw Joined 6123 days ago 1802 posts - 2011 votes 22 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Ancient Greek, French, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Luxembourgish, Dutch, Greek, Italian | Message 11 of 14 15 April 2008 at 10:11am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Here in Florida we actually have a substantial Brazilian population so I would probably start with Brazilian since I might actually get some opportunities to use it. I would definitely want to learn Portuguese Portuguese as well at some point.
Thanks, this is a more prudent approach. I think going too fast might result in lack of retention, even if I could do it..
French – I have basic fluency in my profile and I think that is about right. I am pretty solid in all areas (although stronger in reading and writing). Spanish – I have intermediate in my profile, but only because of my speaking skills. Reading, writing, and comprehension are very strong. I just really don’t have much experience speaking.. Italian – Intermediate is right, but I would say “Advanced Intermediate.” I just need to build a little stronger vocabulary through some more reading. I do plan to get the Italian and Spanish to Basic Fluency before starting Portuguese but I like to research and plan things out in advance. It also gives me the motivation to do the work I need to get Spanish and Italian to Basic Fluency..
Interesting. I don’t know that I have ever heard Portuguese music.. Edited by JW on 15 April 2008 at 10:13am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 12 of 14 15 April 2008 at 5:30pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I bought a few Portuguese books and books about Portuguese around 1980, but I didn't learn to speak the language back then. Among these books I would like to draw the attention to the excellent Portuguese grammar by Teyssier (in French) because it is eminently attentive to the differences between Portuguese (European) and Brazilian Portuguese.
When I personally had to learn Portuguese it was a somewhat rushed affair because I had bought a tour to Cabo Verde for just one month later. I first worked my way through an old edition of Teach Yourself Portuguese, then I read the grammar by Teyssier, while I copied and translated sequences in Portuguese from the internet. About halfways through this crash course I found a couple of interesting audio sources on the internet: TV Ciência and TV Beira, both in European Portuguese, and I found to my surprise that it was fairly easy to understand even this variant of the language. And when I arrived I was ready to speak the language - though probably with a lot of errors and a ghastly pronunciation. Of course this only was possible because I already knew Spanish, Catalan and several other Romance languages. There are some common words that are different from what you find in the other languages, but almost all the more 'learned' words could be guessed on the basis of what I knew from the other languages - which meant that I could start thinking in Portuguese almost from the beginning. Since then I have visited Moçambique and mainland Portugal speaking only Portuguese, and I'm going to the Açores in the near future where I also hope to give this language a boost. I have been to Brazil earlier, but back then I could only read simple texts and I didn't understand anything people said, - I hope to return soon to test whether I can now also accomodate this version of the language. Quite generally I would say that you can learn a language that is close to something you already know quite fast if you have to, but at least for me it is NOT enough just to expose yourself to the language and then hope that it will somehow organize itself to something useful in your mind. You have to study it on its own terms, and you have to do something to make it active. Which is why I haven't added Swedish and Norwegian to my language list: I can understand them and even mimick them, but I don't feel that I know them as languages in their own right. It must be the same thing for hispanophones (natives and non-natives alike): you may understand Portuguese, but unless you study the language the hard way you will just treat it like a slightly atypical form of Spanish. Edited by Iversen on 15 April 2008 at 5:38pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| JW Hexaglot Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/egw Joined 6123 days ago 1802 posts - 2011 votes 22 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Ancient Greek, French, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Luxembourgish, Dutch, Greek, Italian | Message 13 of 14 15 April 2008 at 5:55pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Thanks for the great advice and excellent resources. I assume the grammar by Teyssier is this one Teyssier? Also, the pronunciation of Portuguese does indeed seem strange to my untrained ear. I can follow basic texts but the spoken language just seems to be a mellifluous mélange of "zh" and "F" type sounds.. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| daristani Senior Member United States Joined 7145 days ago 752 posts - 1661 votes Studies: Uzbek | Message 14 of 14 15 April 2008 at 6:01pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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One additional and very inexpensive item to help get a quick feel for Portuguese is the book "An Introductory Portuguese Grammar", by Edwin B. Williams. Originally published in the 1940s, it's been put back into print by Dover and sells for $8.95 list price, and you can even find copies for less than this if you try. It's a rather thin book that has short grammar/translation lessons, with basic vocabulary lists for each lesson, etc.
Particularly if you know other Romance languages, it should be possible to work through it quite quickly to pick up the formal grammar of Portuguese. If you look at the reviews on Amazon/USA, most readers seem to rave about it as a little masterpiece of clear exposition, and a couple mention that it's particularly useful for those who already know Spanish and are seeking to make the transition to Portuguese. No audio, but in 168 pages, you get 25 lessons, vocabulary, irregular verb charts, etc. (If you're interested in Romance philological issues as well, Williams also wrote another book, "From Latin to Portuguese".) Also, don't forget the FSI site, which in addition to the FSI Programmatic Brazilian Portuguese course, also has the "From Spanish to Portuguese" book with accompanying audio: http://fsi-language-courses.com/Portuguese.aspx 1 person has voted this message useful |
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