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Brazilian Portuguese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| IowaHawkeye Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5735 days ago 42 posts - 42 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese | Message 1 of 13 05 December 2013 at 4:13am | IP Logged | ||
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So, recently I've fallen in love with Brazilian Portuguese and want to learn it. I feel like I've reached a pretty high level in Spanish and don't really study it actively anymore (I just study it in usage).
I've read in similar threads that a knowledge of Spanish can be very beneficial to Portuguese, but that it can also be a curse. I took a written Portuguese proficiency test and scored pretty well despite never having studied the language and solely based on my knowledge of Spanish/French vocab and Spanish grammar, although I can understand virtually nothing of spoken Portuguese unless it's basic or I actively know what the context of a simple conversation is. I have the following questions: What would be the best way to use my Spanish knowledge to hit the ground running in Br. Portuguese? How can I stop the two from mixing? I speak Spanish pretty well, but I'm not a native and I have a huge fear of losing my Spanish. I don't want to trade one for the other, I want both to co-exist. What are some good courses? I've looked heavily into LR and I think it might be pretty powerful for Portuguese for those that already speak Spanish. Would that be a useful way to go? Tied in with the above, how can I tell that I'm getting Brazilian audio materials and Brazilian texts? I know virtually nothing about the differences between the different varieties of the language. Thanks for the help! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| gRodriguez Triglot Groupie BrazilRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3881 days ago 44 posts - 56 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishC2, Galician Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 2 of 13 05 December 2013 at 4:31am | IP Logged | ||
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What a coincidence, I have the exactly problem, but backwards. The most frustrating
part is not knowing if you are actually learning the language or just speaking a superficially altered version of what you already know. Sadly I also don't have an answer to that issue. And about the differences between variations of Portuguese, I think you will be able to notice the HUGE difference between the Portuguese accent and the Brazilian accent just by hearing. If you don't the most obvious differences between PT/PT and BR/PT are the lack of "tu" and "vós" in Brazilian Portuguese, we use "você" and "vocês" (conjugated in the same as "ela/ele" and "elas/eles") instead, some people (mostly southerns) use "tu" and "ti", but usually its conjugated in the same way as "você". Portuguese usually don't use gerund while in Brazil it's the only we use the infinitive. Edited by gRodriguez on 05 December 2013 at 4:35am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| gRodriguez Triglot Groupie BrazilRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3881 days ago 44 posts - 56 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishC2, Galician Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 3 of 13 05 December 2013 at 4:32am | IP Logged | ||
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... Edited by gRodriguez on 05 December 2013 at 4:35am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| gRodriguez Triglot Groupie BrazilRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3881 days ago 44 posts - 56 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishC2, Galician Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 4 of 13 05 December 2013 at 4:33am | IP Logged | ||
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I tried to edit my post and instead I quoted myself, sorry.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| IowaHawkeye Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5735 days ago 42 posts - 42 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese | Message 5 of 13 05 December 2013 at 5:25am | IP Logged | ||
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I definitely agree with you, GRodriguez. The Brazilian friends I have also speak Spanish pretty well and I feel like if I (inadvertently) lapse into Spanish when I try to speak Portuguese that no one tells me and so I have this fear of learning things that are wrong because no one is saying "we say x in Portuguese."
At the same time, I really don't wanna start from scratch with Portuguese and try to just pretend I don't know Spanish, I feel like it'd go faster if I leveraged my Spanish, but I'm not sure if it's the best idea. :P 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| gRodriguez Triglot Groupie BrazilRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3881 days ago 44 posts - 56 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishC2, Galician Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 6 of 13 05 December 2013 at 5:31am | IP Logged | ||
Even if you wanted to, I don't see how that would be possible. In the end learning Portuguese when you already speak Spanish will result in a much faster, but also frustrating, learning when compared to other languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5228 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 7 of 13 05 December 2013 at 1:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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Try FSI's From Spanish to Portuguese
Or, you could also try Assimil's Spanish Based Brazilian Portuguese course. If I were ever to study Brazilian Portuguese those are the resources I'd start with. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5115 days ago 2238 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 8 of 13 05 December 2013 at 2:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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You don't have to start from scratch, nor should you, if your Spanish is at a high level. I was in a similar situation to you when I started with Portuguese. Knowing Spanish is a huge advantage and also, at the same time, can be your worst enemy. Check out a Colombian journalist's humorous take (in Spanish) on learning the language: Eu não falo português.
If that doesn't discourage you ;), here's what I did. I started by listening and reading, going through Pimsleur (library), listening to music and studying the lyrics and I used the DLI Portuguese Basic Course, jumping in at volume 4. I also chatted online, read books, skyped and had a private tutor for three day a week one hour sessions for the first couple of months then down to two. I found the various from Spanish to Portuguese type resources made me think of Portuguese too much as it relates to Spanish. They were not useful to me in my goals and actually were detrimental. Don't be fooled into thinking that Portuguese will be a "walk in the park" for you just because you speak Spanish! That's not true. It's not that there's that much totally new to learn but that you'll have to "un-learn" a lot of what's made your Spanish so good in order to speak good Portuguese. Yes, with a brief familiarization with the language, you'll be able to understand a lot, but if you want your Portuguese to be at the same level as your Spanish you're going to have to put in the time. Also, at the same time you're learning Portuguese, you're going to have to maintain your Spanish. I wouldn't use Spanish-based learning resources as I feel it tends to make second language speakers of Spanish, like ourselves, see Portuguese too much in a Spanish context. Using your knowledge of Spanish to help you and seeing the differences for yourself (without a course) helps to make the languages more separate in your mind, at least for me. It seems logical to learn Portuguese using Spanish but I found that it confused the two languages in my mind to such an extent that I abandoned it. Obviously, we're all different. I can just tell you what worked for me. I can't emphasize enough maintaining your Spanish. Try to have at least two days a week devoted to that task. You run a very real risk of having Portuguese overwhelm your Spanish if you don't make that effort. The DLI course is almost 95% monolingual Portuguese, very thorough with drills, dialog and readings, and it's a wonderful free resource! Yeah, it's old, typewritten, not compliant with the new orthographic accord and the pdf's need to be ocr'ed and optimized. To me that's part of its charm. As long as you also use other resources too, at the same time, that won't be a problem. No need to start at the beginning unless you feel the need to do so. Jump in where you feel it's right. For me that was at Volume 4. I didn't ignore Iberian resources. It's important to me to be familiar with both varieties. I used Deutsche Welle's "Learning By Ear" series of "radionovelas". These are radio plays with Mozambican (close to Iberian) actors about 10-12 minutes long. Each radionovela has about 10 episodes. The advantage of using them as learning tools is that they have pdf transcripts and mp3's for free download. You can go to the English site and get the English transcript and make your own bilingual texts. The Centro Virtual Camões site in Portugal has an excellent series of readings for beginners with audio about the age of discovery in Portugal and the Portuguese kings. If you take the time and make the effort to become at least familiar with Iberian and African Portuguese you won't be flummoxed when you come across it and end up writing a post about how difficult it is for you to understand. Lastly, I'm a news junkie and NHK World's Portuguese newscasts helped me tremendously. The Portuguese is clear and there's a transcript available. You can download it to mp3 and print the individual stories to pdf for further study. Each news cast during the weekdays is about 14 minutes long. You can also listen to the Spanish and English versions too. GlobalVoices.org has articles quoting tweets, blogs and even facebook. The articles are often translated across the site into English and Spanish. You can, again, make your own bilingual texts. Don't overlook the importance of music. Brazil has great music! Lyrics can be found for almost any song. Also twitter is quite useful. Get an account and start following your interests in both Portuguese and Spanish. I follow several Portuguese learning accounts and get great tips everyday. My pattern in the beginning was Pimsleur and DlI in the morning, podcasts throughout th day,reading and listening in the evenings. I picked up my skype tutor after about three months. She doesn't speak English, only Portuguese and Spanish. If you're interested, pm me. So there you have it, that's what I did. I don't concentrate primarily on courses. I engage all aspects of the language from the start. That way, your course tends to solve problems for you in patterns you're already seeing and hearing. Links: DLI Portuguese Basic Course NHK World Brazilian Portuguese Linguee online bilingual dictionary-context examples Deutsche Welle Learning By Ear "Fábulas africanas" Deutsche Welle Learning By Ear- African Fables in English Centro Virtual Camões "A ler" beginning reading (Iberian) Global Voices (for making your own bilingual texts) Lyrics Training DLI GLOSS lessons and exercises on reading and listening- select "Portuguese" Boa sorte com seus estudos! Edited by iguanamon on 06 December 2013 at 12:56am 6 persons have voted this message useful |
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