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Learning Portuguese with Spanish

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drp9341
Pentaglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4912 days ago

115 posts - 217 votes 
Speaks: Italian, English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French
Studies: Japanese

 
 Message 1 of 4
27 September 2011 at 2:00am | IP Logged 
Hello!

I recently purchased the course, Teach Yourself Brazilian Portuguese.
But as I started it I noticed two things. The book was insanely easy and basic, as I already have a very strong
knowledge of Italian and Spanish. And B that Portuguese was so close to Spanish that I was afraid I was going to
turn my Spanish into Portuguese.

So I am attempting to learn the 1000 most used words, then start to read things and listen to things in
portuguese and just naturally figure out syntax and verb conjugations and the sort.

My Italian is at a very high spoken level, definitely advanced spoken fluency, (I do make a lot of errors when I
write though :D) And my Spanish is probably all together at about a C1 level. But the thing is I have only been
learning Spanish VERY intensively for about 8 months. So I fear that the Spanish may not be cemented into my
had well enough to tackle portuguese.

If anyone has any advice or things for me to consider or even methods to learn! I would love to hear them!

Thank you!
-Danny


1 person has voted this message useful



RatoDePorão
Pentaglot
Newbie
Brazil
Joined 4851 days ago

15 posts - 16 votes
Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish, French, Italian
Studies: German

 
 Message 2 of 4
27 September 2011 at 3:05am | IP Logged 
If you wanna learn colloquial brazilian portuguese read Yahoo Answers, books will tell you stuff like "THERE IS/ARE mean HÁ" when we actually (most people) say "THERE IS = HAVE", so:

THERE ARE TWO PEOPLE IN THE ROOM wouldn't be HÁ DUAS PESSOAS NO QUARTO but TEM DUAS PESSOAS NO QUARTO
1 person has voted this message useful



iguanamon
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Virgin Islands
Speaks: Ladino
Joined 5262 days ago

2241 posts - 6731 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French)

 
 Message 3 of 4
27 September 2011 at 3:11am | IP Logged 
I'm learning Portuguese after Spanish. Knowing Spanish is a huge advantage in learning Portuguese. You have an extra advantage in speaking Italian as well. As you know with these two similar languages, you have to keep them up and active. I speak and/or read/listen to Spanish every day. This helps a lot to keep what I have and not mix up the two into Portunhol. I'm not using an English or Spanish based course to learn Portuguese. I do have a couple of Portuguese-only books Cinema for Portuguese Conversation and Bem-Vindo, a língua portuguesa no mundo da comunicação. I also hired a private skype tutor twice a week at a reasonable rate. My progress has been quick but it's going to take some more time to get to where I'd like to be in the language. I will be visiting Brazil at the end of the year.

I started out by listening and reading, which I still do. I now have skype language partners and a couple of grammar books. There is FSI From Spanish to Portuguese, I've looked at it and it has helped some, but I would say that it more enables you to see the differences and study more efficiently on your own, rather than teach you the language- which is the point! Assimil has a Spanish based course but it's for Iberian Portuguese and the accents are different. I find Brazilian Portuguese to be clearer and more closer to Latin American Spanish.

As similar as Spanish and Portuguese are, I can tell you that they are indeed separate languages and if you don't put sufficient effort into it, well, Portuguese will burn you. The vocabulary can differ in some very important ways and you can't speak Portuguese by pronouncing it like Spanish. There are a lot more vowels to deal with. Check this link out for a humorous take from a Spanish speaker trying to learn Portuguese Eu não falo português. There are definitely times that I feel the same way he does!

So, my advice is to keep up your Spanish as much as possible. Try doing a language exchange a few days a week via skype with a native Spanish speaker. I don't think you need an English based course- if I didn't speak a Romance language I would, but you don't need to re-invent the wheel. Get a good dictionary and grammar book and start using native materials like Bem-Vindo or Avenida Brasil (look on ebay). Let me know if I can help.

Boa sorte!

Edited by iguanamon on 27 September 2011 at 4:41am

4 persons have voted this message useful



Carlucio
Triglot
Groupie
BrazilRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4858 days ago

70 posts - 113 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishC1, Spanish
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 4 of 4
05 October 2011 at 7:12pm | IP Logged 
You dont need to worry if you speak portunhol, everybody does, there is a cuban teacher in my university who have been living in Brazil for over 10 years, his portunhol is strong but everybody undertands.

Watch this football player from Chile speaking portuguese,his portuguese is one of the bests i ever seen, even though sometimes he speak portunhol.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QD1w1t-rHqg&feature=related


2 persons have voted this message useful



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