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Good Portuguese Books? | ||
Tags: Portuguese | Book | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| FutureIBdegree Newbie Joined 3746 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 8 07 September 2014 at 6:48am | IP Logged |
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Boa noite! I'm new here and have been glancing around the forum lately looking for some
good resources to learn Portuguese. I have been using memrise as of late but don't like the no availability to grammar and with duo lingo, I feel like they don't do enough repetition for me to remember some words. Maybe I'm just blind or overlooking some resources! I have done a bit of latin and really enjoyed a book (forgot the name) that was all in latin and they started with super simple sentences that you had to figure out from context what the words meant. Is there a Portuguese book similar to this? Any recommendations would be helpful :) Edited by FutureIBdegree on 07 September 2014 at 6:49am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5268 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 2 of 8 07 September 2014 at 2:15pm | IP Logged |
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First, welcome to the forum, FutureIBdegree. Your profile says you are a native English-speaker and intermediate level/actively studying Spanish.
You don't mention which variety of Portuguese you are learning, but there are good resources available for both. For Brazilian Portuguese, the DLI Portuguese Basic Course , though dated, is the best and most comprehensive course I have seen in any language. My knowledge of Spanish enabled me to jump in at Unit 4. I haven't really looked at the earlier units, but at least at Unit 4 and above it is almost all monolingual Portuguese with minimal English prompts in the drills, a translation of the dialog (not facing) and a bilingual glossary/grammar at the end of each lesson. The course has a lot of drills, a short dialog and a text for reading with comprehension questions. There's also the bilingual courses such as FSI Portuguese Programatic Course and the usual suspects- Colloquial, Teach Yourself, Cortina etcetera. Assimil will be coming out with a Brazilian course with both English and Spanish bases. Assimil has an Iberian Portuguese course available right now with a Spanish base. I'm not a fan of Assimil for various reasons, primarily the unnaturally slow audio and grammar lite aspect, that I won't go into now. That's another thread. I also used Pimsleur, a tutor and a multi-track approach which included the NHK World Portuguese (Brazil) Noticiario with a transcript. I also used the Deutsche Welle's Aprender por ouvido/Learning By Ear series (African Portuguese). I started with Fábulas Africanas. These are "radionovelas" in play form with full transcripts/mp3's and the English version is also available to make your own bilingual texts. DW's Portuguese service for Africa ends on January 1, 2015. Download while you can. In addition, I had free language exchange partners, a paid tutor, native novels and watched a novela, TV series, Café Brasil Podcast, etc. For Iberian Portuguese- the Português Sem Fronteiras series from Lidel in Portugal is a 3 part book with audio monolingual course for foreigners. Also, the aforementioned DW LBE series and Centro Virtual Camões has a really cool beginning reading series with audio about the Portuguese Explorers and Kings, along with a lot of activities and resources for learning the language. What I wouldn't do would be any of the various "From Spanish to Portuguese" courses- unless, all you want is a passive understanding. See my post here. If your goal is to speak Portuguese and make it a part of your life by interacting regulary, have a look at the other resources I've mentioned. Lastly, I highly encourage you to take your Spanish to as high a level as possible before beginning Portuguese. The benefits of doing this will be enormous if you wait. At this stage of your learning you risk having Portuguese begin to take over your Spanish unless you take specific measures to avoid that happening. If you delve lightly into Portuguese, you risk your Portuguese becoming "Portunhol" as a result. It would be a hard balancing act. I know that's not what you want to hear and you're going to do what you want anyway, but this is just advice from someone who's been there before. If you take your Spanish to a high B2 or C1, it will be secure. You will also have the full benefit of being able to leverage your Spanish to the maximum. You will have the experience of knowing how to learn a language, what works and what doesn't for you. These benefits are often overlooked or dismissed by beginners, but I can tell you from my experience that it is very useful and dramatically speeds up the process of learning the next language. Boa sorte/Buena suerte Edited by iguanamon on 10 September 2014 at 5:46pm 7 persons have voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4713 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 3 of 8 07 September 2014 at 2:22pm | IP Logged |
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I prefer the grammar lite approach - grammar is for when you already are comfortable
speaking somewhat in my opinion. Otherwise I second iguanamon. Assimil's European Portuguese course is also available in some other bases but I don't think it's there for English speakers (my copy is for Dutch speakers). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Mutant Groupie United States Joined 3917 days ago 45 posts - 60 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German | Message 4 of 8 07 September 2014 at 3:48pm | IP Logged |
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I believe you are referring to the Lingua Latina course, which I've heard is indeed excellent.
Assimil's course for Spanish speakers learning Brazillian Portuguese has been available for some time. Personally, it would help me to see the two languages compared side by side, but I can also see how that would cause you to start viewing Portuguese through a Spanish lense. Iguanamon is right...you really need to approach Portuguese on her own terms and give her the respect she deserves as a separate language. Edited by Mutant on 07 September 2014 at 3:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| FutureIBdegree Newbie Joined 3746 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 5 of 8 07 September 2014 at 6:02pm | IP Logged |
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Ah yes I should have mentioned Brazilian Portuguese :). I'm actually going to be taking a
break from Spanish as I've been studying it for about four years but the classroom really just drains all the fun out of it for me. I've already been noticing how similar alot of the words are and how some are completely different. I will be taking a look into Pimselur and Assimil and see which fits me. Thank you ! Edited by FutureIBdegree on 07 September 2014 at 6:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5268 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 6 of 8 07 September 2014 at 6:47pm | IP Logged |
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FutureIBdegree, Pimsleur is NOT a one-stop language-learning course. In my opinion, it should never be used on its own. It is, in my opinion, most useful in conjunction with another, more thorough, course. Also it is very expensive. You should try to get it from your local library. Most likely it would be through an "inter-library" loan. Pimsleur was very useful to me with pronunciation and developing "automaticity" in speech.
The link I gave you to the DLI course is a free and legal download. Try the "down them all" extension with Firefox for an easier download. There's no cost except time to download. It is fee and legal. Combine it with other resources, news with transcript, music, etc. and you're on to a winner. Assimil Spanish Base for BrazilianPortuguese is here. Edited by iguanamon on 07 September 2014 at 7:45pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| victorhart Bilingual Tetraglot Groupie United States mandarinexperiment.o Joined 3713 days ago 66 posts - 155 votes Speaks: English*, Portuguese*, Spanish, French Studies: Mandarin | Message 7 of 8 05 October 2014 at 4:31am | IP Logged |
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I'm a huge fan of the use of authentic learning materials for second language
acquisition. In that vein, as soon as your level is good enough (or even before that time), I would strongly recommend you start reading Turma da Mônica comics (such as Monica, Cebolinha, Cascão, Magali) etc. Oh, and get a Galinha Pintadinha DVD and sing along. Then, start immersing yourself in Brazilian cinema, which has gotten much better in the past couple of decades. Watch TV Globo. I have come across one good (non-authentic) resource for foreigner learners. It's a series called Prata da Casa. Highly recommended. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6603 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 8 of 8 05 October 2014 at 5:44am | IP Logged |
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Given your Spanish you can learn a lot simply by having fun. In fact, I tend to find traditional materials pretty boring in this situation.
These aren't books but try lyricstraining and GLOSS. I've found them incredibly useful when going from Portuguese to Spanish. Do read iguanamon's post about the multitrack approach, too, and try to mix and match as many of his recs as possible. Unless you're very confident about your ability to do some learning every single day, you'll need variety. (and even if you're very serious and patient, variety will allow you to spend 2 hours instead of 30 mins) 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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