Red Eric

That's the ticket - think positive.

And if you start flagging, have a listen to some Welsh and thank your lucky stars you're not having to get to grips with that.

bons

Ha, I did learn a few words once, only a few.

wellinever

all you need are the words.......................learn at least 20 a day. without them you have nothing to work with at all

scrubbedexpat142

And if you are still in doubt listen / look at some Hungarian!

macliam

I raise you Irish.... - and you can choose the dialect.

scrubbedexpat142

The recently retired Ambassador here (who is a bit of a language buff) reckoned that Hungarian was harder than Japanese, how does Irish (Gaelic?) rate against Japanese?

macliam

I can't compare the two, but people schooled in Ireland spend 13 years learning the language and very, very few can speak it at the end. That's without taking on the dialects - where not only the pronunciation and the vocabulary, but even the grammar can change.

Red Eric

Yes, I wasn't actually trying to identify the hardest language to learn in the entire world.

There are plenty harder for a native English speaker than either the celtic languages or the eastern European.

Kudos to you for grappling with Hungarian, though

scrubbedexpat142

You're right, English tends to be quite tricky for most native English speakers!

Innit?

campos

I find the Linguee site good for pronunciation modelling, either Euro or Brazilian Portuguese.
The 10 or 20 words a days is good idea too. I find similarities with many words to the Italian I picked up. Sometimes minimal, but every little helps. Grammar too.

Rambling archer

Exactly - and Whasswnt - What does he/you/she want?
But there again what is this? Bife accent - a portuguese speaking steak?

I am with Bons on this though - reading is fine especially if you have a bit of French, Spanish, Latin, to back you up. But listening to ordinary Portuguese as it is "spoke" - well... My best experience so far has been hanging on the phone to DHL when a parcel went missing and having to hear the repeated introductory blurb - after about the 20th time I could finally pick out all the words and spot the missing bits. If they would just pronounce all of the words, even with accent, the emphasis in strange places, it would be SOOOO much easier. pfFavor - the por becomes an accidental pf leading into the FAVOR and even there the A shrinks to nothing, and as for Se Faz Favor as "sashfvr " .... And simple things like a common surname Comacho becomes CmAch ... Verbal Spanish is so much easier to follow and that has its moments!

campos

Pimsleur - David Sedaris's preferred language courses. I remember him recounting some of the expressions it taught in beginners Japanese- most amusing. Maybe Portuguese is different.

bons

I've realised what the biggest problem for me is learning Portuguese, when I'm speaking a language I visualise the word in my head, I often can't do this with Portuguese. The pronunciation of a letter often changes with the spelling for example, maca and macas, the 'c' sound changes for the plural, at least it does on the recording that I'm listening to, so I don't have the'ss' sound I'm replacing it with a 'z' so I don't 'see' the word. Estou, is pronounced 'shtow', I had no chance in learning that at first, as it's a commonly used word I have got used to it, but it's trickier with less often used words. If that makes any sense, it does to me.

suiko

Maybe depends where you are? That certainly seems to be the case in the Algarve, but then I guess most people here (esp the young) speak some English and are used to doing so with foreigners.

campos

Out of curiosity I've just downloaded the Pimsleur. The first ten units are in Continental (as they refer to European) Portuguese. The presentation and structure is interesting. I'll give it a shot.