Re: Portuguese language learning
 

I have finished my Portuguese lessons at the local high school but with limited success.
I started the course knowing only a handful of words. Most of the expats in the class had private tutors and were confident speakers.
I am not an advocate of immersive learning ( the teacher only speaking in Portuguese) eg ..I did not know the difference between the perfect and imperfect past tense in English (we just speak it) and to be taught that by a Portuguese teacher speaking in Portuguese which I dont understand was beyond madness ! Each class started with the teacher giving a 5 minute monologue.....it may have been about last nights football game or "in case of a fire" I wouldnt know the difference.
Tip...Enrol in the local high school A1,A2 Portuguese classes but ensure you have a 1000 word vocabulary before you do it.

Re: Portuguese language learning
 

It sounds like there is no hope for me then!!!! You must be improving though if you are having to speak it.

Re: Portuguese language learning
 

I agree with you about the teacher only speaking in Portuguese, I had barely a clue what happened in the lesson and I came out with a huge headache which could only be rectified with a cold beer.

I can conjugate past regular verbs and some irregular verbs, I can conjugate most used irregular verbs present and know the regular endings for ar, er and ir. verbs. I can never remember them in conversation, mainly because my vocab is limited. I can never hear the verbs when the Portuguese speak to me. I went to he pharmacist the other day to get some tablets for the dog. He said something which appeared to end in cao, so I said yes. As he was looking on the internet I worked out that he'd said, possibly, 'Esta e para o cao?' It sounded like Shtrrcw. I'm never going to be any good if it takes me five minutes to work out a five word sentence!!! You have to laugh. I understand the Spanish as much in Ayamonte as I do the Portuguese.

Re: Portuguese language learning
 

That made me chuckle :D

Re: Portuguese language learning
 

This is a huge disadvantage for us Brits of a certain age when in language classes - we know how to do it but dont know any of the jargon etc and hence have to learn two things at once ...
https://theconversation.com/grammar-...each-it-166292The key quote is:

However, between 1960 and 1988, English – in England and Wales – was taught in a virtually grammar-free manner

Re: Portuguese language learning
 

Like a good Engineer - I tried to learn all the nuts and bolts of Portuguese exactly right and to a T

I guess it helped as a foundation, but I really started to progress when I relaxed and just talked without thinking too much

Getting older helped as it seems like the older I get the less of a toss I give about how much of an idiot I look
Just ask my daughter :D

Re: Portuguese language learning
 

I used to teach said jargon to the seven year-olds in England so I understand most of that. I have sat down and tried to speak with Portuguese people, I have to have the vocab first. Then understand when they speak.

Re: Portuguese language learning
 

As Midgo says, you have to relax and go with the flow. I have good qualifications in English without ever having to worry too much about anything but the basics...... gerunds and future perfect, eh? In Portuguese I had two drivers, first I already "spoke" Castilian, secondly, SWMBO hit me any time I spoke it!

You are right that vocab is key. Having learned Irish, French and Castilian has taught me to look for the connections in language rather than the differences - and my overall vocab is good. However, my Portuguese grammar is still awful, I'm still learning to use achar rather than pensar (which is what comes naturally) for most of the occasions when I want to say "I think", I still struggle over when to use entender rather than compreender or perceber..... etc., etc - but hey, I'm a foreigner - and for most Portuguese, a foreigner speaking Portuguese is like a dog riding a bike...... it's not how well they do it, it's that they manage it at all!!

I've never done any formal study for Portuguese - my SiL gave me a "History of Portugal" in Portuguese and I managed to read and understand 90+% of it. So, I use online translators if I have to write anything (but know wnough to correct the garbage they initially suggest) and, as a last resort, I ask SWMBO, who usually tears the whole thing to shreds and asks why I want to say anything in the first place!!

However, I can understand most of what is said to me and I can make myself understood in return ..... even if I "speak Portuguese like a Greek". My BiL never tries to speak English with me (after all, as he said, Portuguese is easy..... little kids can speak it!) and my errors amuse him..... BUT we talk, a lot and about a lot of things.... to the extent that he tells his friends that I "Fala pelo cotovelo" when they ask if I speak Portuguese. (I have explained to him that I actually HAVE kissed the Blarney Stone, but it falls on deaf ears!). Apart from the way the language is actually spoken, it's the idiomatic usage that will knock you back - it's not "how to say something like in English", it's "how do the Portuguese say...."

I probably wouldn't pass any exams... but I don't have to do so, I just want to get on with life. It may be hard, but honestly, speaking to people one on one is the only way to learn....

Re: Portuguese language learning
 

When I first started learning Spanish the teacher was English and she first started explaining English grammar and how it related to Spanish grammar. She talked about nouns, pronouns, antecedents, imperfect tense, preterite tense, Imperative mood, subjunctive mood and so on and I immediately realised that I did not have a clue about English grammar. The teacher recommended a book "English grammar for students of Spanish" by Emily Spinelli. The book is superb and for me made learning Spanish so much easier. I am sure there will be a similar type of book for Portuguese but as yet I have not found one so if anybody knows of a similar book please let me know.

Re: Portuguese language learning
 

Having learnt other languages post 'A' level and with the grammar it involves for exam purposes, I now just ignore that and just try to get the correct words out and spoken properly.Just let it flow like others have said. However ,doing this and knowing it is the correct word,locals still don't understand as I'm obviously saying the right word "but not necessarily in the right order" to the Portuguese. I'm saying it the "english way",and perhaps putting the wrong emphasis on the words. It reminds me of being in Australia and asking a local the directions to (my version)Mandurah,while the local in his Aussie accent said "Ahh you mean Mandurra".

Re: Portuguese language learning
 

European Portuguese is a stress-timed language, like English, German, Dutch, Russian, Scandanavian languages and Arabic, where stressed syllables are said at approximately regular intervals, and unstressed syllables are shortened to fit this rhythm. This is as opposed to syllable-timed languages, like French, Italian, Spanish and even Brazilian, where each syllable takes roughly the same amount of time and all syllables are pronounced. That's why people complain about words "not being pronounced correctly" in Portuguese - though, given that English does the same thing, it's hard to see why.

However, European Portuguese is far more phonetically consistant than English, so words are almost always pronounced according to "the rules" (once you know them!) The difference is that Portuguese has accents to help you with any exceptions, whereas in English, you just have to learn word by word. Of course, since particular letters, dipthongs and "special cases" may well be pronounced entirely differently to English, the worst thing is to "expect" a word to be pronounced as it would be in English, or to assume that it is going to be pronounced like in other southern-European languages.

Add to this the nasal sounds and fricatives, which catch us all out at times - M is not always pronounced as M, because the nasalized version dounds more like a swallowed N (think om "Sim"), likewise the nasalized N - learn to pronounce ontem, hoje and amanhã correctly and it will teach you much (and hoje will show the difference between Brazilain syllable timing and Portuguese stress timing). Puxe being pronounced "poosh" is also a constant reminder, given it means the opposite of push! Basically, learn to expect the unexpected. These differences are the reason that speaking Portuguese is far better than reading Portuguese..... because in the latter, you can pronounce the words in your head however you want, as long as you recognize it and know its meaning!

I listened to a YouTube video about nasalized letters - and although it made some good points, the tendency of Americans to call Brazilian "Portuguese" can be confusing.if you don't learn to recognize the signs. For every good point made, the Brazilian inference gave cause for concern for anyone trying to learn European Portuguese. Basically. Brazilian (and there are MANY diferent dialects) is quite different to European Portuguese when spoken, much, much more than US English to UK English - and that can be confusing enough.

Still, try learning Irish, if you want a challenge!

Re: Portuguese language learning
 

I agree, I would have preferred to learn more vocabulary and sentence structure in the present tense than 5 tenses and congegating rare verbs for A1, A2

Re: Portuguese language learning
 

After being recomended this in the past I contacted the publishers of the series of guides, sadly they replied that they'd never created a Portuguese version and that most of the existing ones were written back in the 1970s so were very unlikely to produce any further languages now.

Re: Portuguese language learning
 

Aside from courses and tutors, the most important thing with learning to speak and understand Portugues is PRACTICE!!

To this end, I found the attached on YouTube - it is well narrated and with English subtitles...... have a look and see how much you can understand.

Re: Portuguese language learning
 

I understood 'here' and 'Portuguese'! I didn't look at the subtitles,I might look again and read later to see if it helps.