riv

You don't mention how long before your retirement - months or years ?

You certainly need to have a go at learning Portuguese, but be prepared to find it very VERY difficult, especially the understanding part .

The sooner you start the better. If it will be a couple of years before you retire you might want to enrol on one or other ( or several ) of the summer Cursos de Portugue^s para Estrangeiros run by the Universities of Porto, Coimbra, Lisbon or E'vora. ( Not sure if the Univ of the Algarve runs one ).

They last three or four weeks; the propinas ( fees ) are low, and if you book in advance you might get to have a cheapo room in a student Reside^ncia; also a card for the Cantina where decent meals are available for under 5 euros a pop.
Plus you can visit the local areas at weekends. Sometimes they organize visits also.

When in Portugal you could also watch films which are almost all in English but with Portuguese subtitles.

Actually, you can start doing that on Netflix in the UK - you have an option to select Portuguese subtitles on major films.

Every little helps. [ But it's still VERY difficult, sorry. Not like Spanish or Italian, if that's what you were imagining. ]

macliam

How anyone who speaks English can claim Portuguese is "difficult" is beyond me. I learned French and Castillian before Portuguese and, once you get your head around the pronunciation, the rythm of Portuguese is closer to English, it abides by the "rules" far more than English and there are very few dialectical differences to worry about. With regard to "Spanish", I recall being in a bar in the hills above Malaga and talking to a local builder and his friend in a bar. I could understand 95%+ of what the builder said, but hardly anything his friend did - until, in the end, the friend became frustrated and asked why I didn't seem to understand him - to which the builder replied "It's because we are speaking Spanish and you are speaking Andalucian". The builder was used to speaking with foreigners and chose his words carefully, his mate understood the "good stuff", but replied as he would to his mates down the pub!! In Portugal, I live in the Alentejo, where the accent (and some vocabulary) is clearly "different", yet I've only ever had one problem - with a 90-year old toothless farmer. However, my Lisboeta friend had the same issue.....

Think of all the bad habits you hear in English and expect the same in Portuguese, slurring and slushing words, foreshortening, dropping the endings,etc., etc. - but then imagine my first train-ride with SWMBO when we passed through Slough and Reading and see if you can explain why they are pronounced the way they are any better than I could! Pronunciation of Portuguese, and recognizing it, may not come as second nature - but practice makes perfect - and learning a few useful phrases enables you to keep up the converstion.. pois é