Learning Portuguese

HalloweenJack

I'm hoping to start learning Portuguese in a few years time.

I've studied Spanish for nearly eight years now. I've noticed a lot of similarities in general vocabulary and I'm just wondering if the grammar is as similarly structured?

The reason I said "a few years" is by my reckoning if Portuguese is very similar to Spanish, then it'd be easier to learn Portuguese once my Spanish has improved.

psizzy

Hi!

Portuguese and Spanish do share some similarities, though i'm not sure being fluent in spanish will help much with learning portuguese.

When you say you want to learn Portuguese do you mean Portugal's portuguese or Brazil's portuguese? Cause they're quite different. A little like English in Ireland and the UK and English in the States, i reckon. A lot of words are different, most slang expressions aren't mutually comprehended and the accent, some times, makes understanding quite...complicated!

Anyway, i congratulate you for wanting to learn portuguese, cause it's quite a complicated language (with all the grammar and stuff). I feel it's very rewarding to actually be able to be fluent in a different language. I'm always working on my english!
I can tell you, though i'm not sure it'll help, portuguese (Portugal's) grammar is very similar to French grammar.

If you need any help or have any questions about portuguese and/or Portugal, feel free to ask.

LEH

Hi HalloweenJack,

I did Spanish in college, and in our second year, we got the opportunity to do Portuguese at the same time, which I did for two years. I would say that having learnt Spanish before was half an advantage and half a disadvantage.

The two languages are about half the same and half totally different. The grammar is very similar, and very often words are just spelt or pronounced differently. E.g "soy" in Spanish becomes "sou", and "estoy" become "estou". Your vocabulary will be bigger once you learn the variances between the languages, as you don't have to learn whole new sets of words, just how to modify them to translate into Portugues.

But this is only applies to words that are more or less the same in Spanish. Only about half the vocab is similar, and the rest is totally different, so it's quite easy to speak Pidgin Portuguese, when you are just butchering the Spanish language!

I agree with pzizzy that Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese is totally different. My ego was severely dented when I tried to brush off my Portuguese to a Brazilian, and got laughed at in the face! Ont eh whole though it's a beautiful language and well worth the effort! I got extra classes before my exams in the Sandford Language Instititute in Milltown/Ranelagh if that's of any use to you, really small classes at loads of levels.

UU

Oh they do have they're similarities indeed as they both stemmed from the same Latin dialect of Iberia. Most of the vocabulary is the same or at least similar. Both pronunciation-wise, not at all! Totally different. Well I'm studying both side-by-side in UCD at the moment. And I'm a beginner in both too! Oh there's different types of Portuguese too, the two main being European and Brazilian (there's also Angolan and Timorese and a few others). I'm studying the European variants of both Spanish and Portuguese. I tried speaking Portuguese with a Brazilian friend and he was like "Que?" (What?) lol. But it's a beautiful language and well worth studying. Highly popular international languages I must say!

Compare, for example.

Me llamo Juan. Tengo veintidos años y me gusto las patatas fritas. (SP)
Chamo-me João. Tenho vientidois anos e gosto das batatas fritas. (PT) (Although the Portuguese pronunciation would be something like: Shamoo-muh Zhwowng. Tenyoo veenteedoish anoosh i goshtoo dash batatash freech.)

psizzy

Hi UU, i hope you don't take me wrong for correcting you, but i like to be corrected when i'm wrong so...Actually, twenty two is "vinte e dois" in portuguese (that is twenty and two), and it's "gosto de batatas fritas", not "das".
As for the spanish i believe it's "me gustan", but i've never learned spanish so i'm not sure.
May i ask why you chose to learn these two languages in particular?

UU

psizzy wrote: »

Hi UU, i hope you don't take me wrong for correcting you, but i like to be corrected when i'm wrong so...Actually, twenty two is "vinte e dois" in portuguese (that is twenty and two), and it's "gosto de batatas fritas", not "das".
As for the spanish i believe it's "me gustan", but i've never learned spanish so i'm not sure.
May i ask why you chose to learn these two languages in particular?

Hey no problem, I totally respect being corrected. After all, it is generally through mistakes we learn things! So muito obrigado! Yes in Spanish you say for "I like..." either "me gusta" or "me gustan". For a singular noun or a verb, you use "me gusta" so to say "I like coffee" or "I like to dance", you'd say "Me gusta el café" "Me gusta bailar". But for a plural noun, you'd use the plural form "me gustan", so "I like cakes" would be "Me gustan los pasteles". Like wise, "you like" would be "te gusta/n" or "se gusta/n" and hence forth.

I have many Spanish friends and I think Spanish is a lovely language and really useful to have so that's why I chose to study that. I chose Portuguese because I needed to make up extra credits in college and thought it'd be nice to have also and I was in Portugal and thought it was a nice, pretty, little country!

aaron d

hey uu, im just back from portugal and mad for learning it, im in ucd too, and have studied spanish with the applied language centre, but they dont do portuguese? or do they? where / who are you learning it with?
thanks buddy,
aaron

Paulo Nuno

I think the best way to learn portuguese,is online.
And by the way,i know there's a lot of similarities with portuguese and spanish,but portuguese is harder to speak,cause the gramatic has a lot of rules(a bit like the french gramatic).
from a portuguese

aaron d

any recommendations for online learning paulo? i agree, i find also the portuguese pronounciation is much harder than the spanish pronounciation, even of similar words

Paulo Nuno

The only school i know for english speaker's,is Cambridge School in Lisbon,they have a web site,but i don't know if they have an online course.
you could ask them.
also you can contact the 'instituto portugues de turismo'
also check:
http://www2.fcsh.unl.pt/clcp/
i've checked 'curso de portugues para estrangeiros' with google,and there's a lot of options there.
Let me know if you succeed.