Comments

• Is there a way of saying “Dear Diary” in Portuguese?

  Ps: All the shorties are really fantastic and are just one of many examples of how this site caters far better to learners’ needs than any other site out there. Kudos to all of you!

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  • Dear diary = “Querido diário”

    Thank you so much!

    Reply

• Olá.

  Porque dizemos “Gosto de a ajudar às vezes” e não “Gosto de ajudar-lhe às vezes”?

  Cuando precisamos de utilizar a palabra “a” e cuando precisamos de utilizar a palabra “lhe” em situações como essas?

  Obrigado!

  Reply

  • Olá, Brian. O verbo ajudar pede um complemento direto (direct object), por isso podemos dizer “Gosto de a ajudar” ou “Gosto de ajudá-la“, mas não devemos dizer “Gosto de ajudar-lhe“, porque -lhe é um pronome do complemento indireto (indirect object). Todos estes pronomes podem ser chamados de pronomes clíticos e podes ler sobre as diferenças entre eles nesta Learning Note (e em muitas outras, se pesquisares por ‘clitic pronouns’ aqui no site): Clitic Pronouns: Direct & Indirect Objects

    Reply

• why is it falar sobre desporto and falar do trabalho?

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  • “Sobre” and “de” are interchangeable after the verb “falar”. When definite or indefinite articles are present, using “de” is more convenient, though, since you can contract the preposition with the articles, as is the case in “falar do trabalho” (do = de + o).

    All of these are correct:
    – Falar sobre desporto
    – Falar de desporto
    – Falar sobre o trabalho
    – Falar do [de + o] trabalho

    Reply

• hi guys! I just bought your course and it is great! I am Mexican, living currently in Malta, but moving to Lisbon this coming August 2021.
  I just wanted to mention that it would be helpful to add the option of sounding out the words/expressions. For example, after hearing o Diario da Beatriz I went to see the expressions and wanted to hear them again right there, instead of going back to the transcript… just an idea.
  Buen trabajo!

  Reply

  • Thanks so much! Happy to hear you’re enjoying the course. And thank you for the feedback — we are working on adding sound to the vocabulary and expressions, but it’s not quite ready yet. 😊

    Reply

• Very,good stories. Simply amazing sight. Thank you so much🙏🙏

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• I think we would all agree there is a difference between written and spoken Portuguese!

  I think we would also agree that most adult learners need to see the language written down in order to learn it effectively.

  I feel that I am learning written Portuguese fairly well. But I struggle to learn Portuguese as spoken by native speakers and therefore I find it difficult to understand when Portuguese people speak to me.

  One answer to this is keep trying.

  But I’d like to suggest a different answer. Why not give a written version of each segment of spoken Portuguese using something like the International Phonetic Alphabet or a modified version?

  Years ago, I learned Urdu/Hindi (both of which have a non-roman script). Eventually I learned both scripts but before that I learned the spoken basics using a modified phonetic scipt.

  I understand that this would be a big project but it seems to me that using some sort of modified phonetic script would make a lot of sense in learning spoken Portuguese because it is so different to written Portuguese.

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  • Thanks for the feedback on this! I like the idea, and I’m also one of those people who gets a lot of benefit from seeing the IPA symbols or a modified script. The audio examples will always be the most accurate, of course, but it helps to see it written out in the beginning when you’re trying to approximate the pronunciation.

    That said, it would be a very big project for our small team, and very few people know the IPA symbols. We do include some IPA in the pronunciation Learning Notes for individual sounds, though:
    Consonants
    Vowels

    A modified “Portuglish” script could be helpful in some places, but even this is tricky because not everyone speaks the same dialect of English (or may not speak English as a native language), so the same explanation wouldn’t work well for everyone, especially with vowels. That said, if you have questions about pronunciation for particularly tricky words, feel free to email us and we’d be happy to try and write it out in Portuglish 😅.

    I’ve also found this site to be helpful: https://european-portuguese.info/ipa It’s not 100% accurate, but it can be a good starting place.

    We’ll definitely keep your feedback in mind, but for now at least, I think it would be limited to individual words, as needed, rather than converting everything.

    Reply

    • Thank you for your reply. I feel that most of the problems of learning Portuguese can be overcome by hard work and persistence, but I think that the problem of understanding native speakers at normal conversational speed will remain difficult for many learners.

      Practice Portuguese is, in my opinion, a very good learning system. But if you were planning to develop it further, I think this is where you should focus your efforts.

      Best wishes

      Reply

• This is an example of what I was talking about in my previous messages. In the A1 unit “por” (sorry I have no accents on my iPad) there is the following example of written Portuguese: tu poes o sofa na sala. But the recording sounds like: tu poes os faa na sala. One of the main meaning-words in the sentence is lost. This was enough for me not to understand the sentence even though I played the recording many times. So my question is this: would most native speakers of Portuguese say “os faa” when written Portuguese has “o sofa”? Or is this a quirk of that particular speaker? If most native speakers would say “os faa” at normal speed, then it would be very useful in having some method for drawing this to the attention of the learner (preferably in writing). I suspect that it is this sort of thing that makes Portuguese spoken at normal speed so difficult for learners to understand.

  Reply

  • Thanks Kevin! This is a great point to bring up. This is a common phenomenon in all languages: when you speak at a regular pace, the words start to blend together and sound different compared to when you speak the words in isolation and enunciate each sound.

    That said… European Portuguese is a stress-timed language, and there is a particularly heavy amount of syllable shortening and vowel reduction. So yes, this is a big part of what makes it difficult for learners to understand at normal speed.

    In this case, what you’re noticing is that unstressed syllables are harder to hear, because they are shortened. So it isn’t something specific to the speaker or to the words “o sofá” — it’s more of a general pattern of unstressed syllables.

    In this example, the “o” vowel is still audible in sofá, but since so- is an unstressed syllable, it’s faster / shortened, so that may be why it’s harder for you to hear it. If I tried to “Englishize” this, it might be something like “too poyz oo-soo-fuh…” with the bold parts getting more time/emphasis.

    I think this video will be helpful: Mystery of the Disappearing Sounds because it explains many of the patterns related to where vowels are shortened / almost dropped. I would recommend thinking about it in terms of these broader patterns, as it may be more effective than analyzing the pronunciation word by word. Once you are familiar with the general patterns, and spend more and more time listening to the flow / rhythm of the language, comprehension happens more naturally.

    Seeing it written out is certainly helpful for those times when you just can’t hear it, or when you’re starting to learn it at the word / short phrase level. However, I think training your brain to rely on that at the sentence / discourse level will do you a disservice in the long run. It’s often more necessary when languages don’t share an alphabet, but since most of the Portuguese sounds map relatively closely to English letters, my advice would be to focus on the patterns and overall flow, rather than trying to tie it to an alternate Englishized version. If the goal is to work toward fluency (as opposed to just having a few basics down to use for travel, for example), when possible, it’s better for there to be fewer “degrees of separation” between what you hear/read in Portuguese and the meaning.

    You can learn more in that video, and in these learning notes:
    Pronunciation of S, Z, etc.
    Pronunciation Variations
    Consonants
    Vowels

    You will not be able to hear all these subtleties right away, but after getting lots of exposure to the language, the patterns of connections between the words and sounds will gradually sound more natural. Everyone learns differently and I know there might be disagreement on this, so I don’t mean to say it’s the only way. This is just my personal opinion and recommendations based on my own education and experience in language development / language learning.

    Reply

• Thank you for your swift reply. I think I am going to do both. I agree lots of listening to spoken Portuguese is very useful. The large number of Shorties in Practice Portuguese is very good for this. But I am also going to keep a notebook of phrases in spoken Portuguese, where they are different to written Portuguese, transcribed in a way that makes sense to me. I will then learn these spoken language phrases by repetition in the same way I would learn written language phrases. I really would like to understand when Portuguese people speak to me!

  Reply

  • That’s a great idea!

    Reply

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