Tips/Help

[u/JJ040704]

Hey I’m just starting my journey in learning Brazilian Portuguese but I’m struggling in a lot of places. I can recognize some written and spoken words and phrases. A lot of what I’m doing is using pingo, and pimsler, I’ve also changed my language settings for things like my phone, games, and movies that I’ve played before and know most English voice lines. Listening to a lot of Brazils top hits too. It helps a little, but I’m still struggling with retention. It seems everything goes in one ear and out the other. I can recognize it in the moment, but can’t recall or use it in a sentence. Next is grammar… really struggling just when I think I’ve formed a coherent sentence it turns out I’m technically right but I still used the wrong words. I tried to look into a language class but I live in probably one of the most rural states in the lower 48 of the US and don’t have any options for that even with local community colleges. Also I don’t know any native speakers outside of the few barrel racers I’ve met in passing at jackpots. If anyone has some tips that helped them or know of some tutors let me know! This has been probably the best and hardest learning adventure I’ve ever had, and I really want to see it through! So excited to keep learning this beautiful language!

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[u/atlas1885]

Have you looked up tutors online, like italki for example?

[u/JJ040704 → u/atlas1885]

No I’ll look there thank you

[u/Moe_AB20]

It takes a long time to keep retention of words, but one day they just stick. Anki is great for this, its help me a lot. As for grammer, I recommend Lingua de gente podcast. They explain so many grammer ideas and they do it well. If you can afford it, pimsleur has also been a big help in my Portuguese journey

[u/AnToMegA424]

Personally, I've mainly used these three methods:

1. Watch YouTube videos in Portuguese, sometimes about Portuguese, and sometimes in AND about Portuguese (Portuguese With Leo, Clips do Wuant, Brazilian Portuguese with Sofia, Langfocus, ILoveLanguages)

2. Listen to songs in Portuguese and search up the lyrics, sometimes learn them too, and sometimes simply listening to radio (Song artists: Quim Barreiros, Tony Carreira, Caetano Veloso, João Gilberto, Websites with song lyrics: letras, lyricstranslate, Android app to listen to radios worldwide: Internet Radio)

3. Read, write and test my knowledge with quizzes on texts mainly through Wikipedia and an Android app to read books (Wikisource Reader) (note that a website version also exists: https://pt.wikisource.org/wiki/), and with various AI like ChatGPT, Le Chat Mistral or Euria

I gave you the Portuguese front for Wikipedia and Wikisource, if you want to change the language I believe there is an option in-site, but in case there isn't you can simply replace pt in the URL by en and it will be in English, or you can straight-up remove it and it will automatically adjust to your machine's language on reload

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I also like to try and think in Portuguese, and to name random things that I see in Portuguese, multiple times over, for fun\ It helps with rembering how things are called (it is thanks to this that I remember that _a chair is called uma cadeira for example, which is not the most important thing to know but it's a thing nonetheless, and it can be used for the more important stuff like grammar and tenses for example, write a spritesheet and use colours too if you like, it can help_)

And I've too made my phone and computer in Portuguese as well as played some games (namely Minecraft, I always end up playing Minecraft at some point lol) in Portuguese, and yeah it helps it helps

And I've tried Duolingo also but ditched it at some point cuz I found it annoying, especially on two moments: 1st annoying moment is when I just started up and didn't know shit so without the Duolingo Super subscription it was horrendous to have to wait multiple hours just to fail and have to wait again, 2nd annoying moment was when I knew and understood a lot better and it just felt overly repetitive and I felt it had less learning value\ Although to be fair it was fun sometimes and did help me learn the basics, I just had to turn down most of the app's relentless notifications as it was getting annoying pretty quick and I was good to go for a little while

Another thing I do sometimes is to study something I already know, whether fully or partly, in Portuguese instead of in my native language, like math for example\ I can do math in French, English and Portuguese now (though absolutely not with the same speed as I'm a bajillion times more used to think in French (my native language) to calculate)

It can help as you're not only doing something you like (so there's a form of fun) but also something you, at least partially, know about, so you only need to remember some specific terms and differences between languages and you're good to go for that as you already know the thing you're doing, all the while habituating you to your target language

Oh, and learning insults and idioms are cool too, that's not only fun to an extent but also useful in the long run, whether you plan to travel abroad or not, as they can be used (sometimes extensively) in songs or, probably even more, in interviews and stuff like that

So, especially if you talk to someone who speaks your target language (especially natives) or listen to people talking in that language, idioms and stuff like that are a must-know, as every language has its own and God knows it rarely makes sense grammatically-speaking

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These are my experience and tips, hope it could help :]\ Good luck in your learning journey, you're gonna make it ! 💪

Have fun ! 😁

[u/Funny-Ad-2548]

I’m doing the Brazilian Portuguese on Duolingo and I’ve picked up quite a bit, I redo over the same sections until the words are ingrained and I don’t stumble then I move on to the next unit. I find it fun but I know it’s not for everyone. I’ve only been doing it about a month now and I don’t know very much but it’s an awful lot more than it was a month ago. I signed up to the family max so I don’t have to worry about energy for the lessons, there are a few groups on here and FB where people offer free spots on their family plans so you can have access too. Eventually I will move on to TV shows and books, podcasts etc so I can get my listening up and then onto a tutor for speaking but they’re all eventually, I’m in no rush and I’m just enjoying it at the moment ☺️

[u/NeighborhoodBig2730]

Olá, I see you really want to learn. Maybe you need a guide to help you. I can help you learn, I'm a Portuguese teacher.

My classes are tailored to each student's needs. If you're interested, let me know and I'll be happy to share more information!

[u/JJ040704 → u/NeighborhoodBig2730]

Ya feel free to PM me the details!

[u/NeighborhoodBig2730 → u/JJ040704]

I did....please check there.

[u/JJ040704]

Gotta add to this you are all seriously so sweet, and encouraging! Thank you for all your advice so far I mean it!

[u/Puzzleheaded_Fig3893]

Recognising a phrase and recalling it yourself are different skills. Try choosing just three useful phrases from a short dialogue. Close the transcript, recall them aloud, then change one detail to make them about your life: “Eu gosto de música” → “Eu gosto de cavalos.” Review them the next day before adding more.

For grammar, could you share a sentence you tried to make and what you wanted it to mean? A concrete example would make it much easier to help.

[u/Additional_Hope_2031]

I’m the developer of Jeremy: Brazilian Portuguese. It covers vocabulary, grammar, and phrase training. It’s completely free, has no ads, and doesn't require an account. Give it a try :)

Now, talking about my experience, it was basically brutally learning a frequency list of Portuguese words. It's really effective for understanding text, but obviously doesn't make you fluent at speaking.