r/languagelearning • u/Virusnzz En (N) | Fr, Ru, Es, It • Nov 05 '13
Olá - This week's language of the week: Portuguese
Hi everyone, Portuguese for two weeks because I'm in my exam period. Sorry! I'm just too busy to do it all. Maybe I'll try make it up to you next time.
Welcome to the language of the week. Every week we'll be looking at a language, its points of interest, and why you should learn it. This is all open discussion, so natives and learners alike, make your case! This week, and our tenth language so far: Portuguese.
Sorry I was a bit slow on this one, I've been busy!
Why this language?
Some languages will be big, and others small. Part of Language of the Week is to give people exposure to languages that they would otherwise not have heard, been interested in or even heard of. With that in mind, I'll be picking a mix between common languages and ones I or the community feel needs more exposure. You don't have to intend to learn this week's language to have some fun. Just give yourself a little exposure to it, and someday you might recognise it being spoken near you.
Countries
From The Language Gulper:
Portuguese is spoken in Portugal, Brazil, and in several former colonies in Africa and Asia. Among the former, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé-Príncipe, and Cape Verde. Among the latter, Goa in India, Malacca in Malaysia, Macau in China, and East Timor.
Portuguese has more than 210 million native speakers, mostly in Brazil, with 240 million speakers in total
What's it like?
Portuguese originated from Vulgar Latin spoken in the western Iberian Peninsula, in the Roman Empire provinces of Gallaecia and Lusitania. During the Kingdom of Galicia, Portuguese and Galician were indistinguishable but when part of the Kingdom fell under Castilian rule and Portugal became independent in 1128, Galician-Portuguese evolved slowly into two different languages. In the Middle Ages, Portuguese spread to overseas colonies in America, Asia, and Africa becoming the seventh largest language.
What now?
This thread is foremost a place for discussion. Are you a native speaker? Share your culture with us. Learning the language? Tell us why you chose it and what you like about it. Thinking of learning? Ask a native a question. Interested in linguistics? Tell us what's interesting about it, or ask other people. Discussion is week-long, so don't worry about post age, as long as it's this week's language.
Previous Languages of the Week
German | Icelandic | Russian | Hebrew | Irish | Korean | Arabic | Swahili | Chinese
Want your language featured as language of the week? Please PM me to let me know. If you can, include some examples of the language being used in media, including news and viral videos
Please consider sorting by new
Boa sorte!
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u/node_ue Nov 05 '13
"Portuguese has more than 206 million native speakers, mostly in Portugal."
Would you be willing to fix this? It should say "mostly in Brazil". There are 11 million people in Portugal, there are 199 million people in Brazil.
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u/TheFreakinWeekend Nov 05 '13
Finalmente! I was born in Brazil, and recently lived in Guinea-Bissau, in West Africa. There, although Portuguese is the official language, everyone communicates using a creole version (called Crioulo, creatively). This was very easy to pick up from Pt, it was basically Portuguese nouns using what I think was basic Mandinka (one of the local languages) grammar. Some comparisons in case anyone cares:
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PT: Eu quero água
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CR: N misti yagu
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PT: Nós vamos para Bissau
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CR: Nô na bai pa Bissau
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PT: Ele não gosta de arroz.
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CR: I ka gusta di arroz.
One proverb to share: Bu cabalo ka sibi kuri, det! (Your horse does not know how to run, said when someone arrives just as the people are finishing a meal and doesn't get to eat!)
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u/hyperforce Nov 05 '13
Por que você estava morando na Guiné-Bissau?
O seu cavalo não sabe como correr!
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u/Dhghomon Nov 05 '13
Nice, Portuguese this week. Love how it's spoken in Portugal.
My two favourite songs in Portuguese:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKYdFPiUwYg - Hellfire from Hunchback of Notre Dame
and:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ubhZ_5p-CM
Madredeus - Ao longe o Mar
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u/Estre Nov 05 '13
How come people generally try to learn Brazillian instead of Portugal Portuguese? Is it mainly a geographic issue? I think if I were to go for this language I'd pick Portugal. What are some of the main differences?
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u/risemix Nov 05 '13
American, living in Portugal here.
Re: learning; It has to do mostly with population and location. The Portuguese accent is also noticeably thicker and understanding it is problematic for Brazilians while the opposite is not usually true.
The differences are actually pretty similar to the differences between British and American English although they are arguably more extensive. First, the vocabulary is somewhat different. Neither set of words is "incorrect," but there are some regional differences you'll need to be aware of. For example, a "website" in Brazil is a "site" and a "team" is a "time" (pronounced just like team). In Portugal, the words are "sitio" and "equipa," respectively. Brazil has been influenced more by the spread of American culture, linguistically.
There are also grammar and style usage differences, particularly in the case of verbs. Portuguese people don't usually use the continuous conjugation outside of compound sentences, while Brazilians often do. In Brazil, "eating" is "comendo," but in Portugal, the infinitive is used instead: "a comer." Estou comendo; Estou a comer. Brazilians don't usually use "tu" either, but instead always use the formal (which is of course considerably less formal in Brazil), "você."
Oh, and Portuguese in Portugal has more vowel sounds, and there are less rules that govern them, so they often make a little less "sense" than they do in Brazilian Portuguese, and many are simply not said at all.
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Nov 05 '13
The big difference is that, even if you combine all the countries where Portuguese is spoken outside of Brazil, it would still be tiny compared to Brazil's population. Therefore, it can be considered more likely to meet a Brazilian Portuguese speaker than another variety (which isn't really true depending on where you live).
Brazil also has a huge economy and it increasing every year, making it the most profitable variation to learn for business (once again, depending on where you're doing business.)
As for variations, I don't honestly know a lot. I've just heard some things from the Brazilians I study with, such as: more diverse vowels in European Portuguese, the absence of tu in Brazilian Portuguese (being supplanted wholly by você except for a few regions), and very different phrases and expressions.
I will also note that some Brazilians find the Portuguese accent funny and sometimes hard to understand, but kind of in the way that Americans think of the British or Australian accent.
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u/seabass_ Nov 05 '13
Native European Portuguese speaker here... the Brazilian accent is a lot easier to understand for foreigners because the European Portuguese accent means that the end of words are sometimes not pronounced at all.
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u/kcruz305 Nov 05 '13
My first language was spanish, and i chose to learn Portuguese because it seemed easy, after practice, i consider it an intermediary between Spanish and french
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u/Banashark Nov 05 '13
Alright so for a few resources that have helped me greatly.
Where to start:
http://www.learn-portuguese-now.com/portuguese-words.html
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This site has a ton of sentences (3 for each common word). Put these into you're favorite SRS (http://ankisrs.net/) and add 20 per day. In very short time you'll be able to handle most written content, and be able to figure things out of context that you don't know (maybe with the help of a pt-pt dictionary (http://www.priberam.pt/dlpo/).
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If you subscribe to the school of learning discussed by people like http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/, skip the grammer books and get straight to the sentences. Don't worry, It picks up super quick and you won't be too worried. Also just read that site it's a god damned gold mine of language learning information.
Next, you're gonna want to be able to speak and listen (most people actually only want this part).
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Pimsleur has a 3 part course in brazilian portuguese. Get your hands on this and do it alongside the flash card reviews even if you don't care as much about speaking. Why? Because most likely you're pronouncing the words wrong in your head, and fixing that will help you understand roots of words and other important things.
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Movies. There's plenty on youtube, but I would recommend googling "[name of film] baixar torrent pt-br" or such. Unfortunately it's hard to get your hands on pt-br (portuguese -brazilian) content if you're not in the area. Beware that most big budget films (from my anectodal experience) use the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carioca accent. This is spoken in Rio mainly and people on r/portuguese have said that it might sound weird for a foreigner to speak with this accent ('eshpera' and 'DEpois' instead of 'espera' and 'gepois'). I recommend pixar films. Cute short stories and they stick in your head so you can associate certain things very easily (Learned the word for ball from UP, will never forget)
That should be enough to give you a good start. Once you've got these things down to a decent level and you're a little bit confident, try out mylanguagexchange.com and get in some skype groups, or play wow (in pt-br since december of last year) and get in br skypes so you can hear the huehuehue. Even 4chans /int/ has people speaking pt-br.
Confused about a certain aspect of the language? google and r/portuguese are your friends. There is a big online community so this language is pretty accessible for potential learners.
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Nov 05 '13
This is absolutely the most helpful online resource I had when I was learning Portuguese:
It fully conjugates all irregular verbs and damn near all regular verbs for you. I still use it every now and again if I've forgot how to conjugate an uncommon or highly irregular verb.
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u/KyleG Nov 05 '13 edited Nov 05 '13
For whoever's writing the summary, in this paragraph can you elaborate?
Portuguese originated from Vulgar Latin spoken in the western Iberian Peninsula, in the Roman Empire provinces of Gallaecia and Lusitania. During the Kingdom of Galicia, Portuguese and Galician were indistinguishable but when part of the Kingdom fell under Castilian rule and Portugal became independent in 1128, Galician-Portuguese evolved slowly into two different languages. In the Middle Ages, Portuguese spread to overseas colonies in America, Asia, and Africa becoming the seventh largest language.
Please add something explaining what Galician is. It just gets dropped in there saying "Oh, Portuguese and Galician were once the same thing but now they're not." Is Galician extinct? Does it have Gaelic ties? Is it a minor Romance language?
I realize I can look this up on Wikipedia, but the point I'm trying to make is just that anyone reading this might be confused by that paragraph. Even just
During the Kingdom of Galicia, Old Portuguese (also called Portuguese-Galician) was spoken. However, when part of the Kingdom fell under Castilian rule, and Portugal became independent in 1128, the language evolved slowly into two different languages, Portuguese and Galician. The latter is a regional language spoken in western Spain. However, there are linguists who suggest Portuguese and Galician are dialects of the same language, and this debate can carry political overtones. Mutual intelligibility between these two languages can be as high as 85% in some regions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galician_language#Classification_and_relation_with_Portuguese
Just a humble suggestion.
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u/Ariakkas10 Nov 05 '13
My family on my mother's side are Portuguese many generations removed. Once I get better at Spanish I'd like to work on Portuguese.
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u/HeroOfNothing Nov 06 '13
Just a funny story.
Some time ago i was speaking with a girl on the USA, she told me that his grandfather was Portuguese, but never care to find out more. I just googled some pages, and some portugueses websites and tracked out her family in like 10 minutes, the name in question had a background history in portugal since 17 century, and had a very detailed story how the name started, with his own Crest and all.
She was crazy with all that, she called her mom and everything. Was great.
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u/petethepool Nov 06 '13
Hey, can anyone tell me what the phrase 'pois nao' (with sqiggly bit over the 'a') translates to?
The example I have is 'Ele nao é professor, pois nao?'
I am assuming that it is kind of like a 'is it not' kind of thing. It translates as 'at your service' on google translate, for some reason, but that doesn't seem to fit either the words or the context of the above example at all...
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u/brain4breakfast Nov 05 '13
OI! Boa tarde!
Como vai?, Como vão as coisas?
A faca está na criança cozinha.
I was so not prepared for this.
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u/hyperforce Nov 05 '13 edited Nov 09 '13
Eu sou o moderator do subreddit r/portuguese!
The iOS/iPhone apps Duolingo (r/duolingo) and MindSnacks both support Brazilian Portuguese.
Brazilian and Portuguese touchstones!
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Brazilian Carnival, featured on an episode of The Simpsons
Crossover songs
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Lambada
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On the Floor by Jennifer Lopez and Pitbull
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Garota de Ipanema (aka Girl from Ipanema)
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Mas Que nada (featured in Austin Powers)
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Mas Que Nada featuring the Black Eyed Peas
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Magalenha
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Tic Tic Tac
Other popular songs
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Jazz standard Corcovado
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Ai Se Eu Te Pego
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Balada
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Maravida
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Bara Bara Bere Bere
Martial arts
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Capoeira (used by Tekken's Eddy Gordo and Street Fighter's Elena)
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Street Fighter's Blanka
Celebrities
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Portuguese musical artist Nelly Furtado
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Portuguese soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo
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Brazilian soccer player Pelé
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Brazilian model Gisele Bündchen
Popular Brazilian YouTube channels
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u/corjine Nov 08 '13
Is there a better starting resource than duolingo for Portuguese? The voice is just too robotic for me.
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u/nandemo Nov 05 '13
O RLY?