portuguese required.

first things first... if you plan on staying in brazil for any extended period of time you will need to learn portuguese. this seems like a rather obvious statement, however, i'm not sure how many times i've seen people actually wait to get down here to start learning.


DO NOT WAIT TO GET DOWN HERE.


you have to realize that learning basic grammar prior to getting down to brazil will help much more than you can possibly realize. portuguese is a difficult language to learn and speak coming from english. now, i'm not saying that its impossible or insurmountable. it's just hard. start as soon as you can. learning basic grammar will save you countless hours of frustration.


brazilians are not a culture that will mock you for speaking their language wrong. every brazilian will tell you that even they have difficulty speaking portuguese perfectly. they are always super happy to have someone even try to speak their language.


that being said, when you get here... come with a book or two.


my suggestion to you would be to in the beginning learn phrases not just words. in the beginning, this will be far more helpful to your experience here than just learning raw vocabulary (learn that too, of course).


the reason i suggest this, is because portuguese is similar to english in the regard that they have more colloquialisms than you can possibly imagine. learning these everyday phrases will be extremely useful. here's an example in english...


"What's up?"


now, to you that may seem like the most ordinary phrase in the world. however, if you only studied grammar and vocab, you would be inclined to respond with something silly like...


"Umm... the sky? the ceiling?"


and i'm not talking about your aging, old uncle who thinks its funny to respond that way. i'm talking about basic stuff.


there's one book that i would STRONGLY recommend:


How to say anything in Portuguese

of course, buy all your grammar and vocab books. this is the perfect addition. the reason why is it has phrases for almost every occasion (not just touristy stuff which becomes unhelpful really fast when living here). the other reason why i would recommend it is because the translation is pretty damn good.


TIPS

• Mini-lessons: when i was learning spanish (still trying) one of the things that i did was to study a certain subject before leaving the house. after that i would go directly to a place where i could use my new vocab. for example: learn to ask if they the same thing but bigger, smaller, shinier, etc. the minute you engage in a conversation and your new phrases and vocab works your brain will lock into it much faster than just trying to memorize words and phrases that you might not use for awhile. make sense? 
• Subtitled Movies: this one is kinda obvious. try and watch them with portuguese audio with english subtitles and vice versa.
• Lead the Conversation: this is one of the easiest things you can do to practice your portuguese. if you ask open ended questions, expect to get an answer or story that will follow that will blow your beginner portuguese mind apart. instead, ask closed questions to which you will know the answer to. ask them if they are from rio (or your best guess). not where they grew up. if you know ask questions where you will know one of the limited possible answers to, it will help in keeping the conversation flowing and in a realm where your portuguese is suitable.
• Talk, Talk, Talk: you need to actually open your mouth and talk to people to learn portuguese. shy? get over it. embarrassed? get over it. i'm suggesting you become the life of the party. i'm saying that your brain learns much faster in real life applications than solely in theory.
• Avoid having only english speaking friends: i've seen this more times than i can admit. sure, its easier to form bonds with people you can speak with fluently. and by all means, make friends. however, if you only hang around with people that speak english you will NOT learn portuguese very fast. i understand that its more comfortable. however, it is NOT beneficial to learning a language.
• Embrace your language learning failures: learn to laugh at saying silly things. or people giggling (they're not making fun of you. trust me.) you've picked the perfect spot to make mistakes in learning another language. go with it. in the end, you'll smile and so will everyone else around you.
• Two Language Conversation: so, you've met someone that speaks some english. great! now all they want to do is talk in english with you. great! let them. however, try speaking portuguese on your end and have them respond in english. its a great way to gauge yourself on how well people are understanding your portuguese. this way everyone gets to practice their foreign language skills.
• Take breaks: Ok, einstein... the brain can only take so much. dont try to cram it full of everything all at once. focus on the necessities and remember to break often. its better to master a few areas of conversation first than be able to tell yourself that you breezed through 17 chapters of that portuguese grammar book. you may feel frustrated at first. however, if you take a break, stop thinking in portuguese for awhile, you'll wake up the next day amazed out how much has settled in.

be prepared for your first dream in portuguese. when you have a dream in portuguese you'll know that your brain is switching over to the other language.

NOTE: yes, i speak fluent portuguese.

OTHER STUFF

• brazil is bigger than the continental united states. expect completely different accents and slang between the regions. this is different than almost anywhere else in south america where the accents may differ within a country but not as substantially as they do here in brazil. within time, you'll be able to pick out where people are from based upon their accents as easily as you would be able to tell that someone is from alabama. 
• whoever told you that portuguese and spanish are similar have no idea what they're talking about. what they mean to say is that is more similar than english. grammatically speaking the two languages are similar. however, the similarities stop there. pronunciation and varying vocab make the languages quite different from each other.
• here in brazil pronunciation is important. you can say a word that you saw written down a 1000 times and no one will understand you. the little squigglies above the word tell you where to stress the accents. this is important when ordering things like coconut water. if pronounced incorrectly, you'll be ordering crap water. however, when at the very beginning, just try and learn the words. pronunciation will come naturally.

questions? leave a comment.