I stumbled onto Real Brazilian Portuguese by accident while searching for new resources on the web. At first, I was turned off by the familiar sight of the ‘endless webpage of hype’, not to mention the ‘ew, grammar is so dull and complicated!’ line, which…please. I am generally not a huge fan of the “let’s never speak of this thing horrible scary thing called grammar” approach that is unfortunately becoming very popular amongst people trying to sell you language courses.
But in my exhausting quest to review anything and everything for learning Portuguese, I decided I should at least sign up to get the first 3 free lessons and see if the hype was worth it.
- What you get: $27 for 20 pdf lessons
- Focus of the program: Reading, aquiring core vocabulary
- Level: Absolute beginner
- Weaknesses: Written pronunciation glosses are poor, mnemonics may not be effective, and lack of any audio materials means this is not a good course for learning conversation.
- Strengths: Uses a novel ‘chunking’ approach that gets beginners expressing complete thoughts right from the start.
- Verdict: I would not recommend this as a standalone course, but it would make a good reading supplement for students using Pimsleur.
First and foremost, this is a system for learning to do one thing exclusively: reading Brazilian Portuguese at a beginner level. Each of the 20 lessons comes in the form of a pdf and there are no audio materials to help with pronunciation. Every lesson introduces 7 new words, mostly verbs, by way of mnemonic stories. Then come a series of exercises asking you to use the new words by translating Portuguese sentences into English, and then English sentences into Portuguese.
The three conceits of this program are:
- the use of mnemonics to learn vocabulary
- the use of core vocabulary, getting maximum benefit out of the most commonly used words
- an approach I will call ‘chunking’, which teaches short phrases in a way that makes it easy to combine them to express new thoughts
While I can get behind core vocabulary and chunking as effective principles of language learning, I’m not so sure mnemonics are really all they’re cracked up to be, at least not at the beginner level.
Pronunciation errors
The first problem is that the mnemonics are all based on written pronunciation glosses. No written gloss can ever convey the sound of a spoken word — imagine trying to write out the sound of a nasal vowel versus a normal vowel, like pão vs pau. Or writing out the sound of open e versus closed e. You can’t do it, at least not without using the International Phonetic Alphabet. But ok, if you’re going to try to give written glosses, at the very least, get it right. The pronunciations given in RBP are sometimes ambiguous and often just wrong.
For example, eu posso (“I can”) is transcribed in Lesson 1 as “(ay-oo) po-soh”. This is terrible. The first o in posso is actually an open o, which sounds more like [aw] in English. And the second o, as with the o at the end of most words in Portuguese, is pronounced more like a [u]. Finally, the “ay” could be mistakenly pronounced as [i] instead of [e] by some English speakers, and the use of glides like “y” and “w” will lead to poor pronunciation of dipthongs. So a more accurate (but still inadequate) transciption would be “(ei-oo) paw-su”.
More examples. eu preciso (“I need”) is transcribed as “(ay-oo) pre-see-so”. But the s in preciso, because it comes between two vowels, is pronounced as a [z] sound. So it should be “(ei-oo) pre-see-zu”. ir is transcribed as “ear”. I guess if you’re from São Paulo, you might say it like that, but otherwise the American r will sound strange. de novo is transcribed as “je no-vo”. Most English speakers are not going to pronounce that right, because the pronunciation of j and e are ambiguous in English. There’s a bit of an art to creating glosses that are unambiguous to English speakers. A better gloss would be “dji no-vu”.
The problem with mnemonics
To make matters worse, the mnemonics given for each phrase are based on these faulty pronunciations, so the student will be internalizing very bad pronunciation. For example, for the phrase eu quero (“I want”) we’re given the gloss “(ay-oo) ke-air-o” and then asked to imagine wanting to get into an apartment and having our friend toss down a key, which flies through the air. But there is no dipthong in this word in Portuguese. If I think back to this mnemonic and then say “key-air-o”, I will be speaking with great pronunciation — in Spanish! (“ay-oo kair-u” would be closer to the Portuguese pronunciation, though again, it’s almost impossible to convey the actual pronunciations in writing).
It’s not that I think mnemonics are a terrible idea. But they necessarily force your brain to remember Portuguese words in terms of English syllables. This might not be too bad, if you had an audio reference so you could practice hearing and speaking the native pronunciation, but there’s no audio at all in RBP. A student using only this method will end up speaking these words with a comically anglicized accent, to the extent they learn to speak at all.
Another problem with mnemonics is that they work much better in one direction that another. For example, for the verb comer (“to eat”), we’re supposed to imagine a monkey combing another monkey for fleas to eat – the monkey being a comber. Now, whenever I see the written word comer, I might instantly think comber, think of the monkey eating fleas, and arrive at the meaning to eat. So far so good.
But what if I start with to eat and want to remember the Portuguese word? Now my brain has to go through a torturous series of steps. First I have to search my memory, “What was that mnemonic about eating again? There were several of them. Was it that one about eating lots of carrots? No, that’s ver. The one about the restaurant? No, that’s eu gostaria. Oh right, the monkey eating fleas. What was the monkey doing again? Oh, now I remember, he was picking through his friend’s fur. Something about combs. Comber? Was that it? I think so. Ok, so the verb is comber. I mean, comer.” Thirty seconds later, if I’m lucky, I might arrive at the correct word, or more than likely I will arrive at a comically Americanized version of the word, because I’m remembering it as a string of English syllables and I don’t yet have the sound of Portuguese in my head. Needless to say, this is not a great way to learn a language.
I suppose you could argue that the fact that I eventually remembered the word at all means that the mnemonic worked. Maybe the mnemonic is just supposed to be a crutch to help you until you can remember the word by it’s sound or spelling alone. The problem is, you will never learn the true sound of the word using this method. And sound is how you will recognize the word in actual conversation. If you hear the sound [ko-mehh], pronounced like a real carioca would with the r heavily aspirated, and have not learned to associate this sound with the word comer, then you have no chance of remembering your mnemonic at all. Nor will you recognize any of the possible conjugations other than the infinitive.
The ‘chunking’ approach
Since I’ve been pretty harsh on RBP so far, let me mention something I really like. Many of the mnemonics that RBP teaches are for short phrases rather than standalone words. For example, we learn the short phrases eu quero, eu posso, and com você without actually being taught the individual words eu, querer, com, or você. I can see where they are going with this — it’s an interesting way to reduce the number of verb forms a beginner needs to memorize.
For example, if you learn just the eu conjugation of the most common auxilliary verbs (eu quero, eu posso, eu vou, eu tenho, eu sei, eu preciso), then you can take those eu phrases and combine them with a bunch of other verbs that you learn in the infinitive (falar, comer, beber, trabalhar, viajar) along with a few prefab prepositional phrases (com você, para ele, para a praia, em casa) and string them all together to create a great variety of complete thoughts:
- Eu preciso + falar + com você.
- Eu quero + ir + para a praia.
The result is that even a complete beginner is able to express their needs and wants using complete thoughts right off the bat, without thinking about grammar too much. I imagine that gaining this ability quickly is incredibly motivating to beginning language learners, as well as being pretty useful for tourists.
(As an aside, the more I study Portuguese, the more I realize how much I rely upon short phrases and “chunks” to get by in conversation. Although I know the grammar of the language very well and can use it to create correct sentences on the fly, much of the time when I’m speaking I’m just stringing together well-worn phrases: Eu acho que…, Se fosse você…, tenho que ir…, que tal a gente…, o que é que.., daqui um pouco…. and then using my knowledge of the grammar to fill in the gaps between them. Using these pre-memorized chunks liberally when I’m conversing with someone means I can speak at a more natural pace without having to task my brain with grammatically processing every phrase.)
So I credit RBP with using a novel approach well-tailored to beginners. I think it makes a lot of sense, at the beginner level anyway, to teach only the most common conjugations and tenses of verbs, and to teach nouns along with their most common prepositions (em casa). The exercises given in each lesson let you practice using the words you’ve learned by translating Portuguese sentences into English (fairly easy), and then English sentences into Portuguese (much harder), and they’re cumulative, so they build on vocabulary you’ve learned in previous lessons. It’s certainly impressive that using the chunking approach, RBP is able to teach the student to translate some relatively complex thoughts even in the earliest lessons: “I need to go to my house now” (Lesson 1) or “I’d like to speak more Portuguese with you soon” (Lesson 3). This is a lot richer than the usual “Hi” / “How are you?” / “My name is…” that you usually learn in the very beginning of a language course.
But the problem remains that most of these sentences are things that it would be very nice to be able to say, not just read or write. There is no way to practice them in the context of an actual conversation. Which means I think you’d be much better off going the library and getting the Pimsleur course, which will also teach you to construct thoughts in terms of useful chunks, but crucially it will teach you to listen and speak these chunks in a simulated conversation, with good pronunciation.
And there’s a limit to how far the mnemonics can take you. I may have learned how to say eu gosto de, but when it comes times to say você gosta de, do I really want to learn a whole new mnemonic? Wouldn’t it be better to actually – gasp – learn a tiny bit of grammar so that I understand the relationship between the individual words and the different verb forms? At some point it becomes easier to just teach the grammar that to invent ever more convoluted ways of never having to mention it.
Despite these problems, might Real Brazilian Portuguese be useful for an absolute beginner who wants to dip their toes in the water? Sure. But here’s how I see it being used most effectively. Because Pimsleur uses a very similar approach of chunking + core vocabulary, yet it offers so little in the way of reading practice, I would suggest RHB as a great complement to Pimsleur. Each would make up for the other’s weaknesses: RBP would give you good reading practice and a visual way to remember the vocabulary; Pimsleur would give you practice with pronunciation, listening, and translating English thoughts to Portuguese thoughts.
Hi Lauren,
I enjoyed your review of “Real Brazilian Portuguese.” I signed up for the free lessons and downloaded the first one (they make you wait for the 2nd and 3rd ones). The pronunciation system they use is as bad as you said, and even with my very limited exposure to spoken Portuguese, it was more distracting than it was helpful. The mnemonics were just annoying and for me, more trouble than they were worth. I agree with you that it could be a good complement to a program like Pimsleur, for extra reading practice, but since you’d only really be using about one-third of what you paid for, there might be a better way to spend the money.
As you point out, it’s very difficult to accurately represent the sounds of one language by using the alphabet of another language. It seems to me that instead of trying to accomplish this almost impossible task, it would make a lot more sense for people who create language programs to record digital audio tracks which could be downloaded by users. It can’t be that much more difficult to do this than it is to try to create written glosses, and it would be so much more helpful to the learner. Back when CDs were the only way to distribute audio materials, they added a lot to the cost, but now that anyone can record and upload audio, cost should no longer be a major factor.
The best written representation of spoken Brazilian Portuguese that I have seen so far is in a small book called “Say It Right in Brazilian Portuguese,” which is designed as a phrase book for speakers of English. It’s not perfect, but it uses its own set of symbols that is relatively intuitive and less ambiguous than systems which rely on trying to represent the sounds of Portuguese with the standard English alphabet. There are errors in the book (final “L” is shown as “L”, instead of “W”), and they aren’t consistent with “D” before “I” (they have “dee” for “dinheiro,” but “jee” for “perdido” and “dizer”). However, this book actually helped me with nasal diphthongs (your hint about using my knowledge of French for nasal vowels was also very helpful).
The book includes pages with what the program calls “key words” and “useful phrases” organized by topic, with a limited number per page, so it’s manageable and easy to find what you want (there is also an index). One handy feature is what they call a “phrase maker,” which gives an opening phrase such as “I would like to go…”, followed by a variety of words that complete the sentence. In this way, it uses what you call “chunking,” and it makes sense. I think it’s a decent resource as a traveler’s phrasebook, or as a supplement to an all-audio program. It costs less than $10 on Amazon. One final advantage of this book is that it’s part of a series that uses the same set of symbols for phrase books in other languages, so for someone traveling to several foreign countries, this could be helpful.
I agree with you that the concept of “chunking,” as found in Pimsleur and “Real Brazilian Portuguese,” can be a powerful one. What could really be helpful would be a “Missing Manual” type book to accompany a program like Pimsleur. This could include variations of the spoken dialogue that opens each lesson (for copyright purposes, they couldn’t use the exact words), and then deal with any grammar, vocabulary, and usage points that are covered in the lesson. Finally, there could be a section which uses the basic phrases covered in the audio lesson, but with additional vocabulary, similar to what “Real Brazilian Portuguese” does, except that it would be directly connected to the lesson, so that the reader would already have heard repeated pronunciations of most of the words.
I visit your site on a regular basis, and I appreciate your updates. I’ve started using “Pois Não” and so far, I like it. I’ll post some specific comments after I’ve used it a bit more.
Meanwhile, I have a couple of questions: First: have you seen the iPad app called “iTranslate”? It’s available in a free, ad-sponsored version, which you can upgrade for $2.99. It includes a large variety of languages and can translate both ways. The interface is intuitive and attractive (once you get rid of the ads, anyway). The spoken translation feature supports Brazilian and European Portuguese, and depending on the language, even allows you to select a male or female speaker. You can adjust the speed of the spoken translation, too, which is very convenient.
It also offers an in-app purchase that adds voice recognition for 99 cents, so that you can input the text with your voice instead of the keyboard, and this seems to work quite well. It doesn’t understand a lot of my Portuguese yet, but it does recognize much of my French, Spanish, and all of my English. It’s easier than typing what you want to translate, and I think it could be a useful way to test the accuracy of one’s pronunciation. I am also using it as a Portuguese-English dictionary when I read Portuguese on my iPad. It’s faster than using an online translator.
Second: do you know if Semantica ever offers coupon codes? There’s a place on their order form to enter one, but I haven’t seen one anywhere. I have subscribed to them on Facebook in the hopes that they’ll post one there, but so far, no luck. I suppose I should just give in and buy the first set at full price, but a discount would be nice!
Phil
Hey Phil, I’m so glad it’s going well – sounds like you’re really diving into the language. Thanks for the review of “Say it Right” – I’ve always wondered how good that book was. Would you mind if I excerpted your reviews of that book and iTranslate and posted them (with credit and a link, if you like) in a new blog post?
I’ve unfortunately never seen Semantica offer a coupon code. At some point I’d like to create an arrangement with them like I have with StreetSmart Brazil, where Hacking Portuguese readers can get a discount.
As for Pimsleur, I noticed that they just released a new software product called Pimsleur Unlimited that embeds the audio lessons into a richer learning environment with more reading practice, flashcards (obviously aimed squarely at stealing some of Rosetta Stone’s market share :-). Unfortunately, they only offer French, Spanish, German and Italian right now – I’m hoping they’ll add Portuguese eventually. But it’s a sign that they’re trying to address some of the weaknesses of the course, and that they’re going in the direction you suggested with the ‘missing manual’.
By the way, I bit the bullet and bought a one-month premium subscription to PortuguesePod101 since it seemed promising. I’ve only been using it for a few days, but so far I’m quite impressed with both the execution and the sheer amount of content. I’ll be writing a review soon, and will probably end up adding it the the Best Of page. There’s tons of audio to listen to and every word is transcribed, and I really like the integrated word bank and flash cards for storing and reviewing new words from the lessons. There’s also 8 different levels, from beginner to quite advanced, so you can really fine tune what you’re learning. The only things it doesn’t really give you practice doing are speaking and writing (though the premium account does offer writing correction). But if you’re looking for more audio, I can definitely recommend it as a more structured, comprehensive alternative to Semantica.
Anyway, thanks for checking in and congratulations on your progress so far!
Thanks for your fast reply, Lauren. Feel free to use my comments about the “Say it Right” book and iTranslate in your blog….I’m honored!
Based on your recommendation, and my own experience during the seven day trial period, I went ahead and signed up for PortuguesePod101. As you said, this program includes certain features that are really good and are not available elsewhere. Unlike Semantica, there *are* coupon codes for PP101, so if you decide to extend your subscription beyond a month, email me and I can let you know the one I used. The coupon gets you a significant savings and is much better than anything I’ve seen advertised on the website or sign-up page.
One thing about PP101 that was slightly confusing to me at first was the assortment of courses or series of lessons that they offer in the section called “Introduction.” This section includes lesson series called “Introduction,” “All About,” “Basic Bootcamp,” and “Pronunciation.” I’m a rather linear learner, and I’m used to lesson 1, lesson 2, and so on, but they probably wanted to target the early lessons to specific users with various needs. In any case, your recommendation sealed the deal for me, and I’m really glad that you took the time to explore the site in depth and report back on it. By the way, I’m finding that I refer to the Whitlam book all the time, and it was worth every penny.
I just received another book from Amazon, which I ordered because it was really inexpensive (about $6) and looked promising. It is called “50 Ways to Improve Your Portuguese.” It was published in 2010, by the same company that publishes the “Teach Yourself” books. It is aimed at beginning to intermediate learners, and the cover of the book advertises a free audio download. I had to email the publisher to get the download (no mention was made of how to get it in the book itself), but the audio is actually pretty good. It offers a couple of examples for each of the sounds that are likely to challenge students who speak English, with both a European and Brazilian Portuguese native on hand to give examples when the sounds are different. The audio file is only about 20 minutes long, but it’s a step in the right direction.
The book itself covers some very basic topics, such as gender agreement for nouns and adjectives, as well as topics like the personal infinitive. The focus is on issues that the authors know are challenging for English-speaking students of Portuguese (both of them have taught it).
The first section is called “Sounding right: pronunciation and spelling.” It is about 20 pages long. Without the audio file, the descriptions of how to pronounce the sounds would be totally inadequate, and this is compounded by the fact that the authors use British English as their standard. It would have been better if the audio file had included all of the examples given in this section of the book, but it’s better than nothing.
The next section is about 50 pages long and is called “Getting the Structure Right” (I guess they were afraid of scaring people off if they used the word “grammar”). It is a very user-friendly presentation of key grammar concepts.
The last section is called “Choosing the Right Words.” It is about 40 pages long, and deals with vocabulary (actually, vocabulary and grammar), and there are entries on “ser” versus “estar,” “saber” versus “conhecer,” common uses of “ter,” proper use of dates, days, numbers, etc. There is also a glossary of grammatical terms, which is fairly basic but includes everything covered in the book, and an index.
This book is an inexpensive resource that I will use as a supplement to my audio-only lessons. It’s much less comprehensive than a full-fledged course like “Pois Não” or one of the big textbooks, but that’s what makes it so accessible, which could be a plus for many learners.
It’s also a good book to just pick up and browse through, as the style is engaging and each item is fairly brief. For the money, I think it is a worthwhile purchase for a beginning or early intermediate student. It would be especially helpful for anyone who has little or no prior knowledge of grammar, since the authors manage to cover grammar topics in a way that is easily understood and isn’t at all intimidating.
The only caveat is that someone who buys it expecting to get the audio file should be prepared to email the publisher, since as of now, there apparently isn’t any other way to get it. However, this isn’t a big deal, and I had a reply with a link to the file within 24 hours of sending my email. For learners who have already acquired reasonably good pronunciation, the audio file isn’t really necessary, and they’d be better off spending their time with “Tá Falado.”
Wonderful – thank you so much Phil for sharing your reviews of these books and apps. Sometimes it is hard for me to put myself back in the mindset of a motivated person who is just starting out with Portuguese, so it’s great to hear your experience of what is helpful and what isn’t. I’ve collected all your reviews on this page:
http://hackingportuguese.com/reader-reviews/
Olá Lauren,
I’m glad to know I’m not the only one who find it difficult to understand what cariocas say and mind you, I’m brazilian. From São Paulo.
There’s something that you mentioned that I’d like to ask you, about the pronunciation of the ‘R’ in São Paulo, at least in the metropolitan area and part of the State countryside. You said that the paulista ‘R’ is much easier to recognize for an american…hey, can I swich it over to Portuguese? OK. Here we go: Você disse que é mais fácil para um americano entender o ‘R’ pronunciado em São Paulo. Eu sempre pronunciei o ‘R’ (alveolar aproximant [ɹ]) dessa maneira, como no dialeto caipira, embora eu seja nascido e criado na capital do Estado. Gostaria de conferir com você se esse som, como na palavra ‘porta’ ou em ‘dor’ ou ‘par’ é o mesmo encontrado nas palavras inglesas em American English ‘door’ e ‘par’. Pelo menos nunca encontrei dificuldade em aprender a pronunciar o R do inglês americano por já conhecer esse som. Algo que os cariocas e a maior parte do Brasil não conhece e não usa em suas variedades de dialetos.
Também sou fanático por tudo que é linguístico e por estudar línguas. Adoro sons de línguas “estrangeiras”. Com exceção do espanhol.
Gostaria de aprender mais com você sobre técnicas para estudar e aprender línguas rapidamente e com resultados de qualidade. Vou acompanhar o seu website.
I love your country, I’d love to know California, I love the English language and english speaking culture.
Congratulations
Hey Harold,
Thanks for stopping by! R is such a weird letter in that there are so many different ways of pronouncing it across the romance languages, and it always gives language students such trouble (I’m thinking particularly of the French R). Of course in Portuguese it varies according to its position in the word and the accent of the speaker. In American English, there isn’t as much variation, *except* that people from New York and New England will tend to drop the R from the end of a word like ‘car’, so it sounds more like ‘cah’ — which interestingly is kind of like what some Brazilians do, in the word “falar” for example. The British do this too.
De verdade eu não tive muita exposição ao sotaque caipira, mas, quando por exemplo eu ouço a fala da Michele Lima (uma paulista) nesse podcast de Tá Falado, o jeito que ela pronuncia o R no fim de uma sílaba/palavra parece muito similar ao de um americano, exatamente como você disse.
Você conhece o website Forvo? Pode buscar uma palavra e ouvir a palavra falada por falantes de qualquer língua. Ás vezes até tem várias falantes de diferentes regiões. É bem útil.
Eu te desejo muito sucesso em aprender as línguas!
I have just come across this review of Real Brazilian Portuguese. I have been working my way through this and I think it has been useful to some extent but it does have a few big drawbacks which you have mentioned, mainly that it is purely written and there are no dialogues or other listening materials but to be fair that is clear from the outset. They do let you have the first three units for free. I did not use the mnemonics, I think as the vocabulary is relatively limited they are more confusing than helpful. I think the main problem is that at the end of the course you are able to construct on paper a series of sentences based on only a few verbs, mostly in the present tense. This may well have its uses but as a beginner I was looking for something to give me a basic grounding of things I need for the everyday including at least a few basic past tense verbs.
I have been using the Busuu app on my iPad which is good for listening and vocabulary and is not to expensive.
I like my unorthodox lessons like the one below.
http://grittypoet.blogspot.com.br/2012/03/quest-for-perfect-porque.html
Plus a guide to obtaining proper haircuts in the Portuguese world.
http://grittypoet.blogspot.com.br/2012/02/gritty-guide-to-expat-haircuts.html
First time visitor to your blog and I’m a fan already.
Comprar Comprar (Bye Bye)
Valeu! Gostei muito do seu site. E eu concordo com vc – todos os porquês são muito confusos.
Hello –
I stumbled upon this site looking for explanations of Brazilian slang expressions. It’s wonderful that you review different appraoches to learning Portuguese, especially since there seem to be more podcasts and subscription pdf courses offered every day. Will keep digging through the blog. BTW, I do like ‘Brazilian Podclass,’ since it offers a host of listening material.
Just a minor comment on this particular review: “Eu posso” não quer dizer “I want” como vc escreveu. O verbo ‘poder’ significa ‘can’ / ‘to be able to’.
Hi Kurt, thanks for your comment and for catching that (pretty dumb!) error. You probably saw it already, but I linked to a good site for Brazilian slang in my latest post. Also check out the Top 10 Resources page under the Dictionary section for some more options.
Hi Lauren! That blog on slang expressions you linked to is really wonderful. The variety of resources for learning Brazilian Portuguese is mind-boggling. I am glad I found your blog and the reviews.
Hey Kurt, I’m so glad you found this site useful. Good luck with your Portuguese!