Portuguese

File:Map of the portuguese language in the world-1-.png
**Portuguese** (*português*or, in full, *língua portuguesa*) is a Romance language. It is the official language of Portugal, Brazil,Mozambique, Angola, Cape Verde, Guiné-Bissau and São Tomé e Príncipe. Portuguese has co-official status (alongside the indigenous language) in Macau, and in East Timor in South East Asia; Portuguese speakers are also found in Goa, Daman and Diu in India.

Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes once called Portuguese "the sweet language" and Spanish playwright Lope de Vega referred to it as "sweet", while the Brazilian writer Olavo Bilac poetically described it as *a última flor do Lácio, inculta e bela* (the last flower of Latium, wild and beautiful). Portuguese is also termed "the language of Camões", after one of Portugal's greatest literary figures, Luís Vaz de Camões.

In March 2006, the Museum of the Portuguese Language, an interactive museum about the Portuguese language, was founded in São Paulo, Brazil, the city with the greatest number of Portuguese-language speakers in the world.

With a total of 236 million native speakers, Portuguese is the 6th most spoken language in the world, the 3rd most spoken language in the western hemisphere, and the most spoken language in the southern hemisphere. This will rise by millions in the future as Brazil's and Angola's/Mozambique's population boom.

## Resources

### Portuguese English Frequency Dictionary

This Portuguese frequency dictionary covers about 95% of all spoken Portuguese, and 85% of all written Portuguese you encounter on a daily basis. In the book you will find

* 2500 most used Portuguese words listed by frequency and alphabet
* Both Brazilian and Standard Portuguese entries included

* Frequency rankings as part of speech (most used nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc..)

* 2500 Portuguese to English example sentences showing word usage
* Phonetic spelling of Portuguese words with the International Phonetic Alphabet
* Recommended in conjunction with an audiomethod (Michel Thomas or Pimsleur)
* Great for building vocabulary fast
* No grammar

### **Rosetta Stone**

* 3 levels available.
* Recommended as a beginning tool.
* **Strongly not recommended to be used as the only tool.**
* Covers pronounciation, reading, listening, vocabulary, writing.
* Very poor for grammar.
* Easy to use. Shouldn't take more than an hour to set up and begin using.
* More expensive than it's worth. Thank you based internet!

### **​Pimsleur**

* Brazillian Portuguese, 3 phases with 90 total lessons.
* Standard Portuguese, 1 phase with 10 total lessons.
* Recommended as a learning tool.
* **Strongly not recomended to be used as the only tool.**
* Covers mainly speaking and being able to hold a conversation.
* Easy to use, just open the audio file and repeat.
* Much more expensive than it's worth. Thank you based internet!

### **Books and PDF files**

* **Recommended authors**: José Luís Peixoto ('Morreste-me' in .pdf format), José Rodrigues dos Santos, Miguel Sousa Tavares, Jorge Amado (Brazilian writer), António Lobo Antunes, Valter Hugo Mãe, António Gedeão
* **Classical Portuguese writers** (not very modern writing, I assume it might be hard to understand if you don't have at least an intermediate knowledge of the language): Luís Vaz de Camões, Eça de Queirós, Gil Vicente, Fernando Pessoa, Cesário Verde, José Saramago (not classic but his stuff can be difficult to read as he purposefully misused grammar and punctuation... he won a Nobel Prize though, so whatever)
* Collection of 83 poems by Fernando Pessoa
* [Hell Mode] Os Lusíadas by Luís Vaz de Camões
* Search for Z-Library alternatives on google. That site was the biggest free online library on the Internet with books available in many languages but got taken down.
* Note about Fernando Pessoa: wrote using many heteronyms (some say about 70). Alberto Caeiro, Álvaro de Campos, Ricardo Reis and Bernardo Soares are the most well-known out of them all. No, he wasn't a schizo (as far as we know).

### **Learning Portuguese online**

Instituto Camões has some interesting exercises and games for practising grammar and reading (the link is dead. Use archive.org).

Memrise is a great way to learn vocab and it's free. Sections for either Standard Portuguese or Brazilian Portuguese.

Practice Portuguese - Standard Portuguese

Portugalist mentions many learning plataforms.

Simpleton Portuguese - Standard Portuguese made simple; sometimes too simple. One negative aspect is that he directly translates portuguese words/sentences every time, as well as concepts and nuances, instead of explaining them right away. Besides that, the videos are very entertaining.

### **Good online reading material in Portuguese**

Recommended readings (regularly updated):
* José Luís Peixoto
* Ricardo Araújo Pereira
* António Lobo Antunes

### **Movies and TV**

#### Subtitles

* Subscene
* Findsubtitles
* Legendas.tv
* Sublearning - learn languages from movie subtitles. Flash cards of movie lines in 62 languages
* (add more if you know them)

#### Movies

* City of God
* Elite Squad
* Elite Squad 2

#### Anime

* Fansubspt - great to discover Portuguese fansubs or dubbed anime that aired on TV. The portuguese dub of Dragon Ball (Z) is one of the most iconic ones.

#### TV

* RTP - probably the largest Portuguese broadcasting network. Includes many channels, 3 radio stations and an archive. This is very good for immersion.

#### YouTube

* Many of the (Gaming) YouTubers below were at their peak on early 2010s - some better than others - so their newer videos aren't as good as the old ones or are even very very bad. They were selected exactly because of that peak since people on the Internet are more likely to have watched them. If you know more, please feel free to add them.

##### Portugal

* Fer0m0nas - The biggest and most influential early 2010s Portuguese YouTuber. Almost everyone knows him. You can find more Portuguese YouTubers in his many Minecraft series. Minecraft e os Aventureiros is the most famous one.
* Wuant
* Mister Remedy
* SirKazzio - Like many YouTubers, fell for the clickbait-y *en masse* videos, but his early ones are cool. Also released a banger.
* D4rkFrame - Same as Kazzio. Did many horror gameplays.
* Zorlak - Professional CS:GO player. If you wish to see peak Portuguese rage and swearing barrages, search "Zorlak melhores momentos" or "Zorlak rage"
* More rough language
* Tiagovski

##### Brazil

* VenomExtreme
* Viniccius13 - Creator of "Em Busca da Casa Automática", a really long Minecraft Let's Play that everyone probably has heard of.
* ForeverPlayer
* Monark - Nowadays he's quite a controversial character but his early Minecraft videos are cool.
* RezendeEvil - same as Kazzio.
* TazerCraft
* BRKsEdu

### **Music**

#### Brazil

* Antonio Carlos Jobim (Sample)
* Astrud Gilberto (Sample)
* Banda do Mar (Sample)
* Chico Buarque (Sample )
* Caetano Veloso (Sample )
* Cartola (Sample)
* Gal Costa (Sample)
* Gustavo Lima (Sample)
* João Gilberto (Sample)
* Jorge Ben Jor (Sample)
* Los Hermanos (Sample)
* Nara Leão (Sample)
* Michel Teló (Sample)
* Sérgio Mendes (Sample)
* Toquinho (Sample)

#### Portugal

* Dulce Pontes (Sample)
* Amália Rodrigues (Sample)
* Madredeus (Sample)
* GNR (Sample)
* Xutos & Pontapés (Sample)
* Sétima Legião (Sample)
* Pólo Norte (Sample)
* António Variações (Sample)
* Dealema (Sample)
* Rui Veloso (Sample)
* Ornatos Violeta (Sample)
* Sam the Kid (Sample)
* Pedro Abrunhosa (Sample)
* Paulo Gonzo (Sample)
* Zeca Afonso (Sample) - musician that took a big part during the Revolução dos Cravos.

### **Brotips**

* Brazilian Portuguese and Standard Portuguese are different. One can easily understand the other but the way each speaker conveys words and uses some nouns, pronouns, verbs and the other stuff might be a bit different, even more than American English and British English. So, FIRST OF ALL: be specific, try and search exactly for the kind of Portuguese you're interested in.
* If you have any connections to Brazil - or want to create some -, feel free to study Brazilian Portuguese. You have many many many resources in this variant. However, if you don't want to connect yourself to the Brazilian culture, please study Standard Portuguese, even thought the resources may pale in comparison. Doesn't matter if you want to get to know the Portuguese culture or not; not only you are respecting the Portuguese people but you are also respecting the language's History. Although it may not be evident, Portuguese people get excited to see learners of the standard language. Thus, if you are learning to speak Brazilian Portuguese in Portugal, it is a big let-down and some may even consider it a huge disrespect. The same way that you wouldn't learn Australian English in Britain.

* Pay attention to the diacritics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diacritic), but don't be intimidated by them. There was a recent orthographic reform in both written Portuguese varieties, so many elements were removed from a lot of words, like some diacritics or voiceless consonants. But do focus on learning how to use the tilde ("~" - called "til" in Portuguese), it's very useful in superlatives, verbs in the future and some Amerindian words.
* On a side note, this reform, however, is quite controversial, specially in European Portuguese. Among the many changes, the removal of voiceless consonants can bring a challenge on how a word can be pronounced to learners because the voiceless "c" and "p" make the vowel higher ("correcção" [old] and "correção" [new] - both mean "correction". Although native speakers know that the first one is the correct pronunciation, learners may get confused). The removal of the diacritics was clever in the way it doesn't change the stress of the words but it changes the pronunciation if we were to look at it literally (i.e. "herói" became "heroi". The stress is the same but, instead of a open "o", the spelling makes it seem it is pronounced with a closed "o". They are pronounced the same way regardless - with the open "o").

* Portuguese uses ONLY the following diacritics: acute (á, é, í, ó, ú), grave (à), tilde (ã, õ) and circumflex (â, ê, ô). Since the reform, umlaut (ü) became obsolete. This symbol would be used in words were the "u" in "que/qui" would be pronounced, like "tranquilo" ("tranqüilo" before the reform) as opposed to "questão". The grave diactritic is only used in two words: "àquele"/"àquela" (preposition "a" + demonstrative determiner or pronoun "aquele"/"aquela").

* Also, pay attention to words that use cedilha (ç) instead of double-s (ss). They sound exactly the same and there is no apparent rule on which words use which. There aren't that many words with ç though and it is only used before a, o and u (ça, ço or çu).

* Portuguese has a shitload of tenses, and quite a few of them are rarely used in writing and speaking. So, unless you absolutely need to write something in a VERY formal way (for instance, if you're a lawyer here) or read old poetry, there is no need to concern yourself with those. Really, no one in Brazil will ever say "Amar-te-ei"\*, but you'll definitely hear "Vou te amar". In Portugal, it also is very rare to see this tense in the wild but it's generally more common than in Brazil. \*This is a very specific conjugation just for the future and conditional tenses.\*
* One thing to keep in mind is the position of pronouns linked to verbs (pronomes átonos). In Standard Portuguese, these pronouns generally come after the verb ("Dá-me isso") whilst in Brazillian Portuguese it comes before the verb ("Me dá isso"). In BrP it's also common to not use these pronouns, but in StP it sounds weird and may be agrammatical in some instances.

* As you study the grammar and tenses, go search for phrases in websites (blogs and news sites are great for this) and you'll figure out which of that stuff I mentioned above is rarely used. I can't just list them here because it depends on what you need the language for.

* Portuguese is also known to have a healthy regional diversity. For instance, lots of people from the South of Brazil and Portugal itself use 'tu' (you) instead of 'você' (you, less formal), and this also causes the language to have a ridiculous amount of slangs and weird uses. To learn that, you absolutely must speak to a local and learn from him, but it's actually very funny when you start to understand it.

* When chatting on the web or texting, we tend to use a LOT of contraction in words (think of using 'u' instead of 'you'). Words like 'vc' (você, you) or 'pq' (porque, why/because) are easy to spot but there are uglier stuff that's also common, such as using 'aum' instead of 'ão' ('não' becoming 'naum' or just 'n') or using just the phonetic consonants of the words (sdds = saudades, pfvr/pff = por favor). It is good to learn this stuff if you want to browse portuguese speaking communites but please, don't EVER write like this or you'll look like a stupid teenager.

* Scared of that? Don't be. Portuguese may look tough but I'd say the learning curve is not that steep. Take it easy and don't worry about trying to sound natural, that's almost impossible. I'm a native and if I set foot out of my state (or into the suburbs/favelas, or into the countryside, or trying to talk to someone from some group or urban tribe), people WILL know that I'm an outsider and usually make fun of my accent (in a good way, that's not so insulting here, just relax).

* Just for curiosity's sake: most Amerindian words in Brazilian Portuguese came from languages in Tupi-Guarani language family. Some of them are still spoken in Amazon (Nhe'engatu) and nearby countries (like Guarani in Paraguay). Brazilian Portuguese borrowed a lot of words from them, and most, if not all of those aren't used in Europe.

### **Notes**

* "European Portuguese" has been changed to "Standard Portuguese" as it is the foundation to the other variants, not one of them.
* Portuguese people, specially nortenhos, swear A LOT as if their lives depend on it. Expect some rude and rough language but don't take it personally. We tend to be very friendly and welcoming (as long as you are respectful) so just laugh with us instead. You might learn our swear words first if you are lucky enough.
* The majority of variant comparison videos, the comparison is between a soothing and elegant Brazilian accent and a Northern, rude and sometimes ugly Portuguese accent. The truth is, the normal accent is the one talked in Lisbon and surrounding areas, which is much more pleasant to the ears.
* Because of the resource volume, one of the tuganons decided to be a little more selective with Standard Portuguese content than Brazilian Portuguese content since it can be hard to find. The content in this guide should suffice as a starting point.

### **Other**

* Uz-translations (a very useful website that you should definitely check out)
* https://conjuga-me.net/ - Verb conjugation
* https://dicionario.priberam.org/ - Largest online Standard Portuguese dictionary. You can also conjugate verbs here.
* Bruno Aleixo - a somewhat known comedian of the early 2000s. He speaks with a little accent but it's understandable. Very good for immersion and a good ol' laugh too.