Greetings. I was/am still a beginner as well even after completing 6 months of the A1.1 course at Porto University. Although I will say that I have learned enough now to be dangerous and misunderstood ! But seriously it has helped. However if a structured course is not for you or feasible, I would suggest that you learn the very basic and very important verbs and phrases - such as I want, I need, I am, I speak, I need help, thank you, please. The course lessons on PracticePortuguese are excellent so start with the basics. If you have a particular concern, such as you do, with everyday living I have found the most useful approach for me was to plan ahead. So, for example, if I know I am going shopping for shoes I will use my translator ( I use Google and although it can give you Brazilian translation it is typically just fine for vocabulary and simple sentences). Vocabulary is easy to look up but it is the sentences as you say that are important and I do not know any way around this than to take lessons somewhere to get you going…either online or at a school. The interaction with others who are trained to teach is important since they will start out slow with you. The good news is clerks often can and do lapse into English because they are very kind that way in Portugal but yes they may not want to take the time to work through the translation with you. Do not be discouraged. But do take a structured approach to your learning and use the on the spot translator applications to help you in specific circumstances.
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