Ola,
My name is Francine Lima-Cooke, my family come from Cape Verde Islands . I speak French fluently for having lived in francophone countries (Senegal, France) . I lived in Senegal (West Africa) for a few years and studied Portuguese there in High School and I also worked with the Portuguese embassy in Dakar, Senegal. I lived also in Paris, France. I’ve been living in the United States for the past 25 years, in Alexandria, VA. I teach French here.
I love the Portuguese language and have had the chance to run into your website “Practice Portuguese”. It’s a wonderful website and I have learned so much through this site.
The reason I am writing is because I would like to find someone with whom I can practice my Portuguese. Preferably, on weekends and 1 or 2 times during the week (evenings). Do you have any suggestions? Thank you for your help!
I plan on visiting Portugal in 2023-2024.
Óla limacooke.
I use a website called tandem.net for just that purpose. You tell them what languages you speak and what you want to learn. They will show you lists of people with the opposite skills, in my case, speak English and learning Portuguese and French. If you use some of the advanced filters, you can filter the people you see by what country they come from. In my case, I just wanted people from France, Portugal, Mozambique, and Angola.
Unfortunately, you cannot tell tandem that you want to learn European Portuguese, so you will have to tell lots of Brazilians that you want to speak European Portuguese.
They support audio and video chats and conversations. When I get to the point where I want interactive sessions, either my partner or I sends the other a link for a service like Google Meets or Zoom. Tandem’s videoconferencing system does not compare to the other vendors.
BTW, the free version of Tandem is entirely adequate.
HTH
William