Mozambiquan language partner? Good or bad idea?

Portuguese Questions
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I found a language partner on Mixxer but the person speaks Mozambiquan Portuguese. I intend to move to Portugal in a couple years and am currently speaking at a high A1. The person is about the same level of English, which is great - I think we can help one another, but I don’t know how different Portuguese from Mozambique is from European Portuguese. I worry this might mess me up quite a bit since I’m so early in learning. Anyone with more experience and knowledge of dialects want to weigh in?

Thanks, Nicos

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@yayfornick, Mozambican Portuguese uses European Portuguese as their reference/baseline, so I’m confident it won’t be an issue to study with this partner at this stage. I’m not deeply acquainted with the unique features of the Mozambican variant (the Mozambicans I know in Portugal just speak like everyone else here, which is a good sign for you), but I’d assume that locally, they might mix up words from any other of their several languages, and generally have a more open/articulated pronunciation than what you’d hear from a Portuguese person. Just ask them to be careful to avoid any vocabulary/slang that is really specific to Mozambique, or to make it known to you when they do use it, and you should be good to go :slight_smile:

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Thanks Joseph! That’s good to hear. We’ve been messaging and becoming friends so I’m glad we can work together! Maybe I’ll file away some good slang to connect with Mozambiquan peeps in Portugal later too.

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Late to answer, but oh well! I actually used to have a coworker from Mozambique and learned some from him. As Joseph said, their PT is VERY close to European. However, there are some caveats:

  1. Localisms. As Joseph said, by virtue of being a different country there’s going to be different words. And Mozambique being an African country, the words are often going to be of non Indo European origin. So if you learn something non Portuguese, it’s not only just going to be proper to Mozambique but one of the more than FORTY languages spoken over there. However, this not going to be much of an issue because 99% of what you’ll learn would still be Portuguese.
  2. Grammar wise. As said, they use a European base. However, Mozambiques seem to have weird patterns with their pronouns that are almost Braziliany. Which leads to point 3…
  3. I’m unsure about your friend, but Mozambique is getting influenced by Brazil a lot. Which, I find sad because imo it’s one of the most beautiful sotaques next to the one from Lisbon.

However, here are the goods parts.

  1. Mozambique has, in my opinion, the most neutral accent. It has the vowels of Brazilian yet the consonants of European PT, thus making it VERY crisp and easy to understand and a Brazilian and a Portuguese will understand you quite well. Which says something considering some Brazilians complain that they can understand Galician more than Euro PT.
  2. I did say their grammar is a bit different, but it’s just close enough to European that you can adapt to whatever Europeanisms you might come across. It is a decent bridge to it. But, if you want a guide for they speak, here’s a (decade old) article detailing some of their quirks: https://portuguesmocambique.wordpress.com/2010/11/05/caracteristicas-do-portugues-de-mocambique-do-blogue-de-vitor-manuel-lucas-santos-lindegaard/
  3. I’ve found that there’s not a terrible amount of free books from authors online. So, there’s that! This also has Angolan PT, but check this site out: https://www.buala.org/
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