Welcome, @jedd. I’m sure your gradma will appreciate your efforts!
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Hi I was born in the UK to Portuguese parents. I understand Portuguese but for some reason myself and my siblings never learnt to speak Portuguese fluently so we would reply to our parents in English which seems a bit strange as Portuguese would have been the main language spoken at home until we went to school. When I was 15 I visited Portugal for the first time and stayed with family but was unable to communicate with them because of the language barrier and when I tried to speak a few words I would be laughed at because of the pronounciation. This has frustrated me over the years because I have been unable to teach my children how to speak Portuguese. Anyway I have been studying practise portuguese for the last few months and my husband and I have just returned from a trip to Portugal starting in Porto then onto Lisbon and then down to the Algarve. At first I was a bit reluctant to speak but eventually I got the confidence to have a go, whereas before studying this course I was unable to put a sentence together because of the lack of vocabulary. I was surprised that I was able to remember a lot of the phrases and managed to put sentences together so much easier and quicker. The best bit is they understood what I was saying and didn’t reply in English. Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to be able to finally be able to speak Portuguese after all these years. I have a long way to go as I’m not sure I could have a full blown conversation with anyone but I feel so confident that this will happen one day.
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This is very sweet, @Dalia_carter 
Welcome and thanks for the post! I can relate, as someone who always spoke Portuguese at home even when my parents talked to me in French. I did learn enough French to not only understand it, but also communicate, but I’m also a bit frustrated for not being as fluent as I could.
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Me and my husband have been going to Portugal each year for the last four years. Our hobby is trail running and we have discovered an excellent organisation offering multi-stage trail run events in the Peneda-Gerês national park and the Douro valley. We keep coming back because it is so beautiful and well-organised and the people are so nice (by now, they are like family). Some of them speak English, some don’t or only a little. So we figured we’d learn Portuguese. We even want to move to the north of Portugal at some point, but this plan is in very early stages!
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My daughter has lived in Portugal for 3 years, and has recently purchased a home. I have visited several times. Her boyfriend’s parents don’t speak much English, and I want to speak with them. I also would like to be able to communicate as I travel around Portugal. I am hoping that since already speak Spanish and Italian (and some French), this will be easy. (However, the pronunciation is very different!) In addition, my sister and I are visiting in October and will be biking on a trip for 5 days after a week in Lisboa. I would like to be able to communicate when I’m there.
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So that’s the story behind those beautiful photos you posted. I’m hoping you’ll post a few more whenever you feel like it and then help me put more pressure on @pmfrancisco to also post his 
That’s the best combination of languages you could ask for. And still, European Portuguese always finds a way to beat you down at some point. I’m sure you can make it anyway, hah!
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Hi Joseph
I have moved from New Zealand to live with my Portuguese partner. He speaks English but I feel if I want to be part of this great country I need to learn the language, hence PPS! I find it is a great tool for learning the language in addition to classroom lessons. I am enjoying reading everyone’s different experiences/challenges in learning this language.
Kind regards
Diana
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@dianawalker08, welcome and thanks for posting. Quite a big move, from NZ to Portugal. Hope everything goes well for you
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Honestly, I have never thought I would learn portuguese, but some things have changed and now I study Romance Philology: Spanish and the Culture, Literature and Media in Latin America. Ofc we focus on spanish there, but I choosed portuguese as my second language. You know, I learn spanish since I was 10 and I thought " pff, portuguese is very similar, I can do this!! "… But turned out it is not that easy… During my first portuguese lecture at University I was like omg what is going on. I did not understand it at all. Well, some words are similar, but I’d say that knowing spanish does not help with portuguese… especially if it comes to pronunciation. Anyways, the more lectures I had, the more interested in portuguese I became. I want to get better and better, that is why I’m here
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I have been visiting Portugal for three years in a row, and we plan on moving in the next 2-3 years. I just returned from Lisboa and four weeks of intensive A1 +A2 classes. I learned so much, but not as much as I wanted to based on the short time frame. A classmate recommended PP, so here I am!
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O meu marido é português mas ele queria aprender inglês porque vivemos na Austrália. No Augusto atrás, eu foi nas Açores, e depois Portugal para passar tempo com a sua família sem meu marido (ele não conseguiu ir porque tem Alzheimer’s) e eu precisa de falar a língua um pouquinho. Eu queria ir mais uma vez e tenho de aprender mais. Desculpe, os verbos …!
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Thank you for your posts, @Patty and @braddyplex - e claro, obrigado, @kathrynalves2. Lamento a doença do teu marido.
Tonight we travel back to Portugal where we have spent the last three winters, to escape the harshness of Canadian winters and to return to a place that has come to feel like home for my husband and I. Before our first trip in 2016, I started to learn Portuguese through Duolingo, and very soon after our arrival, realized that Brazilian and European Portugal had distinct differences. I set out to find another language program with a focus on European Portuguese and found PP recommended on one of the forums on Duolingo. Because we are considering a move of sorts to Portugal, learning the language is a priority for me, and I feel like I am making strides with this platform. Thank you so much for the tremendous job you are doing!
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It’s a small world Kadoucet. I believe it may have been me who posted the thread on Duo guiding people to this site if
a. They wanted to learn European Portuguese
b. Wanted to do so with a degree of hand-holding not available on Duo
c. They wanted a teaching method which was accurate, responsive and corrected minor errors with urgency.
They do do a wonderful job here…(a bottle of Maciera will suffice PP!!)
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Hia, I’ve visited Portugal regularly for the last 10 years and have never got round to learning the lingo. I generally play golf in the Algarve or close to Lisbon, but took a road trip to the north in 2016. I have finally found this course and started the lessons. Greatly enjoying them so far. My native language is English (UK) but I have lived in Germany now for almost 40 years, working as a translator and interpreter, so hopefully my ear for languages will be of some assistance in making progress.
Kind regards,
Catriona
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Thank you for your posts, @kadoucet and @Catriona.Thomas! And a big thanks to you, @mac.cummings
(@joelrendall, @ruicoimbra, where’s your stash of Macieira?)
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It’s in my drinks cabinet boys with small overflow jic in my garage. I import it all via a company in Porto. In fact ALL my wines come from Portugal via DHL.
The wines of Portugal are world class.
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Hi everyone,
I’m from Dublin, Ireland. My wife is from Thomaston, Maine, USA.
We’ve holiday’d in the Algarve a few times to start. And loved it. It was a brief visit to Sagres that planted the seed. Now we are full focused on moving to Portuagal. For the first time in my life I have a plan. We want to settle somewhere within 1hour of a city. Last September we stayed in Sesimbra. We’ve now booked next September in Peniche. I believe it is important to be able to speak Portuguese and not rely on everyone else speaking English. My eyes were opened when I found this site. Bye bye Babbel and Duolingo. A colleague in work whom I’ve infected with the Portugal bug excitedly was telling me about a great Portuguese learning app he’d found… of course I finished his sentence… Practice Portuguese!!
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Depends what sort of life you want to lead. Lisbon is my favorite European city. I love Porto too!
But if you want sun on your back all the time you might consider living in the Eastern Algarve inland of Olhao, a real working town or further east the lovely Tavira.
Avoid at all costs the central Algarve. It is Northern Europe on steroids. Finding someone to speak Portuguese with there takes some doing!!
But on balance I would be near Lisbon. It opens up so much of the country for you…
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Thank you.
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