I visited Portugal for the first time in 2014 for a week in the Algarve and fell in love with the place. I went back in 2016 for two months on a bicycle and travelled all around the country. I came to like it even more and have been fascinated with Portugal and its culture ever since.
I live in the UK and learning Portuguese is one way for me to keep learning and discovering more about the country and its culture.
I also know I’ll be going back to Portugal (I’m planning a 10 to 15 days hike for whenever we can all travel again) and I want to be able to converse with people beyond French and English (the two languages I speak fluently).
Yes a great country Allysse. We have been visiting 2/3 times a year for 30 or so. Have you noticed how when you are in a fix with your Portuguese and are talking to a senior that they often switch seamlessly into French.? It has got me out of a fix several times in the earlier years.
Many then love to talk, in French, about their years living there when times were really hard in Portugal. A huge number of Portuguese looked to L’Hexagon for work.
Like you we hope to go back soon. We were due to go to the Eastern Algarve for a month on the 28/4 but that is cancelled
When you get to go back, try the Braga/Guimaraes area. Fascinating cities and there are some really great towns to visit further inland towards the West like Amorante (and too many to mention).
We go every year to the Eastern Algarve between Olhao and Tavira on the lagoon where we take a house. And it now seems like home to us. It is Portuguese whereas the Central Algarve is awfully touristy!! But that said Tavira itself is becoming more so but at least it still retains its Portuguese identity.
But we also travel across Portugal each year. The more remote the better for us. Last year we stayed on a vinyard in a little place called Celerico do Basto. The owner makes Vinho Verde and I got to help with the harvest, my wife and I lunched with the family and the harvest helpers. Only one had a little English. It was fabulous even though I missed much of what was being said.
Funnily enough I have just emailed them (in Portuguese) to ask if the wine is ready and good.
Have you done the Alentejo? Monsarraz, Estramoz and Evora are great towns and the Vinho Tinto wine is usually sensational.
Enjoy it when we are allowed out!!
Mac
Olà @allysse.riordan. As @mac.cummings says, many of the older people know French because they may have worked in France but also, French used to be the first foreign language taught in schools.
I have found that, the further north you go, the more French is spoken and have been told that people from Northern Portugal tended more to emigrate to find jobs. Two years ago we stayed near Chaves, not far from the Spanish border and loads of people spoke French. As soon as they heard my bad Portuguese they switched to French rather than English.
You have a head start learning Portuguese if you are a fluent French speaker. I have had some Portuguese lessons with a girl brought up in France and it was really useful to see that things like adverbs are formed similarly in both languages. Personally I would be very happy if everyone in Portugal spoke French. Bon courage.
Yes Patrick. The constructions in French are much the same and there are some verbs which are spelled and mean the same…but boy when it comes to prononciation…!
Hi @allysse.riordan. One big difference between French and Portuguese, which I’m sure you’ll know by now, is verb tenses. I know that in French you can sometimes use the infinitive to avoid the subjunctive tense but it seems that, in Portuguese, you can’t avoid it :(.
I was floored to learn that Portuguese has 6 subjunctive tenses, which all Portuguese children apparently learn as easily as falling off a log. Just to add confusion the word ‘subjunctive’ in Portuguese is ‘conjuntivo’ which really threw me when working with grammar books written in Portuguese.
Spanish also has 6 subjunctive tenses but Portuguese has an extra element of mystery, a tense called Personal Infinitive (but that can be avoided).
I alternate between learning Portuguese and Spanish, which can be good or bad. It’s usually bad because I mix up vocabularies but it has the advantage that they mostly have the same tenses which are used in the same contexts. In particular they are quite precise about when to use the Preterite tense and the Imperfect tense where, in English, we tend to confuse them.
This website is great for including lots of practice on verb tenses but I also recommend the book ‘501 Portuguese Verbs’ published by Barron’s . It has examples for each verb and shows differences between Portuguese and Brazilian usage.
I’m sure you’ll find it all easier than I did, but please keep in touch and let us all know how you are progressing.
I found that out about verbs quickly.
I did start studying a bit a while ago but for various reason my routine fell off. I’m just coming back to it now.
I studied Spanish in high school so I’m prepared for the verbs. I find verbs and conjugation the hardest in general. It’s just a lot of practice isn’t it.
@mac.cummings I know what you mean about pronunciation! I have always been able to read Portuguese and get the gist of what a simple text says, but when people start to speak… As I progress, I’ll definitely be spending a fair amount of time on my listening and spoken skills.
My partner and I travel to Portugal every year to visit family in a small town called Raposos which is near Nazaré. It is my favorite place to go and we are lucky enough to visit for around a month each time. My grandmother is the OG of the town and is one of my favorite people. She doesn’t speak english, however, so we tend to talk to each other without knowing what is actually being said. We always wake up and head to the beach in Nazaré for Galão and torrada! We’ve become great friends with everyone there and I would love to be able to speak to them in Portuguese and not always rely on them speaking to me in English.
While there we also spend a weekend in Algarve (no specific spot) and I try to travel to a new city every time we go. So far I’ve been to Lisboa, Porto and Caldas de Rainha (which was beautiful)!
I have trouble learning other languages (I’ve been trying to learn Spanish since I was a child) but I have hope with this site and also Memrise and the podcasts.
That’s a great reason to learn Portuguese. Maybe you’ll find it easier to learn a the language as you know you’ll get some practice every year, but also you have a very specific goal in mind.
Originally I came to Portugal for a vacation and I keep returning for longer stays each year. I picked up common phrases in context. Now I want more skills.
I intend to visit with the intention of exploring retirement options. I hope to be able to interact more clearly with locals as I wander the country. As a side note, the teaching on practiceportugese is much much better than the free resources I have used before and well worth the monthly fee.
I am learning Portuguese because my boyfriend and his family are Portuguese. We visited them a couple of times and I fell in love with Portugal In January we decided within a few weeks to up and leave to start a new life here. So here I am living in Lisbon
I have been getting by a lot by letting him do all the talking but I think he’s had enough of translating for me now so I’m pushing myself to learn a lot more. It helps I have a lot of free time now due to the lock down.
I was struggling to find good resources when I came across a video from practice Portuguese and it literally made a light bulb pop up above my head:bulb: So after watching that I came straight to this site and signed up
Ooo, welcome. I love Lisbon and hope I can live here until I die, but it can be a terrible city for someone wanting to learn Portuguese, because you can easily get by with just English (with exceptions, of course) Resist the temptation!
Hi, I’m Andi and quite new here. I’m German and living in Berlin. As my bf is Portuguese I want to learn the language to make communication easier with his family and friends, but besides this I felt also in love with this beautiful country and language. As also moving to Portugal could be an option for us in the hopefully “near” future, It would be definitely great to improve my portugese skills before this. Happy to found this Plattform …especially in European Portuguese is not so easy to find much! Thanks a lot for this opportunity. Beijinhos
We were planning a family trip to Portugal (Acores and then Lisbon) for late May/early June, but with the virus had to put everything on hold. My father’s side of the family came to the U.S. from the Acores over 100 years ago - they are all from Sao Miguel. We all went with my grandmother (minha avo) for her 80th birthday about 21 years ago, and this was going to be our second time. I had taken a Brazilian Portuguese course in college, and wanted to learn how to speak the Portuguse way, because I love languages (I am fluent in Spanish) and to be a point-person for the trip, which I was the first time even though I couldn’t understand almost anyone in the Acores (but they understood me!). I’m still looking forward to the trip even though we don’t know when we’ll be able to go…
Thanks for posting, guys. @andyberner, you’re lucky, you already have someone to practice with, or at least to show off what you learn @jeff.botelho, was your first trip to the Açores only to São Miguel or did you tour other islands?
In January we decided within a few weeks to up and leave to start a new life here. So here I am living in Lisbon 
Resist the temptation!