Reddit reviews Modern Brazilian Portuguese Grammar: A Practical Guide (Modern Grammars)
We found 9 Reddit comments about Modern Brazilian Portuguese Grammar: A Practical Guide (Modern Grammars). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
First, you need to decide whether you want to learn European Portuguese or Brazilian Portuguese as they have different resources (there are more for Brazilian). Probably it will be decided by which one your university course teaches.
I've been learning Brazilian Portuguese for about 6 weeks now using a combination of methods:
Duolingo and Memrise for apps
Lingua da Gente podcast
Semantica video series
If you want a book, this seems to be the one to get:
http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Brazilian-Portuguese-Grammar-Practical/dp/0415566444?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=ox_sc_sfl_title_2&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER
Of course there are many more resources and it's worth browsing around to see what you like.
There is a book 501 portuguese verbs. I have the Brazilian version but i believe the author wrote a European one as well. It has the 501 most common verbs that are used/spoken and every conjugation for them.
In the beginning of the book the first couple chapters are grammar rules and sentence structure.
Same author also wrote this book which goes over grammar pretty well with a workbook with exercises. Once again this is Brazilian but I'm sure the Grammar and sentence structure will be the same if not very similar
Modern Brazilian Portuguese Grammar: A Practical Guide (Modern Grammars) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0415566444/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_qXTADbCEGQ8D5
Boa sorte
Not a "course book" but it's one of the best books for learners of brazilian portugues "Modern Brazilian Portuguese Grammar". It's not the typical grammar book and the author is incredible. https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Brazilian-Portuguese-Grammar-Practical/dp/0415566444/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1503251046&sr=8-3&keywords=portuguese+grammar
I'm in the same boat. I'm using the book right now and it is very good. Modern Brazilian Portuguese Grammar: A Practical Guide
What's also good about it (unlike most BP books) is that it tells you what you need to know colloquially. It doesn't dispense with literary and formal usages but it will tell you beforehand which is awesome. I don't want to write a book in portuguese, I just want to understand and speak the bloody language colloquially. This book is perfect for that.
I'll list all the stuff I'll be using!
I'm doing Brazilian Portuguese, so I'll be going through the Semantica course which I keep hearing is very good, although subscription-based.
Books that I got were:
Websites:
1. Hacking Portuguese
Programs/Apps:
If anyone has more suggestions, let me know!
The most helpful thing for me has been the Pimsleur language tapes. I'm almost finished with all 90 lessons. They're great.
Also good is this site, which has lots of dubbed and subtitled movies.
This book is really good: http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Brazilian-Portuguese-Grammar-Practical/dp/0415566444
I find Duolingo so boring that I struggle to keep at it.
I am learning portuguese for almost two years now.
Lots of resources have already been mentioned here. You can also find some great lists here in the sub (e.g. here for Br-Pt or here for european Pt)
As you are already a language learner, I guess it's needless to say that making studying a habit for every day is key.
However, as some users here already reported, it sometimes can get overwhelming by all these resources that are available. So in order to get started I would recommend to find 3 or 4 tools to use on a regular basis and stick to them. I myself made the mistake to try out to many services/apps/tools in the beginning and also switched between them way too often.
That being said, in my opinion you need tools for the following tasks in order to learn portuguese:
1: Sound
Depending what you mother tongue is you might have difficulties to distinguish between "ã" and "ão" or to properly reproduce the "ão" or "nha" sound. Minimal pairs can help here. You can make them yourself for Anki or use some premade deck or a website that provides this functionality. I remember that /u/pedrosantos16 made a minimal pair collection on his website www.european-portuguese.info , but don't know whether he included the audio already. The Podcast Tá falado is great for sound and pronunciation, too. If you find some youtube videos that focus on sounds you can use those as well. After very short time you should be comfortable with the sounds of portuguese you you can simply drop the minimal pair exercises here.
2. Vocabulary
For obvious reasons. Focus on nouns and verbs (some verbs are beasts as they have a trillion different use cases). I use Duolingo and Anki. Note that lots of learners suggest to learn with pictures (at least for simple nouns) instead of translations and I highly recommend that, too.
3. Grammar
Duolingo explanes very little grammar, but has some exercises. So in order to get the basics and as a reference book I use Modern Brazilian Portuguese Grammar. Learn some irregular verb conjugation in present tense, make yourself familiar with the regular verb conjugation patterns. Learn the gerund and iperativo. After that past tense (preterito perfeito and imperfeito). Don't worry about prepositions too much, they will come over time.
4. Listening Comprehension
In my eyes one of the most important parts, if not the most important. I don't know about you, but I like to actually use my portuguese in order to talk to people. Although you theoretically know the words, it is sometimes difficult to understand people, there are quite a lot of different accents, and some tend to merge words so it becomes a real challenge. I can recommend Semantica-portuguese (video based), portuguesepod101 (mostly audio based) and the podcasts of the texas university (e.g. lingua da gente). Semantica and portuguesepod101 are comple courses for beginners to advanced, so they can easily replace university classes. I started with a beginner course in university, but didn't learn much. It got me more curious about the language though, so I made the semantica course afterwards and was very satisfied with my progress.
5. Speaking
You should start speaking portuguese as soon as possible, even if you are not feeling comfortable about it yet. There are great tools available and people are very helpful. Hellotalk, iTalki.com, mylanguageexchange.com....there are tons
6. Slang
I noticed, that after quite a while I still was not able to follow conversations. That was because in spoken language, at least Brazilians use a lot of slang words, so over time you should make yourself familiar with them. Just add them to you preferred flashcard tool whenever you encounter some new slangs / idioms.
7. Reading and writing
Some people suggest reading childrens books such as the little prince or similar. Or reading along withe song lyrics. Since reading and writing is not my top priority I cannot give you solid recommendations. What I do is following a lot of portuguese twitter accounts (news etc), so I read at least a little portuguese every day. From time to time I head over to the website of a newspaper and try to decipher some articles. There are also reading tools available online such as lingua.ly but I haven't tried them yet.
8. Culture class
It always keeps me motivated, when I dive into Brazilian cultura. Food, music, city reports, history. There are great video podcasts and blogs available, some of them are listed in one of the other threads linked to above.
I guess that's it, your first year of learning portuguese should be covered by that. Boa sorte para aprender português!
tl,dr I use Semantica, Duolingo, Anki, Modern Brazilian Portuguese Grammar book on a regular basis, and throw in some podcasts, videos or newspaper articles from time to time
Yes, you should definitely learn the different levels of formality if you want to speak like the Brazilians. This one is extremely good:
http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Brazilian-Portuguese-Grammar-Practical/dp/0415566444
I'm from the US and presently in São Paulo taking engineering classes taught in Portuguese after studying the language for less than 6 months, so I can share a bit from my experience:
Learn basic grammar/vocab from textbooks, read the news in portuguese (globo.com, folha de S.Paulo, etc) and create a vocab list from words you don't know, watch youtube videos from brazilian talk shows (the noite), meet someone who speaks the language (or read articles outloud to yourself if you can't find someone), find some brazilian music you like.. these are some of the thing I did.
Also, BrazilianPodClass is a great podcast to look into. For a grammar text I recommend the following + the complimentary workbook. I find it to be excellent:
http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Brazilian-Portuguese-Grammar-Practical/dp/0415566444/ref=pd_sim_b_1/192-2892797-9687731?ie=UTF8&refRID=0YS5KBCGWRDAYP8JE154
I never found a good cohesive vocab book, so just created my own lists.
Hope this helps! Boa sorte!
edit: Also, it's a beautiful language and I find it fun to speak, so I think you made a good choice! It's not easy to learn by any means, but it's worth it IMO