Customer Reviews

Brasil! Lingua E Cultura (Portuguese Edition)

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The 3rd edition of Brasil! is a much improved revision of the second edition. The text is now in full color at a very reasonable price and is loaded with new photos, realia, exercises, and explanations useful to native speakers of English AND Spanish. The audio lessons are available online (in a downloadable RealAudio format), which reduces the cost to students. After looking at and using three different Portuguese language textbooks, I can confidently recommend Brasil!.

Furthermore, I have recommended this book to several students who are interested in learning Portuguese on their own. The text and ancillaries allow for such independent study. Finally, LinguaText provides excellent customer service both for professors and their students.

I find Brasil! Lingua e Cultura a deeply disappointing textbook. The emphasis on colloquial spoken Brazilian Portuguese is fine, but the grammar sections should make a clearer distinction between colloquial usage and what is acceptable in the formal written language as used for example in newspapers. Brasil! is also culturally biased as most of its real language samples are from young (college-age), urban middle-class (or upper middle-class) speakers from the state of Sao Paulo. In fact, if you read Brasil! without any prior knowledge of Brazilian socio-economic reality, you might be tricked into believing that going over the weekend with friends to one's parents' beach apartment or country cottage is a normal passtime for any ordinary young Brazilian !