Colloquial Portuguese: The Complete Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series) [Paperback]

Barbara McIntyre (Author), João Sampaio (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 15, 2002 | ISBN-10: 0415274419 | ISBN-13: 978-0415274418 | Edition: 2

Colloquial Portuguese is easy to use and completely essential! Specially written by experienced teachers for self-study or class use, the course offers you a step-by-step approach to written and spoken Portuguese. No prior knowledge of the language is required.

What makes Colloquial Portuguese your best choice in personal language learning?
* interactive - lots of dialogues and exercises for regular practice
* clear - concise grammar notes
* practical - useful vocabulary and pronunciation guide
* complete - including answer key and special reference section

By the end of this rewarding course you will be able to communicate confidently and effectively in a broad range of situations.

Accompanying audio material is available to purchase separately on CD/MP3 format, or comes included in the great value Colloquials pack.  Recorded by native speakers, these will help develop your listening and pronunciation skills.

Editorial Reviews

Review

‘If you want to get to grips further with any of the [European] languages, Routledge’s Colloquial series is the best place you could start.’ Rough Guide to Europe

Language Notes

Text: English, Portugese

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 2 edition (March 15, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415274419
• ISBN-13: 978-0415274418
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,489,604 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #88 in Books > Education & Reference > Foreign Language Nonfiction > Portuguese

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Eu achei o livro finalmente., November 8, 2007

By 

Pauper in Rossio (Japan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Colloquial Portuguese: The Complete Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series) (Paperback)

In Japan, we have lots of difficuties in finding the textbook for conversations of European Portuguese.

I'm very happy to find this.

Actually it doesn't have the detail about grammer,but don't worry, we heve some useful ones in Japan.

Next time I visit Portugal, I hope I can make many friends with Portuguese.

Thanks a lot!!!

Muito obrigado!!!

4.0 out of 5 stars "Continental" Portuguese?, April 19, 2004

By 

Cedric Rocha Leao (Sao Paulo, SP, Brazil) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Colloquial Portuguese: The Complete Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series) (Paperback)

Being Brazilian, I can tell that there are indeed several differences between Brazilian and European Portuguese, but the main difficulty are the local expressions that differ a lot and the pronunciation/accent. It is harder to understand the European accent than the Brazilian one. Grammarwise, the main and maybe only significant difference is the use of the Gerund in Brazil for continuous actions, forsaken long ago in Portugal. However, both countries do speak the same language and one can be understood in either one regardless what "Portuguese" he or she learned. By the same authors, there is the "Colloquial Portuguese from Brazil", which has enough grammar discussions and real life dialogues based on "Brazilian Portuguese", despite using over formal and unnatural structures, sometimes. A comment on the first review made about this book: What is "Continental Portuguese"? Is Brazil an Island? Or is Europe the only "Continent" with capital C so that the Portuguese spoken in Portugal can be labelled "Continental"?

5 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars This books lacks Brazilian Portuguese., November 27, 2003

By 

Tomo Sugnetic (Croatia, Southern Europe) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Colloquial Portuguese: The Complete Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series) (Paperback)

This book is completely on Continental (or European) Portuguese.
At times, dialogs between Brazilians are presented but words and sentence structure is Continental, something Brazilian speakers would never say or use. Don't get me wrong. This book is okay if your aim is to learn Continental Portuguese (10 millions of speakers). If you are interested in Brazilian Portuguese this book will be no use and might teach you wrong.