Customer Reviews

Com Licença!: Brazilian Portuguese for Spanish Speakers (Special Publication)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Esto es lo mejor que he visto si uno habla español e inglés. Hay algunos errores en la parte de español (evidentemente no sé si los hay en portugués), por eso no le puedo dar otra estrellita. Ahora quisiera comprar las cintas.

I used this book to study Portuguese before I went to Portugal last year and had no problems making myself understood on my trip. If you know Spanish fairly well, this is the book for you. Although the subject of the book is to teach you Portuguese as spoken in Brazil, I would think that people interested in learning Continental Portuguese could benefit from this book as well. I highly recommend buying the audio tapes that go with this book as you will almost certainly not get certain pronounciations correct without hearing them. One of the reviewers faulted this book for its grammatical and typographical errors, which is nonsense. The reason it's in English is that it is aimed at native speakers of English who also happen to speak Spanish as a second language, such as college students who've had a couple of years of study in Spanish.

While the concept of this book is great--Portuguese for Spanish speakers--the book falls flat in a number of areas crucial to language acquisition. First, all of the instructions are in English, followed by examples in Portuguese and Spanish. At first this sounds ideal, but it is very taxing to work between the three languages--especially in a collegiate level language course that moves very quickly. In addition, the instructions are incomplete, and often say that they provide basic information because the student is not ready for the entire explanation. A complete beginner with a Spanish background may find this book a useful reference for the absolute basic sentence constructions, but anyone attempting to learn about more advanced constructions (such as the personal infinitive, the future subjunctive, etc.) should consider alternative textbooks and audiocassette series.

This book was written for people who, in addition to English, speak Spanish at a high-intermediate to near-native or native level (obviously not geared towards monolingual Spanish speakers in Mexico, Spain or Argentina). The description mentions it was created due to a rising interest among University Spanish-speaking individuals in the Portuguese language! That being said, it won't help you learn much Spanish, although it could be used to review some things in Spanish but at the same time introduce you to Portuguese. It assumes you have a working knowledge of grammar in Spanish. That way you'll be able to easily transfer your knowledge from Spanish into Portuguese (Brazilian), which is the author's original intent.

The reason it's written with English instructions is because the author is using English as a bridge between Spanish and Portuguese to illustrate Portuguese pronunciation. Portuguese pronunciation is much more complex than Spanish and the student already knows many sounds existing in English (an equally rich language). This means that s/he didn't know that some Portuguese sounds also exist in English and all that needs to be done is transfer this information into the target language, Portuguese. This is how this method works. It uses English as a bridge! If you didn't understand this when you read the description of the book, then you absolutely missed the point and should not have "wasted" your money.

Just read the description first. It says it right there. Don't waste your money if you are not a Spanish Speaker who knows English. For Spanish speaking monolinguals there are far better Spanish-Portuguese methods.

There are some spelling mistakes, indeed, but that does not justify your not buying it. The benefits are greater (provided you meet the criteria specified in the book description).

As? que si quieren usar este libro y sacarle alg?n beneficio . . . a estudiar espa?ol! ? um livro ?timo.

I bought the book and had to buy the tapes. The tapes do help with pronunciation. The only drawback is that they only cover the first 2 or 3 units. The third cassette covers all the vocab in the glossary but something happened while recording and some of the words are missing. I was a little disappointed with the cassettes but it seems the best text/tape combo so far.

This is a wonderful book for spanish speakers, or people with knowlege of the spanish language (I took up to spanish IV and two excelerated spanish classes at the high school level, and it is at the perfect level). It introduces the Portuguese Language, focusing on Brazilian Portuguese, both pronunciation and vocabulary. It is in a straight foward aproach, and is easy to follow, with vocab in English, Spanish and Portugues, for easy comprehension. It pinpoints important differences between the two languages, and shows the many similarities in a format that makes learning quick and easy for Spanish Speakers. This is an excelent book, and it has introduced me to a beautiful language which has shown me a facinating culture. This book is highly reccomended!!

If you are a fluent in English and Spanish, and wish to learn Portuguese (especially Brazilian Portuguese), this is the book for you. It can get you up to speed quickly because the book skips over the differences between English and Potuguese, and concentrates on the relatively smaller differences between Spanish and Portuguese.

I found myself somewhat frustrated by a lack of tapes with the book because some of the pronunciations are difficult to imagine if you haven't heard Brazilian Portuguese spoken. That is significant, but I still recommend this book. Perfect pronunciation will take time anyway, and tapes wouldn't help as much as an actual instructor.

Boa sorte.

Used this text while a student at UC Berkeley. If your Spanish is near fluent, you can quickly acquire basic Portuguese using this text.You skip a lot of junk because the languages are so similar The text focuses on comparing and contrasting the two languages. I used it in a classroom setting, but would say it would be great for the autodidact as well.

Amazon messed up the title, not the writer. He has it as Com licença!, so you can't fault him for orthography. As far as the content, I think its a good approach for spanish speakers. A standard grammar would be nice as well, the introduction of grammar is a bit discursive.

This is the only book of its kind in existence--a textbook of Portuguese for those who already know Spanish. It does a good job highlighting the differences between the two languages, and wastes little time on concepts which are identical.
That said, this book is a very poor guide to learning Portuguese. The organization is terrible, with some irregular verbs in the beginning, more later, and a few more splashed in here and there. The vocabulary doesn't follow any sort of progression throughout the book, either.
This book was the text in a course "Portuguese for Spanish Speakers" at CU-Boulder. The only reason I can hack it in Portuguese is because of my instructor. The book works much better in a classroom setting, but even then it confused my whole class.