Customer Reviews

Essential Portuguese Grammar (Dover Language Guides Essential Grammar)

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Published by price-conscious folks at Dover Publications, "Essential Portuguese Grammar" is a great, compact book to learn and/or brush up on your Portuguese grammar. Considered by many linguists as one of the most difficult languages to learn due to its' many nasal verbs and differences among Brazilian and Lusitanian norms, Portuguese will require many hours of countless study before anyone can speak, read, and write like a native.

Author Alexander da R. Prista does a great job compiling the essential of the language in this 114-page book. Although the small font size might be something that might make it difficult for anyone with a visual impairment to read, however the book is well researched and organized. If you're preparing for a trip to Brazil, Portugal, or anywhere in Portuguese-speaking Africa, this book makes a great buy and investment for anyone interested in travel or business in these areas.

As I learned more about Portuguese, especially its grammar, I picked this book up again and realized its true utility: a very concise, compact, well-organized reference.

This is a complementary book to your language studies. If you are a gifted student of languages this book might be enough, but for the rest of us, this book is a sweet study tool and reference, especially if you're taking Portuguese in college.

I just received this book the other day, and it is a gem. I have gone through many Portuguese and Spanish grammar books in my time and discarded most as cumbersome and unusable. This is by far the most concise, clear book of this type I have ever seen. Between the Portuguese audio course I am working through and this book, I am there! It is the Strunk and White of Portuguese and a whole lot more.

This is the best portuguese grammar book I have come across out of my vast collection of portuguese study materials. The author simplifies the distinction between the use of various tenses, demonstratives, articles and other aspects of grammar usage through narratives and examples. This book has been absolutely essential to my learning. My fiance's family have commented that I articulate better than their relatives in Portugal. With the help of this book, I am able to write letters overseas. My fiances' family overseas are very impressed especially since I am not portuguese. I highly recommend this book. The overall format, content and strucuture is better than any language textbook I have come across.

This is a must have. It has rules on conjugations, highlights differences between continental and Brazilian Portuguese, and explains the background behind grammar. It's also concise and not all that voluminous, therefore, I bring this book when I travel.

This book is fantastic -- it's small, concise, clear, and complete. I referred to it constantly when I was studying Portuguese, and often found it much more useful than my textbook. An amazing value.

I quite like this grammar. It is very clear on the basics of Portuguese grammar. You get the feeling that it was written by someone who knows the language in depth and can extract what is essential but still give full information. The reference system makes different points easy to get to, when you use the book as a reference tool. You can also use it as a course book, though there are no exercises for practice. Perhaps it would be asking for too much in a book of this size. The information on verbs is also clear and fine but in my case I needed more. I have found a superb book on Portuguese verbs, another five star book. It is called 'Portuguese Verbs Explained An Essential Guide' and the author is Manuela Cook. If you want more than the Prista book has to say on verbs, I strongly recommend this one. Like Prista, this is an author who knows her Portuguese (and her English too)!

While "Essential Portuguese Grammar" gives learners of the language a solid review of grammar and serves as a handy "reference guide," for self-learners who are trying to grasp the language on their own, it is not well suited to beginners and is not meant to be an all-encompassing way to learn the language.

It's a great book for highly motivated self-learners or as a supplement to more substantive texts/audio books.

This book was a valuable book in my study of Portuguese. Coming from a bi-lingual English and Spanish speaking background, this small book gave me all of the essential elements of Portuguese grammar in a concise format. I highly recommend it for your study of Portuguese, especially if you are at all familiar with Spanish.

Alexander Da R. Prista's Essential Portuguese Grammar gives the reader a clear cut
tool for understanding the complexities of the Portuguese language.
One may use this guide only to study the written language, which is fine.
My personal goal is to speak Portuguese fluently.
To that end I have invested in and am using 'Behind the Wheel Portuguese' which is a marvellous and highly effective course, but contains no written material whatsoever.
For that reason I find Essential Portuguese Grammar to be so 'essential'.
I'm sure this guide would work well for anyone desiring to learn Portuguese at any level, but I can attest to its effectiveness when used with a good recorded CD course like Behind the Wheel Portuguese which uses no grammar at all and rather simply teaches you to 'speak' and 'understand' the language.
I wanted to go further into the grammatical understanding of the language and also wished to learn to write the language a bit.
I am very pleased with my results and am speaking the language quite fluently already.