Customer Reviews

The Everything Learning Brazilian Portuguese Book: Speak, Write, and Understand Basic Portuguese in No Time (Everything: Language and Literature)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

It's nice that there actually is an affordable and effective book for a beginner to learn quite a bit of Brazilian Portuguese. I thought this book was really well organized and a solid introduction to the language. There are exercises throughout the book as well to practice what you learned. There is also an audio CD which is helpful (A native Brazilian speaker repeats words and phrases which are also written in the book). The chapters are:

1)Introducing the Portuguese Language (Why learn it, similarities to Spanish, European Portuguese vs. Brazilian Portuguese, tips on learning Portuguese, recognizing what you already know)
2)The Sounds of Portuguese (Portuguese alphabet, accent marks, listening practice, consonants, stress pattern in Portuguese, oral and nasal vowels, typing in Portuguese)
3)Beginning Conversation (Greetings, talking on the phone, saying goodbye, etc)
4)Nouns, Articles, and Contractions
5)Introducing "ser" (the verb "to be")
6)Introducing "estar" (the other verb meaning "to be")
7)Describing People and Things in Portuguese
8)The Vocabulary of Numbers
9)First Conjugation Verbs
10)Second Conjugation Verbs
11)Important Verbs to Know
12)Verb Tenses: an Overview
13)More Verbs
14)Negative Words and Constructions
15)Questions and Exclamations
16)The Future and Other Tenses
17)Imperative and Subjunctive Constructions
18)Carnaval, Samba, Feijoada, and Futebol (Brazilian culture!)
19)Means of Communication (In person, by mail, making phone calls)
20)Traveling to Samba-Land (getting papers in order, hotel reservations, currency, a bit of information about the most popular cities...)

I was mostly looking to learn the language, not the culture, and this book is indeed mostly teaching the language. I liked the bits of information about the culture though in this book and found it interesting.

I definitely recommend this as a book to start off with to anyone serious about learning the language. I went through this while going through Pimsleur lessons for Portuguese and found it to be a great supplement to my learning (In my opinion, Pimsleur goes at quite a slow pace and this book helped me learn more about grammar in a shorter amount of time, as well as expressions, etc, without going at too fast a pace). I recommend it to travelers only if they want to spend some extra time learning a bit more than they absolutely "need".

without the CD I'm not sure this book will be that great. Amazon has a great product with the Kindl but I don't think 9.99 is a good value for this book since it is missing half the content...the audio part. So unless the publisher offers the audio portion as a free download with this Kindle version, then Amazon needs to come up with a way to blend these two mediums in the future.

Good book. You will learn the basics in portuguese. That being said, it's a very slow method: you will have to reach page 58 to learn "to be" (present tense) in portuguese. Moreover, each lesson begin with a very basic grammar explanation (what is a noun?, what is an article?). I find it a bit condescending (the author could have assumed that her readers went to elementary school).
The CD is very helpful. I would not buy the book without it.

'In No Time?'
If you are a traveler or casual visitor to Brazil, this book is not for you. It is aimed at someone who plans to master some level of fluency far beyond basic communication. For travel or quickly learning basic, useful phrases you will be disappointed by the 'Everything' approach.

I just returned from 10 days near Sao Paulo and found that I relied on phrases learned from English speaking Brazilians and upon my basic Spanish skills far more than what I derived from 'The Everything Learning Brazilian Portuguese Book'. I found that a reasonable number of locals speak some Spanish although less English.

The CD section of the book contains about 90 short segments that offer pronunciation and grammar skills, etc. but very few aimed at travelers. The printed book itself I found illogically laid out, especially for the casual or quick learner. I found that the format of the book works against speedy learning of the language.

Bottom line: Brazil visitors/travelers, seek elsewhere. If you wish to invest the time to develop advanced competency in Brazilian Portuguese, you may find this book helpful. The 'In No Time" promise from the front cover is very misleading. You will need to invest a significant amount of time to develop conversational or written skills.

I have just got it, but I have to say that is seems like a useful tool for the disciplined learner who wants to study at home without a tutor or without having to go to a formal classroom set to learn the language. I like the voice and accent of the speaker in the CD as well. It's close to what I would call a "standard" accent.She may be from São Paulo. The quality of the audio could be better though. At times it sounds as though she is almost whispering the words instead of speaking them clearly and enthusiastically. I especially liked the chapter on the sounds of Portuguese because they compare it with the sounds of English words. This helps learners whose L1 is English.

This is an excellent book! The poor reviews seem to be primarily centered on the fact this is not for a tourist seeking to learn quick phrases. That is true, but that is not the intention of the book. I'm currently taking a college level Portuguese class. I know some Spanish and jumped into the second semester.I have to study double time to make up for foundations I missed from the previous class. This books and the accompanying CD have been incredibly helpful. I have other Portuguese manuals including my primary textbook, but this book beats them all. It provides great structure for self study and the CD is well paced.

If you are serious about self study in Portuguese I highly recommend this and the Modern Brazilian Portuguese Workbook.

Thank you Dr. Ferreira!

Despite the 'Everything' logo, there isn't much of anything other than grammar. This won't help you much if what you want is a course that will equip you to interact in the country.

This book was disappointing.
I found the lessons confusing.
The tracks for the CD should not be so spred out in the book.
It would be much better if each track held about 20 items at a time otherwise we have to keep turning pages and very often, not fast enough to follow the speaker.

I needed to learn Portuguese over the summer so I bought this program. It is VERY thourough and it has really helped me. The CD also helps with pronunciation throughout the lessons.

This book consists mainly of grammar theory and lists of examples to illustrate the grammar points. The audio is also on grammar. Here and there you will come across the occasional list of vocabulary like 'countries and nationalities' or 'professions and occupations'. Then you go back to grammar. There is no life to it! Positively boring!