Customer Reviews

Lonely Planet Brazilian Phrasebook (Lonely Planet Phrasebook: India)

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

As the book title says it's a Brazilian phrasebook, and for those who said that most pages have multiple errors in spelling and grammatical errors, all I can say is that it's so not true. As a Brazilian born and native Brazilian Portuguese speaker, I can guarantee that. But you must remeber that Brazilian Portuguese and Portugal Portuguese are almost two different languages, so you can't use this book to survive in Portugal.

As one reader put it, this book has nothing to do with Portuguese. In fact it is on Brazilian language, which is becoming a distant dialect from the latter. So if you want to learn Portuguese, avoid this book, but if you want to learn Brazilian, that is your choice.

One of earlier reviews was titled "Hardly a page not packed with mistakes". It was refering to the first edition, but it seems that the authors did not correct any errors since then. Nor did they even tried to find them.

Otherwise, it would be impossible for them not to notice 10 errors on the first 27 pages of the book. I was not looking for errors, I just read those first pages and the errors affronted my eyes.

Examples:
p. 15, "rapazess bonitos" instead of "rapazes bonitos"
p. 17, "pasagem" instead of "passagem"
p. 18, idem
p. 20, "amanha" instead of amanhã (missing ~ sign)
p. 27, "eu fala (inglês)" instead of "eu falo (inglês)"
p. 27, "eu não fala (português)" instead of "eu não falo (português)"

I don't mind a lot of errors when explaining pronunciation rules. With such a number of errors they are just useless and of course no one will speak as a "true brasileiro", as the authors pretend.
Do they really think that "o" in "gato" is pronounced like "o" in English "go" (p. 9)?!

Although my Portuguese is far from perfect, my modest knowledge allowed me to encounter so many errors. Thus bearing in mind that the book lacks any accuracy, I can no longer trust the book when learning more advanced things: I know that practically any page could contain an error, so I could learn a phrase or word incorrectly.

I was always deligted by Lonely Planet guidebooks (Spain, Egypt, Syria), but the phrasebook is awful. Why didn't they hire a Brazilian proof-reader to correct the errors?!

This phrasebook was really helpful on my recent trip to Brazil. I don't speak any Portuguese, so it was nice to have a little help with common words & phrases. It has pronounciation guides, which was great, and my new-found (English speaking) Brazilian friends were impressed with it too. It's small enough to carry around easily, and I highly recommend it for anyone traveling to Brazil.

Don't even think about trying to survive in Brasil on this book. While other LP language guides (I have used their guides to Latin American Spanish, Mongolian, and Russian) are thorough, and provide lots of conversational phrases to get you into and out of almost any key travel situation, this one is woefully lacking in any aspect. Not enough vocabularly, not enough questions, not enough areas. After three weeks in Brasil, I managed to successfully use this book twice. It's cheap but it's not worth the purchase price.

Beware of serious pronunciation errors in this book. Although it was overall pretty useful, there were some glaring errors in areas where there likely shouldn't have been. Case in point, the phonetic pronunciation for tchau (goodbye) in the book is spelled out as "tee-show." At least in Bahia, it was pronounced by the locals just like the Italian "ciao." The word "vinte" (twenty) is spelled out "veeng-te" in the book, while again everyone we encountered in Bahia pronounced it "veen-chay." I don't know if these are regional differences in Brazilian Portuguese, but if so, they need to at least be addressed in the book. Take care when using the phrasebook to listen to the local speakers as well.

(This is for the 3rd edition Oct. 2003) An excellent pocket guide to Brazilian Portuguese. Good use of color and illustrations rarely seen in a foreign language dictionary. Begins with important grammar points, then covers various subjects (accommodation, shopping, etc.) and concludes with English-Portuguese dictionary (& vice-versa) in the back. The entire dictionary section has a purple color tab, making it hard to find where English-Portuguese ends and Portuguese-English begins.

My only real sore point is with the pronunciation. They seem to have forgotten this isn't Spanish!! Letter 'D' changes to something between the English "DZ" and "J" sound when followed by vowels E, I, and ÃO. In Brazilian Portuguese "Pode" sounds like "POO-jay" and "cidade" like "see-DAH-jay". Yet this book has you pronouncing them as if they were Spanish words. Direct pronuncation quote: "see.daa.de" (with "daa" in italics which are hard to see--CAPS for stress would be better.)

Overall, a great book at $7.99 list--just remember the 'D' rule!!

I actually bought this book not as a tourist, but simply to communicate better with a Brazilian friend I have. I wanted a quick start to supplement what I'd been picking up from her.

So far, it's been far more helpful than I'd expect out of such a tiny book. The grammar tools are very helpful in using something other than the canned phrases in most books of this type, as I can usually piece together a new sentence when necessary. Some of the more generic, non-touristy sections are also very helpful in terms of the canned phrases, as knowing simple things like greetings and such comes in handy.

There do seem to be some pronunciation issues as noted in other reviews, but only so much can be expected from a book. It helps to have a native speaker nearby to clear up trying to say some of the harder words. These could also be regional differences, as well.

Overall, it's been very helpful as a starting point, and I've surprised my friend by occasionally springing a phrase on her she didn't expect me to know, or understanding a sentence or two. It's not the same as a proper course, but it's a very good start. Probably invaluable to a tourist.

Really handy! It's unbelievable the amount of rare phrases that are in this book that you can't find anywhere else (example: Pull my finger= Pushe meu dedo). It covers a wide variety of topics like food and sex and parties. However, I found that the pronunciations guide kinda sucks. I'm not sure if I learned a different accent of Brazilian Portuguese (my teacher is from Brasilia), but the phonetic pronunciations they include were way off (for example, they never mention the fact that 'te' as in 'arte' is pronounced like 'chee' as in 'cheese'). Also, the organization of the book could have been a lot better. It took me HOURS to find a basic phrase (I'm hungry) because it was not put in a section with food or anything food/restaurant related. But for the reasonable price and convenient size, it's definitely worth having.

I thought this book was very good. It gave each phrase in portuguese, english and written out the way that you would pronounce it. I bought another portuguese book that did not have the pronunciations, and will never do so again if I can help it. In my opinion the english/portuguese dictionaries did not contain enough words in them. There were quite a few times where I didn't have access to the words I was looking for. Overall I think this is a good book and would definately stick with Lonely Plane Phrasebook in the future.