Customer Reviews

Portuguese For Dummies

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

 

 

I was very excited to see a book for Portuguese in the "Dummies" series, and I was thrilled once I received it. Written in the usual comedic style of this series, "Portuguese for Dummies" is entertaining, very well-organized and has tons of useful information. You should know that this book concentrates only on Brazilian Portuguese.

However, I should say that you shouldn't expect to be able to teach yourself Portuguese solely from this book even though it's fantastic (and the author states this upfront). This book is a great companion to taking Portuguese classes or using another learning resource. Personally, I have been working with the Pimsleur method on CD (which is superb), and so I have a working knowledge of the langugage. This book is great for someone like me, since it can serve as a review, a fun supplement to my regular studies, and has lots of other wonderful features.

I was thrilled to see sections on common Brazilian idiomatic expressions and slang, something that's not contained in most instructional resources I've come across. I have Brazilian friends who constantly confused me with their expressions, so now I'm starting to get it! Also great are sections on terms associated with Brazilian culture, music, Carnaval, helpful things for travelers, tables with conjugations of common verbs, etc. You can tell a lot of thought went into creating this useful guide.

One major problem: the CD is off-the-charts bad. There's an English speaking narrator who introduces conversations and cannot pronounce any of the Portuguese words properly (WHY did they bother having her try?) The Portuguese speakers sound stilted and robotic when talking.

However, the book is fantastic... I strongly recommend that you buy it, then tear the CD off the back cover and play frisbee with your dog.

If you REALLY are serious about learning Portguese, I recommend the following materials, all available on amazon.com:

1. Pimsleur's Brazilian Portguese, Comprehensive CDs (or Cassettes), Levels 1-3.

2. A good Portuguese/English dictionary: I like the Oxford.

3. Portuguese for Dummies

4. Portuguese in 10 Minutes a Day (for vocabulary building).

Learning a language in the informal and fun way proposed by the book is always good, but unfortunately this book has too many mistakes, mostly concerning pronunciation. For example, the letter X in Portuguese does not have only two sounds like they say, but four. The difference between "closed E" and "open E" is never pointed out, so that the letter E in words like "dedo" and "elefante" is said to have the sound of the English E in the word "egg", which is not true. There are also too many accents missing. The list of problems goes on and on. Concerning the CD, I'm totally amazed that the speakers, although from Brazil, still read all the mistakes contained in the book. In their life, they would never say "gostar o Brasil", but "gostar do Brasil". I'm Brazilian and a Portuguese intructor. There is hope for the book because the grammar is not bad, but it needs to be carefully reviewed and corrected.

In the midst of my excitment preparing for my coming trip to Rio de Janiero, I was ecstatic to find "Portuguese for Dummies" in the language section of my favorite bookstore. What's even more amazing is that it focuses on Brazilian Portuguese.

This book contains a wealth of information for anyone studying brazilian portuguese. It is both entertaining and informative. I especially like the "cultural wisdom" sections as well as the useful slangs at the end of the book. The CD, however, could use some improvement.

I have combined my studies with this book along with the pimsleur method and Portuguese 10 minutes a day. And hopefully it will give me a solid background of the language once I attend my language school in Rio.

I highly recommend this book.

I travel to Brazil a lot for business and pleasure, and I have bought other language-learning books for Portuguese--but this is the one book I take with me when I go. I like it for a lot of reasons---the slang and idioms, the section on Carnaval, the way it makes the hard work of learning a language fun and engaging. I felt like the author was more of an encouraging friend than a teacher. But I think I like it most of all because of the way it gives me insight into the Brazilian culture along with the language learning.

I don't agree with the previous reviewer about the pronunciation guides. Brazilians have said that my accent is pretty good, based on what I got from the book.

This book is a well written companion to other books and courses on Brazilian Portuguese. And this one has a lot of features that I could not get anywhere else.

Overall, I found this book to be an enjoyable and informative supplement to the Pimsleur CDs (Conversational Brazilian Portuguese: Learn to Speak and Understand Portuguese with Pimsleur Language Programs (Simon & Schuster's Pimsleur)) (Portuguese (Brazilian) I - 2nd Ed. Rev.: Learn to Speak and Understand Portuguese with Pimsleur Language Programs (Comprehensive)) that I have been studying. The text has the usual breezy style that is typical of the Dummies book series. The author has provided very useful general information about the language as well as insights on Brazilian idioms and customs. If you want to start learning Brazilian Portuguese, this book is a good beginner's reference to have in addition to books on grammar Essential Portuguese Grammar (Dover Books on Language), verb conjugation 501 Portuguese Verbs (501 Verb Series) and dictionary Larousse Concise Dictionary: Portuguese-English/English-Portuguese (Larousse Concise Dictionary) (and the aforementioned CD set by Pimsleur).

I gave the rating three stars for the following reasons:

- As mentioned by another reviewer, the CD is rather a joke and makes a good coaster. The "ding" before each lesson is *so* annoying. Buy the Pimsleur CD series instead.

- There are a lot of typos throughout the book when a Portuguese sentence is presented and then followed by the phonetic transcription, which can be jarring at times. For example, on page 164: "Faz muito tempo que eu fui para o Rio de Janeiro. (fah-eez moo-ee-toh tang-poh kee eh-ooh nah-ooh voh pah-dah ooh hee-ooh jee jah-nay-doh; It's been a long time since I've been to Rio.)" In this case, and several others throughout the book, the Portuguese and the phonetics don't match up. It's as if the publisher had a less-than-knowledgeable assistant editor go through the transcript to do some checking before publishing but wasn't thorough enough on these kinds of mistakes.

- Lastly, the author could have provided a more complete word reference index in the Appendix. She should have listed words presented in the text and the masculine/feminine association with those words where needed. Many times new words and phrases are presented in the chapters but they don't always carry any masc./fem. identification. Yes, some nouns when ending in -o are masculine and -a are feminine, but there are always exceptions. This becomes more important when you have to figure out the conjugation of articles (in English - a, the, etc.) and adjectives for that noun.

I found Portuguese for Dummies to be a great introduction to learning Portuguese. Aside from being useful, it's entertaining, so for those who aren't good at making their way through dry grammar books that's a major plus. Also, for those who are interested in language, there are some fun cultural anecdotes on usage etc.

Of course if you're looking for a complete review of Portuguese grammar, go elsewhere, but if you're looking for a fun, quick, entertaining way to become proficient in Portuguese, this book is perfect. The accompanying CD is pretty sad but it will at least give you an idea of how to pronounce some of the more difficult sounds in Portuguese, which for me, are quite a few.

I bought this book before going to Brazil on vacation for 6 weeks. I didn't speak any Portuguese or Spanish, so I started reading the book a month before my trip and learned as much as I could. I found that the book helped tremendously - I felt competent and comfortable communicating with people. I received several compliments on my accent (some people have said this book teaches poor pronunciation but that's simply not true - you have to get used to the way its presented but it definitely teaches an authentic accent). The book also taught me a lot of fun cultural anecdotes that I noticed once I arrived in Brazil. It is well organized, easy to read, light-hearted and a good learning tool for anyone wanting a quick course before having the time of their lives in Brazil!

I found this book a very good self teaching tool for who does not have a thorough or any knowledge of the brazilian portuguese language. I realize the person has to have a lot of self discipline to learn any language just from the book but it can be done. I bought this book for my boyfriend and he is doing very well; after he reads a chapter I help him with the pronunciation. The book does not cover everything, evidently since there is a lot to learn, but it does a pretty good job overall as far as vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation for beginners.

I was born in Brazil - thus Portuguese is my primary language.

I came across this book only by chance.

I used the "Look Inside" feature and had a shock: I noticed an excessive amount of words that are not spelled correctly, many cases of poor translation and text showing inappropriate use of slang (and too much of it). To make things worse, the author committed basic grammar errors. All this is absolutely unacceptable when the book's objective is to teach the language!

I strongly recommend the author to submit this book to a Brazilian linguist expert for a deep, thorough review.

I definitely do not recommend this book to anyone.

Portuguese for Dummies is a great resource for conversational Portuguese. I had a Brazilian friend check it out and she found it to be fairly accurate, but some words/phrases "just wouldn't happen" in reality. (Remember the author is not Brazilian/Portuguese!) Also I got a little caught up in over-pronouncing words because I was following the phonetics provided.The CD provided is good for mastering the sound of how certain letter combinations occur. In general, it is great for learning how to conjugate the verbs and basic grammatical rules, but like any language, the best way to learn is to talk it up with someone of the language you are learning. This book coupled with the Brazilian soaps will have anyone speaking Portuguese!!