Portuguese Language Stumbling Blocks

So there are a few things that absolutely have tripped me up in learning Portuguese, from the small to the big. These are things I wish I knew going in to learning the language that probably would’ve accelerated my process by a decent number of months. Or, well, not knowing these things slowed me down and I feel like I lost months because of it. One common theme here is that, for the most part, you’ll still be understood when you misspeak, but your brain won’t be ready to hear because you yourself aren’t saying things the right way.

• The number ‘two’ is gendered. “Dois” (masculine) vs. “Duas” (feminine). You’ll still be understood if you use the wrong one, but you need to be ready to listen for the word, so you should try to use it. (The number ‘one’ is also gendered as ‘um’ (masculine) and ‘uma’ (feminine) but that one didn’t trip me up as hard).
• Portuguese has tons of ‘the’ in it. That’s “a” and “o” for feminine and masculine. You’ll even hear it when referring to people by name (which can be a nice formal way to address people) – “a Sandra” or “o Brady.”
• I wish I had started with some basic pronounciation tips. Knowing the rules can really help, and, for the way I learn, I can’t really process rote information like “say this word this way” – I need to know the actual rules. Vowels are the problem. The second-to-last syllable gets the accent (most of the time) – but look for a vowel with the accent ´ on it which changes where it goes. There are also some certain syllables that will move the accent to another place – “Brasil” and “peru” (“peru” meaning turkey, the animal not the place) are pronounced “Brah-SEEL” and “Puh-ROO” (or even just “PROO”). The vowel with the accent gets the ‘open’ version of the vowel – like Spanish. Most of the other ones get the ‘short’ version – extremely clipped and sometimes just fully absent. There are also rules for vowels with the ‘hat’ ˆ on them that takes them from the ‘short’ version to a more open version, and sometimes it’s more of a third sound. Start out learning this stuff so you can hear it from the beginning.
• Learning how to say the alphabet is generally really helpful, especially when you’re spelling out confusing things like foreign words, such as your name. Vowels sound like in Spanish, consonants are closer to how you say them in English with quite a few exceptions. Drill that stuff, even if you can only spell your name.
• To find word breaks, find the accent in the word. It’s going to be the open vowel with the most stressed syllable. From there, you can work around to where the rest of the word is. A lot of words are going to have accents on the second-to-last syllable.
• The letter “Rr” (A leading ‘R’ or a ‘rr’) can be weird to say. It’s this sort-of “hocking a loogey” sound that’s not native in English. (At least, it is that way here in Lisbon, apparently in Porto it’s more like a Spanish ‘rr’ and rolled). The way I was able to make the sound was to over-push it – to get myself used to making the sound – then slowly start to claw it back.
• Many contractions in Portuguese are not optional. And this has been the biggest stumbling block of all. I have been reading and re-reading and re-re-reading this article: https://www.practiceportuguese.com/learning-notes/portuguese-contractions/ over and over again to drill it into my thick skull. But the challenge here – and, again, it’s the same problem as before – is you can say “em a casa” (in the house) and people will understand exactly what you mean. But it’s incorrect. It’s “na casa.” And the problem is if you don’t say it, you won’t listen for it, and since you’re not listening for it when it comes up you won’t understand it. It’s not “de a casa” (of the house) it’s “da casa”. Etc.
• Angolan Portuguese is my favorite one to learn from. It has the same rules structure that European Portuguese has, but the short vowels are still pronounced, they’re just ‘short’. Lisbon Portuguese can completely swallow them. Brazillian Portuguese doesn’t follow the same rules so it doesn’t help that much (in terms of hearing things, at least).
• The city of Porto gets translated in a lot of different other languages to “Oporto.” Why is that? Because Porto is a “The” city. “O Porto.” You know, like “The Big Apple” or “The Hague.” It’s “O Porto” – “The Port.” You can double-check this in your translation apps – try translating “Welcome to Lisbon” versus “Welcome to Porto.” You will get “Bem-vindo a Lisboa” and “Bem-vindo ao Porto” (contraction ‘ao’ – is “a” + “o” – “to the”).

A lot of these lessons are hard-fought and a lot of these are tailored to how I learn. You might be one of those people who can just listen and kind of pick some stuff up that way – that just doesn’t work so well for me, unfortunately. But I can now get to the point where I can read a brand new word in Portuguese and guess how to pronounce it and usually I’m pretty close. And one time I was on the subway (I have to keep making sure not to use my New York lingo of calling it ‘the train’ because it confuses people here) and I heard the name of a station pronounced, and it sounded different than how I’d been pronouncing it in my head. I looked closely at the name written on the map, and, lo and behold, there was the accent in “Cais do Sodré” that I had missed before – making it pronounced as “Kaysh duh So-DRAY” not “Kaysh duh “SO-druh”.

So for those of you who have same brain configuration/misconfiguration that I do, I hope this helps and saves you a bit of time.

Até logo!