Basics Of Portuguese

Portuguese is spoken across the world and is an official language of Portugal, and also Brazil, Mozambique, Angola, Cape Verde, the Republic of Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé and Príncipe, East Timor, Equatorial Guinea, and Macau (China). Portuguese is the ninth most powerful language in the world, with over 220 million native speakers across the globe.

Many English speakers learning Portuguese find that it is not as difficult to learn as they thought. This is because Portuguese grammar and sentence structures are simplified compared to English. Many Portuguese language learners find the Portuguese accent is easier to master than a Spanish accent. Additionally, English and Portuguese both share deep Latin roots, so many words sound similar to English and have the same meaning—also called cognates. These cognates may give you an advantage when it comes to speaking Portuguese with confidence.

Rosetta Stone encourages learning foundational concepts first. As Portuguese is a much more phonetically consistent language than English, Portuguese words almost always sound the way they are spelled. This phonetic knowledge can be used to your benefit to pronounce words and phrases that otherwise might seem overwhelming.

Here are some basic Portuguese phrases and greetings:

• Bom dia. = Good morning.
• Boa tarde. = Good afternoon.
• Boa noite. = Good night.
• Desculpe-me por falar tão mal o português. = Excuse my poor Portuguese.
• Só falo um pouco de português. = I only speak a little Portuguese.
• Tudo bem? = How are you?
• Olá = Hello
• Obrigado/Obrigada = Thank you
• Parabéns = Congratulations
• Feliz Aniversário = Happy Birthday

Your ultimate goal of learning Portuguese is to feel confident enough to speak the language and to understand it in real-world situations. Our Portuguese learning program focuses on both spoken and written Brazilian Portuguese in context, using audio and visual cues to help build a program which will have you speaking Portuguese from your very first lesson. Sharpening your Portuguese pronunciation is an important component, and relies on getting immediate and accurate feedback on your pronunciation efforts. Each Rosetta Stone language lesson includes our patented TruAccent™ speech-recognition engine . This powerful tool delivers instant feedback that will help you align your accent to the accent of fluent Portuguese speakers. TruAccent was developed by carefully scanning and closely analyzing the speech of native Portuguese speakers and is a significant tool which will help you learn to speak and understand the Portuguese language. There’s no better time than now to start.

Surround yourself with Portuguese (Brazil) whenever, wherever with the Rosetta Stone app .

Download a unit and knock it out on the train or a flight. Select a 5-10 minute lesson and sneak it in while you wait in line or for your ride to show up. And explore dynamic features, like Seek and Speak, where you can point at an object in the real world and get a translation .

The best part? You don’t have to choose between app or desktop. Both come with your subscription and sync, so you can switch between devices seamlessly.