Portuguese is spoken by more people than French or German and taught far less, which means learners arrive with fewer bad habits and less baggage. It also means the first thing you have to decide is which one you are learning. Brazil and Portugal share the grammar and disagree about almost every vowel.
Hunger, thirst and cold are all things you have in Portuguese, not things you are.
Não, mãe, pão, irmão. The sound lives partly in your nose and has no English equivalent, so learners substitute the nearest ordinary vowel and get a puzzled look back. It is worth more practice than any grammar point in the first month.
Esquisito is strange, not exquisite. Pasta is a folder. And every door in Brazil that says puxe wants you to pull, not push. Close languages create confident mistakes.
Brazilian Portuguese pronounces its vowels openly and sings. European Portuguese compresses the unstressed ones until words collide. Learners who train on one and then travel to the other feel like they have lost the language for a week.
The door says puxe. Every Spanish and English speaker pushes it exactly once.
| Say this | When |
|---|---|
| Como se diz...?KOH-moo see JEES | You are missing a word and want to stay in Portuguese. |
| Pode repetir?POH-jee heh-peh-CHEER | Can you repeat that. Note the r sounding like an h, which is the giveaway sound of Brazilian Portuguese. |
| Tátah | "Okay". Short for está, used constantly, and instantly less formal than a textbook. |
| Nossa!NOH-sah | "Wow". Surprise, sympathy, disbelief. Brazilians use it for all three. |
| Pois époyz EH | "Yeah, exactly." Agreement with a shrug in it, and very hard to translate cleanly. |
On Pro, pronunciation is scored sound by sound, which is the only reliable way to find out whether your não is landing or arriving as nao.
Corrections happen inside a real sentence, so the Spanish word that slipped in gets replaced where you can see why it did not fit.
Tap any word mid-conversation to save it, and it comes back in later chats until you have it.
Dosti speaks Brazilian Portuguese, which is what most learners want and what most media is in. European Portuguese is fully understood in what you say; the difference you will notice is rhythm, since Portugal swallows unstressed vowels in a way Brazil does not.
A large one for reading and a smaller one for speaking. The grammar maps closely, the vocabulary mostly rhymes, and then the nasal vowels and a set of false friends make sure you cannot coast.
Not in Brazilian Portuguese. The r at the start of a word sounds closer to an English h, so rio comes out nearer to hee-oo. It is one of the first things that marks a learner who has only read the language.
Two minutes, no account, and a tutor who will not switch to English on you.
Start speaking Portuguese