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Learning Portuguese (Slightly Japanese Related) - esgrove - 2009-05-01
I've been studying Japanese for years, and recently I've felt that I was in a rut. After reading books by famous polyglots, I've felt more and more like trying the learning methods I've acquired in my Japanese study on a fresh language.
As I live around the Nagoya area, I recently made friends with some nice Brazilian people (one girl in particular was especially nice). So I decided to try to learn Portuguese as a small break in my Japanese studies.
Here is an outline of my planned method:
-Pimsluer's Brazilian Portuguese (1 lesson a day)
-Rosetta Stone (1 lesson a day)
-Portuguese for Dummies (the only book I had access to)
Once I'm finished with these I was planning on using a Portuguese/English dictionary to work through literature intended for young adults or junior high school children. I would combine this with internet-streaming Portuguese TV channels, and any Portuguese movies I can find. Naturally, I would simultaneously mine sentences from these sources and put them into a Portuguese Anki deck. Finally I would hopefully be proficient enough (after a few hundred sentences, maybe 1,000) to use a Portuguese/Portuguese dictionary, and read contemporary adult literature and watch more adult programming (not pornographic).
Does anyone else think this is possible while still studying Japanese? Would they interfere with each other? I've only been at it for three days, and so far the only noticeable effect on my Japanese is that I feel much more confident about it. Japanese never seemed so easy!
Does anyone have any Portuguese/simultaneous language advice?
Learning Portuguese (Slightly Japanese Related) - Tobberoth - 2009-05-01
Of course it's possible... the question is why you would use such bad sources... Rosetta? Pimsleur?
Learning Portuguese (Slightly Japanese Related) - esgrove - 2009-05-01
They're all I have. Do you have any alternative suggestions?
Learning Portuguese (Slightly Japanese Related) - Tobberoth - 2009-05-01
esgrove Wrote:They're all I have. Do you have any alternative suggestions?Not really, I've never really been interested in Portugese. Personally I would look up a good textbook, university level stuff. You could buy it on Amazon or something.
I'm sure there are Portugese lists on smart.fm as well though I've personally never tried to use non-official lists since I'm afraid of unnatural language.
Learning Portuguese (Slightly Japanese Related) - Nukemarine - 2009-05-01
Just yesterday I was showing what material there was for Portuguese on Smart.fm. There's not much, maybe 100 word list here and there.
Now, Rosetta Stone with European Romance languages may be a good resource to strip mine. What I mean is, you can: get .pdf's of the work book, unlock them (via certain programs) so that you can copy and paste from it, and get the sentences into a spread sheet.
Next, do the same with English sentences.
Next, strip Portuguese audio and photos (if you used the "free" versions floating around the internet). Get links to these into the spreadsheets.
Now, I don't think you need to toss all 8000 sentences into Anki. It's way, way, way too redundant. However, go through and mine the items keeping the i+1 mentality. Since it is a romance language, each conjugation of a verb can be considered a new item as would gendered adjectives.
Best way I would think is add one more field to Anki for "Vocabulary - Portuguese" and put in there the vocabulary word you're using the sentence to teach. With verbs, be sure to do the conjugation here to. Then set Anki to mark duplicates so you're kind of forced to do the i+1. It's your call if you want to use. Reason I say use the English .pdf's is to get a quick reference as to what the hell the sentence is talking about. Don't lean too heavy on the English, treat them like you'd treat English keywords for Kanji (ie a quick means to get the meaning in your head).
Obviously, use your friends to get yourself videos in Portuguese. Go on the web and find a news site/blogs/tv scripts/books/comics/etc. to read every day. The benefit of Romance languages is that 6 months of reading/watching everyday will bring you to the brink of fluency.
Please note, I did try to do this with Japanese Rosetta Stone and met with utter failure. It was during a time I thought every sentence was a good sentence for the 10,000 sentence method (ah, the naivete of youth). It just cannot work with Japanese. But something feels correct about RS with Spanish for at least a base for vocabulary gains. Anyone have differing opinions?
Learning Portuguese (Slightly Japanese Related) - travis - 2009-05-01
Don't know if it's any good, but what about the FSI course?
Learning Portuguese (Slightly Japanese Related) - iSoron - 2009-05-01
Can't really recommend any textbooks, but if you want some interesting contemporary literature, buy Luis Fernando Veríssimo books. They're quite funny, and not very hard to read.
Also, don't mine Portuguese from Internet forums. They're usually ridden with badly spelt and ungrammatical sentences. But you should know that already from another languages.
Anyway, good luck.
And feel free to ask any questions.
Learning Portuguese (Slightly Japanese Related) - jondesousa - 2009-05-01
Hi esgrove,
I also have felt myself in a rut with Japanese and have since taken up Esperanto, Italian, and Portuguese (my family is from Brazil). I can agree that it won't interfere with your Japanese and if anything will definitely help.
For resources, I would like to make some suggestions:
1. Don't waste your time with Rosetta Stone. It isn't as helpful as many people think.
2. Pimsleur BP series is actually very good. I would continue with that.
3. You should start working on the FSI courses which travis was so kind to suggest. It is a very good course (and free from the link that travis provided), but it can get a bit boring.
4. If you have a chance to pick up anything, I'd highly suggest Living Language's Ultimate Portuguese as it is mostly of the Brazilian persuasion and it is very well done.
4a. Michel Thomas' Foundation Portuguese is excellent to piggy-back onto LL's Ultimate Portuguese. It helps to consolidate a lot of what you learned within an 8-12 hour time period.
5. If you like, you could also try Teach Yourself Series Portuguese. Don't bother with their Brazilian Portuguese. It is crap. The Portuguese series is pretty good (not as good as living languages) and contains much more Continental Portuguese than the Living Language Series.
That should give you an excellent foundation in the language within only a month or two. You will be surprised at how much you will already be able to converse and understand at that point.
I hope this is helpful. If you have any questions on any of these resources, etc. please let me know. I'd be happy to help. You can even PM me if you like.
Good Luck,
Jon
Learning Portuguese (Slightly Japanese Related) - esgrove - 2009-05-01
Thanks for everyone's advice. I would like to get a real university textbook, but I can't find any good ones for Brazilian Portuguese on Japanese Amazon, also they tend to be a bit pricey.
Additionally, while Rosetta stone and Pimsleur aren't ideal for Japanese, I think that Portuguese is more in line with their original conception. And at least Rosetta stone doesn't use any English.
Learning Portuguese (Slightly Japanese Related) - Tobberoth - 2009-05-01
travis Wrote:Don't know if it's any good, but what about the FSI course?Thanks for the link! Their Mandarin tapes were easily the best examples of tones I've ever heard, I felt I really got it down in just the first tape.
Learning Portuguese (Slightly Japanese Related) - mentat_kgs - 2009-05-01
Even if it were not possible, you should try!
My guess is that portuguese will be much easier to learn =D
I tried japanese+french for a while and it seemed impossible. The problem was that I had not passion for french, or at least not much as I have for japanese.
Boa sorte camarada, guerreiro de fe' nunca gela.
Learning Portuguese (Slightly Japanese Related) - Tobberoth - 2009-05-01
mentat_kgs Wrote:Even if it were not possible, you should try!This is the problem I had with Korean. Even though my girlfriend is korean and her family can't speak English, I didn't have enough motivation to sit down and learn it. I just felt it was a chore, time which could be spent improving my Japanese instead. Chinese however is different, it feels sort of "fresh" compared to my japanese studies.
My guess is that portuguese will be much easier to learn =D
I tried japanese+french for a while and it seemed impossible. The problem was that I had not passion for french, or at least not much as I have for japanese.
Boa sorte camarada, guerreiro de fe' nunca gela.
If I had enough time, I think I could do both, possibly.
Learning Portuguese (Slightly Japanese Related) - Codexus - 2009-05-01
Be careful with new languages. I've started to learn way too many and never continued. It's so much fun at first when everything is new and different that it's easy to forget the rest for a while. But when it starts to become real work, will you be motivated? And if you're already learning Japanese, will you be motivated to do both seriously?
Learning Portuguese (Slightly Japanese Related) - konakona50 - 2009-05-01
well i have to disagree with jmkeralis on not being able to understand Portuguese people my Portuguese(brazilian portuguese btw) isn't too good but i could understand. but its totally different for speaking...brazillian portuguese has a lot of slang that doesn't exist in Portugal... then again i might have been able to undertand because of my knowledge of mexican spanish....oh well...
Learning Portuguese (Slightly Japanese Related) - Rina - 2009-05-01
I'm portuguese, and I can perfectly understand what brazilians are saying.
Portuguese is a hard language for foreigners mostly because of the verbs. I think.
Also, there are differences between Brazilian portuguese from the european and african.
We (in portugal) write "percepção" whilst in Brazil its written "perceção". The "P" is not read in european portuguese anyway. Brazillian don't write it.
Learning Portuguese (Slightly Japanese Related) - zer0range - 2009-05-01
The two hardest things for me when I was learning Portuguese were the conjugations and pronunciation, especially nasal dipthongs.
I moved to Rio for six months knowing absolutely nothing, but the end I could scrape my way by in casual conversations, but looking back I know I could have done much better with SRS and other tricks.
Anyway, you know about all of that stuff so I won't waste my breath, but I will recommend a couple movies.
Everyone knows Cidade de Deus (City of God) but many people don't know that they did a mini-series based off of the movie, Cidade dos Homens (City of Men) which I found even more enjoyable than the movie. Another good watch is Onibus 174 (Bus 174).
Also, you might want to check out omegle.com - it hooks you up with a random conversation partner and there are a shitton of Brazilians on there looking to practice English... I've found most of them willing to help me keep the rust off of my Portuguese too.
Learning Portuguese (Slightly Japanese Related) - Nukemarine - 2009-05-01
esgrove Wrote:Thanks for everyone's advice. I would like to get a real university textbook, but I can't find any good ones for Brazilian Portuguese on Japanese Amazon, also they tend to be a bit pricey.Here is where I even disagree in part with going J-J definitions, especially early on with simple concepts. See, we're adults with a fully developed language. Why not use that strength to get concepts across quickly? Do you need a 15 word definition in Japanese or 4 photos of different colors to get across that kuruma is car? It's one of the reasons Heisig advocated using keywords from your language, it's quicker.
Additionally, while Rosetta stone and Pimsleur aren't ideal for Japanese, I think that Portuguese is more in line with their original conception. And at least Rosetta stone doesn't use any English.
Yes, once you have a decent (not solid, just decent) then move away from the mother language. But I think it's a gimmick with Rosetta Stone that has too slow a pay off. It's part of the reason I recommend getting both the English and Portuguese RS pdf's so you don't have any ambiguity with what the sentence is trying to say.
Please note that I'm soon going to using J-J as soon as my ex-wife mails me my electronic dictionary. But I think I'm at a point I can use it effectively.
Learning Portuguese (Slightly Japanese Related) - sethg - 2009-05-01
Tobberoth Wrote:the question is why you would use such bad sources... Rosetta? Pimsleur?What's wrong with Pimsleur? Sure, it's slow, but I think it's a great way to kind of get started with any language. Gives you a good accent from the get-go and teaches you some good foundational phrases to learn more...
Learning Portuguese (Slightly Japanese Related) - mafried - 2009-05-01
sethg Wrote:It's horrendously inefficient in terms of time investment.Tobberoth Wrote:the question is why you would use such bad sources... Rosetta? Pimsleur?What's wrong with Pimsleur? Sure, it's slow, but I think it's a great way to kind of get started with any language. Gives you a good accent from the get-go and teaches you some good foundational phrases to learn more...
Learning Portuguese (Slightly Japanese Related) - jondesousa - 2009-05-01
mafried Wrote:I am sorry to disagree mafried and Tobberoth, but you are quite incorrect. Measures of efficiency require a metric. You may be using a metric of vocabulary acquisition per unit of time, for example, and in that regard you may be correct; however, one can also consider other metrics of efficiency.sethg Wrote:It's horrendously inefficient in terms of time investment.Tobberoth Wrote:the question is why you would use such bad sources... Rosetta? Pimsleur?What's wrong with Pimsleur? Sure, it's slow, but I think it's a great way to kind of get started with any language. Gives you a good accent from the get-go and teaches you some good foundational phrases to learn more...
If one considers the ability to think in a language without recourse to translation, Pimsleur is an excellent method. Also, as sethg pointed out, your pronunciation is significantly improved with Pimsleur as compared to those who study without it.
I have personally used all three levels of Pimsleur for Japanese, Italian, and Portuguese. I traveled last year to both Japan and Italy within a three week period, spending one week in each country. In both countries, I was complimented on many occasions (and on some occasions saw outright shock on native's faces) when they heard how well polished my accent had become without having spent many years in the country. Pimsleur itself helped me with those areas. My father and aunts and uncles who are Brazilians were also shocked when they saw how good my accent was after using Pimsleur for only two weeks.
Every tool has its place and some are not for everyone, but I definitely wouldn't go knocking a tried and true method that has been used for decades, such as Pimsleur.
Learning Portuguese (Slightly Japanese Related) - Tobberoth - 2009-05-01
Any form of audio method helps with pronounciation, not just pimsleur. Just like japanesepod101.com is a lot more effective than japanese pimsleur, I'm sure there are similar tools for portugese.
The same is true for thinking without translation. If one WANTS to repeat patterns over and over so as to be able to use them quickly, it can be done without paying insane amounts of cash for pimsleur which will bore you to death.
Learning Portuguese (Slightly Japanese Related) - MethodGT - 2009-05-01
jmkeralis Wrote:The difficulty apparently only goes one way. The Portuguese can understand us easily, but I've heard from a lot of Brazilians that they have trouble understanding the Portuguese. My cousins have told me that they can't understand anything when they watch Portuguese soccer games, for example. And I know my cousins were having trouble understanding the Portuguese guy that we met.I agree with you.
Same thing with Brazilians understanding almost everything an American Spanish speaker says. They can. But that doesn't mean Portuguese is the same as Spanish. It's similar, yes, but it's different enough that few Spanish speakers, without training, can understand a Brazilian speaking Portuguese. It's like the understanding only goes one way. My wife's from Brazil and has only been in the US for a couple years, yet she can understand Mexicans speaking Spanish much easier than she can understand people from Portugal.
Esgrove,
I used to listen to this podcast: http://www.brazilianpodclass.com/blog/ It's pretty good for concepts and grammar and vocabulary, but the learning curve is pretty high. The first lesson (supposedly beginner) feels more like intermediate to me. Also, it can get kind of boring, because it's just the one lady that does the lessons, not the teams like they've got on Japanesepod101.
Good luck.
Learning Portuguese (Slightly Japanese Related) - Tobberoth - 2009-05-01
From what I know, it's similar between Germans and Swedes. Germans can somehow understand Swedish much better than Swedes understand German (without training, obviously).
Learning Portuguese (Slightly Japanese Related) - Proxx - 2009-05-01
Tobberoth Wrote:From what I know, it's similar between Germans and Swedes. Germans can somehow understand Swedish much better than Swedes understand German (without training, obviously).I experienced it the other way around ;-)
When I was speaking slow German, a Swedish friend could get a gist of what I was talking about, while I never had an idea when he was talking in Swedish.
Also some Canadian French speaking poeple told me they could understand French people effortlessly, while French people have a hard time trying to understand Canadian French.
It's really interesting how it can be only one way...
Learning Portuguese (Slightly Japanese Related) - mentat_kgs - 2009-05-02
It is simple. We in Brasil have almost 0 exposure to portugal's portuguese.
I met some portuguese people and I too could not understand them at first.
But the problem is not only that. Brasil has many accents, more or less like English worldwide, but in some specific regions this is brutal. I'm from one of these regions.
If I talk with someone that came from another state the same way I talk with my grandma, they won't understand much.
This is more of a question of speed, tought. Speaking slowly this problem disapears.
If you are choosing an accent to follow, you should consider a Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro accent. There is where the main TV stations are and their portuguese more or less became the normative portuguese for Brasil. People will understand it be it in Portugal, Macau, Sao Tome e Principe or Angola, or else.