Brazilian Portuguese - is it a hard language?

I don't know if this is true about Brazillian Portuguese specifically, but Portuguese is considered one of the more difficult Romance languages because of its extensive use of the subjunctive.

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That's relative...
Most subjunctive forms are not used much in speech, personal infinitive is prefered:

É melhor ela sair. (more frequent).
É melhor que ela saia. (less frequent).

in Spanish subjunctive is a must: És mejor que ella salga...

90% of subjunctives in Portuguese can be replaced with shorter personal infinitive.

Brazilian is the easiest one grammatically

Brazilian is the easiest one grammatically.

...
Not really.

Choose the correct form:

1) Se você visitar ela
2) Se você visitá-la
3) Se você a visitar
4) Se a visitar você
5) Se visitar a você...

Which is
a) the traditional (Continental) Portuguese form? answer: 3)
b) which one is used in Brazilian formal writing? answer: 2)
c) which one is used in speech? answer: 1)


So, Brazilian Portuguese is a rather complex language because it is transformed and formal/informal/written/colloquial registers are so distant, you have to master all of them to speak and write like a native...Speaking like a book (mataram-no or chamo-me) will make you seem goofy, bossy or foreign, and writing like a movie character (mataram ele, me chamo) will make you seem illiterate.

This details are only for those who want to study a language in a very advanced form. The subjunctive (conjuntivo in Portuguese) is indeed difficult for native speakers of languages that doesn't have that tense. Most of European languages do not have it in fact.

In Portuguese, the verbs related to subordinated sentences - after "that" (que) or "in order to" (para) - or after the equivalent of an if clause (se) have each a specific tense.
Even for Portuguese speakers it's difficult to use. Many languages do not have this forms.

For a beginner, it's advisable to skip this difficult forms and concentrate on the basics.
It's shown here that Brazilians do not always use this tenses. So, that means it's not mandatory to use them. Do not be scared about it.
The Portuguese use it a lot but also not always.

Be prepared for learning lots of tenses anyway.

Like in Spanish. there are two verbs for "to be": ser and estar.

"Ser" means "to be" as a permanent carachteristic.
I AM a man / I AM a woman: Eu SOU um homem / Eu SOU uma mulher.

"Estar" means "to be" as a rather temporary characteristic.
I AM tired : Eu ESTOU cansado

As in any romance language, the future, the conditional and other specific tenses, are made by adding suffixes to the verb.
I do not know how it is in Slavic languages, but in Germanic languages (English, Dutch, German), those tenses are made with an auxiliary verb.

Examples of the future tense
In English: I will go
In Portuguese: Eu irei.

You will go:
Tu iras (informal) /você iria (formal and Brazilian forms)

He/she will go
Ele/ela ira

Examples of the conditional tense
In English: I would go
In Portuguese: Eu iria

you would go
tu irias (informal) / você iria (formal and Brazilian)

he/she would go
ele/ela iria

Quite easy indeed, particularly Brazilian Portuguese, you don't have to learn all verb forms unlike Italian or European Spanish
Brazilian never use the second singular and plural person so, for example "cantas" and "cantais" are no longer used, in written either.
In addition, the second person is the most irregular in all verb tenses and the first and the third singular form coincide in most conjugations. For ex.
eu cantava ele cantava/ eu cantaria/ele cantaria que eu cante, ele cante, eu cantar ele cantar. eu cantasse ele cantasse. So, if you learn Brazilian Portuguese you need to study just a few verbal forms, compared to other romance languages

Yup, you can do just fine in Brazil with 2-3 verbal forms:

curtir = to like or to enjoy

present:

eu curto

você curte

ele curte

---

a gente curte

vocês curtem

eles curtem

3 forms: curto, curte, curtem

and in conditional or in the imperfect there are only 2 forms

eu, você, ele, a gente CURTIRIA / CURTIA
vocês, eles CURTIRIAM / CURTIAM

;)

Correction of my previous post,

The future tense is:

You will go:
Tu iras (informal) /você irá (formal and Brazilian form)

He/she will go
Ele/ela irá

Nós (we) iremos, a gente (Brazilian colloquial for we) irá

vocês (plural of you) vão

eles (eles) vão



The plural for the 2nd person is also not used in Portugal anymore. We use "vocês" or "os/as senhores/as" (formal, used in business when dealing with costumers).

The main difficulty for native English speakers is finding good resources to learn the language. There are probably hundreds of resources for Spanish-for ALL LEVELS, but after the elementary level in Portuguese, there is not very much to help the student who wants to continue except for "From Spanish to Portuguese" (IF you know Spanish already), and FSI Portuguese. Vocabulearn has a second level, but not what I'd call an advanced level for Portuguese, but more of an intermediate level.

If anyone knows of an advanced modern course in Portuguese for self-motivated people, I'd love to hear about it.

In theory, it seems that it would be fine to learn Portuguese first, but I've changed my mind. Maybe it would be better (unless someone is going to learn in country) to learn Spanish, then move to Portuguese.

K.T. I've met quite a few people who learned Portuguese without learning Spanish, but this were people who lives or have lived in a Portuguese speaking country.

Sorry, I cannot recommend any course.

Hello Joao,

I suspect that there may not be many such courses. I guess I'll just use the old advanced materials. If I say something weird and dated in Portuguese, I hope people will correct me.

Someone mentioned Instituto Camões in another thread. It's a Portuguese language institute, however from Portugal, not Brazil. Maybe they can help.

Can you give an example of something weird and outdated?

I'm not sure, but since the FSI course is probably decades old, I'm sure to write or say something weird or outdated eventually. I'm kind of serious already, so people will think (and do, lol) that I am older than I am based on how I write. I finished a course in Modern Basic Portuguese and now I'm working on the FSI course (the latter part), listening to broadcasts from Brazil and Portugal, and reading anything I can get in Portuguese. I have listened mostly to BP. I can understand some EP, but whoa, when I was listening to a broadcast on a science topic, I felt that my ears were "slower" in EP, than in BP.

Thank-you for your suggestions, Joao. I'll look up Instituto Camões today on the net.

i´m portuguese from Portugal and I am tired of reading the word brazilian portuguese...
There´s no such thing like brazilian portuguese (for me) there are just different ways to speak it, write it, spealling it. In a small countrie like Portugal we can find a lot of differents ways, imagine in a countrie with the size of Brasil....
The true for me is this:
if u really want to learn portuguese start with portuguese from Portugal:
Why?
U will be able to understain the portuguese from all the world. A language have no owner but remember this: spanish find it hard to undertand us portugueses, we can understain them easily. Sometimes brasilians dont undertains us, we always do. If u lear portuguese from Portugal u will find simple to learn french, they use the same verbes and pronoms that we portuguese use. When U visit France remember that U have a sucessefull 1million portuguese community and other half-million luso decenders (portuguese decenders)
Dont learn math with a portuguese but learn portuguese.
Brazilians, Angolans can dance it (the portuguese) sing it bether but in language we are on top.
It it just an instrument you get and can use, has I had sayed: a language have no onwers.

<<For a beginner, it's advisable to skip this difficult forms and concentrate on the basics.
It's shown here that Brazilians do not always use this tenses. So, that means it's not mandatory to use them. Do not be about it. >>

I strongly disagree.

The "difficult" verb forms, are all part of basic everyday speech, and are unavoidable.

Portuguese is not like french where theres different grammar that only exists in writting. All of the tenses with the exception of maybe one (the synthetic pluperfect), are part of the spoken language, and you have to know how to use them.

maga: "if u really want to learn portuguese start with portuguese from Portugal: Why? U will be able to understain the portuguese from all the world."

Hi Maga, I would suggest Mozambican Portuguese instead. It sits closers near the center of all Portuguese dialects, and even makes it understandable to Spanish speakers. Portuguese from Portugal drops too many unstressed vowels. I kind of like its accent, but I wouldn't say it's a good representative of all Portuguese dialects. We have to face the fact: Portuguese has evolved too much in Portugal, just like English in England. So, despite being the country where the language originated, you are no longer a good standard.

Irish actors are in demand today, because their English sits at the center of all dialects, and can please both the American and the British audiences.