Five cool ideas to start to speak and understand Portuguese before you arrive in your student apartment in Porto
Let me teach you five easy and fun ways to learn how to speak Portuguese language and when you arrive to your student apartment in Porto, you can start to understand the local people better at the same time you speak Portuguese more fluently.
1) Make some Portuguese friends on social networks and start speaking Portuguese.
Search on Facebook and other social networks friends from Portugal, learn with them the basic words, like ‘Olá’ which means ‘Hello’ in English language and simple sentences like for example, ‘Como te chamas’ (“ch”amas in Portuguese sounds like “sh”amas) which means ‘What’s your name’.
2) Paying attention to phonetics makes you understand more words easily.
Some words are written almost the same way in different countries, but phonetics are different, so makes it more difficult to understand, once you are aware of the phonetics, you understand more words and what locals are talking about. Let me give you a simple example, so you can understand better what i mean. Ill use as an example the word Restaurant, in English we say restaurant, in Portuguese we say Restaurante with an “e” at the end, so the word is very similarly written but we press more the “R” and the word sounds a bit different. A glaring example of this is the same word, “Restaurant” is written the same way in English and French language but spoken sounds a bit different.
3) Understand Portuguese language by association
Some words are written almost the same way in different languages but the termination is completely different. Because of the phonetics and word termination is more difficult to understand, but once you acknowledge this you will be a step ahead to understand even better what locals are saying and can translate to your students friends in you student apartment in Porto.
Again, let me give you an example that makes it easier for you to understand, let’s use the same example, the word Restaurant in English, Restaurante in Portuguese (small difference at the termination) and Restauracja in Polish language (with a bigger difference in the end).
4) Learn the language watching movies you like!
Another way to learn through association is watching movies, in Portugal we don’t change the Hollywood movie actors voice, we keep the movies original soundtrack, so all the movies have subtitles in Portuguese language. Choose a small scene with subtitles, see it 3 or 4 times, read the subtitles (that are in Portuguese) and the english actor language after associate with the words being said and the subtitles and you are starting to learn Portuguese!
5) Search Portuguese videos on Youtube!
Search Portuguese videos on youtube listen to the words to get use to the phonetics and when you find a word you like, try to find the translation. Its easier for us to memorize the meaning of the words when we like the sound of the word!
Chose a method or two, focus on your goals and practice, you are two steps away from arriving to your student apartment in Porto speaking some Portuguese words and understand the locals.
Take a course in Portuguese language for foreigners.
Some universities have Portuguese language courses for students here is two examples of the courses that universities give, make a google search with the words FEUP Portuguese Language Course, Erasmus Portuguese Intensive Language Course .
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