Kilo Lingo
Countries where Portuguese is an official or dominant language

Portuguese is a language where reading runs well ahead of listening, and the gap is wider than in most languages worth learning.

Open a Brazilian newspaper with a year of Spanish behind you and you will follow a surprising amount. Turn on Brazilian television and you will follow almost none of it. That is not a failure of your study; it is the shape of the language.

Why the gap exists

The grammar is unremarkable in the best sense. Gendered nouns, three verb families with predictable endings, no cases, and a set of irregular verbs that are irregular because they are common. Anyone who has studied Spanish or French will recognise the whole structure.

The sound system is where Portuguese earns its difficulty:

  • Nasal vowels that English simply does not have, and which are not the same as the French ones.
  • Heavy vowel reduction and palatalisation in Brazilian speech, so a d before an i softens and words run together in ways the spelling does not prepare you for.
  • A rhythm that compresses unstressed syllables, so the written and spoken word feel like different lengths.

The practical consequence is that listening practice is not an optional extra to add later. It is the main event, and it should start on day one.

Ser and estar

The one grammatical decision Portuguese asks you to make in every sentence. Ser is what something is; estar is the condition it is in. The permanent-against-temporary shorthand gets a beginner a long way and then quietly misleads them, which is why it has a guide of its own in this course.

What this course is

A hundred words, one chapter, and three grammar guides: ser and estar, the verb groups, and a plain account of what separates Brazilian from European Portuguese. Enough to read simple Brazilian Portuguese and decide whether to carry on.

Frequently asked

Frequently asked

Is Portuguese hard to learn?

For an English speaker, no harder than Spanish and easier than French, and the difficulty is in an unusual place. The grammar is familiar Romance territory. The sound system is not: Portuguese has nasal vowels English lacks entirely, and Brazilian Portuguese reduces and palatalises in ways that make the written and spoken forms feel further apart than they are.

Should I learn Brazilian or European Portuguese?

The one you have a reason for. If the reason is Brazil, and for most English speakers it is, learn Brazilian. They share a written standard and diverge sharply in speech, so the choice matters more here than it does for most language pairs.

How long does it take to learn Portuguese?

The Foreign Service Institute puts it in the easiest group, around 600 class hours to professional proficiency. Reading comes quickly. Understanding fast colloquial speech takes considerably longer than the written difficulty suggests, and that gap is the thing to plan for.

Across the Portuguese library

Everything on the site for Portuguese, in the order you would learn it.

Start here

Core vocabulary

Grammar

Stories

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