Is Portuguese hard?

So what’s involved if you want to learn Portuguese… and is it hard?!

• Portuguese is descended from Latin, and is quite closely related to Spanish; if by chance you have learnt Spanish, you will find it quite easy; French or Italian would also help.
• Many Portuguese words will seem quite familiar to you right from the beginning. English also has a lot of words of Latin origin. If you know that “nation” is “nação”, and “situation” is “situação”, what do you think “organisation” will be?
• Portuguese pronunciation may be a little harder than that of Spanish or Italian – Portuguese has a strong nasalised feel to it, which takes a while to get used to. However, it is not hard to achieve pronunciation which will at least be easily understood.
• Most of the spelling of the Portuguese language is reasonably predictable, though the link between spelling and pronunciation is a little more complicated than it is in Spanish.
• The basic grammar of Portuguese is not difficult, and you will pick up a lot of the key points as you start to learn phrases and everyday language.
• Like most languages, Portuguese becomes a bit harder when you start to look at the grammar in more detail. And like all the Latin-based languages, it has a lot of verb forms and tenses which are quite different from those of English. However, you do not need to embark upon all of these all at once, and if you don’t get that far, you can still express quite a lot of useful, everyday ideas.
• Brazilian Portuguese does differ somewhat from the language spoken in Portugal, but the two peoples understand one other in much the same way that speakers of British and American English understand one other.

Under Euroasia style, we have more information about our approach to teaching. If you’re ready to enrol, our Portuguese timetable has details of the next Portuguese classes with Euroasia! Otherwise, see course options to find out about the types of Portuguese courses which we offer. Course outlines might also be useful.