Cons:
more scholarly and linguistic than other books reviewed here; whatever your skill level, you must be willing to take it for what it is and extract useful examples and explanatory analysis for your own learning benefit

Mario Perini’s Modern Portuguese intends to bridge the linguistic gap between standard Portuguese and real-life Brazilian language use in his thorough breakdown of Brazilian Portuguese grammar.

The foreword and introduction are very academic, mostly of interest to linguists. From there, Perini moves on to an extremely detailed coverage of Portuguese grammar, with a specific focus on the structure of Brazilian usage.

There’s no point in keeping students in the dark about the difference between standard Portuguese and the real Brazilian Portuguese language as it’s spoken. It’s not a matter of slang or improper speech – people of all walks of life in Brazil speak differently than they write.

To shed light on this subject, Perini builds a robust, well-organized guide that breaks down all the essentials of Brazilian grammar. The topics covered are rather technical, and that’s where a knowledge of linguistics comes in handy.

Yet even if your knowledge of linguistics stops at “nouns” and “verbs”, the exposure to real Brazilian usage is the key here. Unit by unit, section by section, the book tackles every major topic of grammar and sentence structure. You’ll read plenty of fluent examples that illustrate each point along the way.

The book does an excellent job of analyzing Portuguese grammar into smaller, manageable chunks, and tracking down examples that illustrate those chunks. It sets out to cover the whole of Brazilian grammar, and does an equally commendable job of covering such a wid range of topics. Some have mentioned mistakes, but I didn’t see anything that would keep me away.

If you’re learning Brazilian Portuguese, Mario Perini’s Modern Portuguese is a welcome addition to your collection. Non-linguists will have to use this as a secondary grammar reference, not as a main lesson course. Any student of Brazilian will be able to mine examples and quickly find topics of interest in this methodical, deep, well-organized resource.

Cons:
sense of progress marred by ambiguous presnetation of material; explanations get dense or problematic at times; too tough for beginners, but many sections just review for intermediate learners; questionable organization of material; a bad course for fresh beginners and students who can’t find their own way without extra guidance

The author of Teach Yourself Brazilian Portuguese flexes her grammatical muscles in this attempt to present Portuguese grammar to self-taught learners pursuing a “complete understanding” of the language.

Teach Yourself Portuguese Grammar begins with a glossary of grammar terms (noun, verb, etc… all in English with English examples). Then, there are some notes about Portuguese spelling, punctuation, accent marks and stress.

Beyond that point, the book is taken up with a thorough presentation of all the basic and intermediate points of Portuguese grammar and sentence structure. It even manages to cover some advanced topics. As a learner, I know your next question without you asking: but how well does the book teach Portuguese grammar?

Over the course of 45 lessons (46 total minus the spelling unit mentioned above), you will read and reread sections that explain a range of grammar topics. Some topics deal with specific words (like por and para), while others focus on general patterns (like the inflected infinitive of verbs).

Within each chapter, topics are explained in the “grammar in focus” section. These explanations can be dry, dense and textbook-like. What’s more, they may leave out crucial material that beginners. Despite the book’s coverage of both Brazilian and European Portuguese, examples of the two aren’t always distinguished carefully, and some of the information (especially about those ever-tricky Portuguese verbs!) should be checked for accuracy against native speakers of each dialect.

Fortunately, the explanations are supported by well-placed Portuguese examples. Every “grammar in focus” topic has plenty of these sample sentences to digest with a Portuguese-English translation of each one. Exercises that follow offer variety and stay focused on the topics just presented. Some chapters offer a “grammar in context” activity after the exercises, which includes real-life Portuguese examples to test your understanding.

The book ends with a short list of Brazilian and European vocabulary differences, a table of regular verb endings, a table of irregular verbs (the same one found in Manuela Cook’s Teach Yourself Portuguese, and answers to the practice exercises. The book has no index, but the table of contents is thorough enough for later look-ups.

The order and choice of Portuguese grammar topics presented in each chapter is the toughest feature to accept. Related topics (such as definite articles, indefinite articles and nouns) are often grouped together, but the progression between chapters is ambiguous. It’s best if you make a separate learning plan for the grammar topics you need to learn or enhance, and refer to those sections in the book.

If you’re a later beginner looking to tighten your knowledge of Portuguese grammar, especially your abilities in the written language, I think you can learn a lot from this book. Its balance between explanations, examples and exercises, its coverage and variety are all commendable, even if the author’s way of organizing and explaining the material fails to impress.

Cons:
too compact to cover some of the more difficult aspects of many topics; explanations focus on formation over real-life usage; index not quite as robust as I’d like for a reference guide

Harrap’s Pocket Portuguese Grammar offers students a colorful and well organized on-the-go grammar reference guide for both Brazilian and European Portuguese.

Chapters are divided up between the major players of Portuguese grammar – articles, pronouns, nouns, verbs, etc. The topic (like VERBS) is always listed at the upper, outer corner of each page to make this reference easy to flip through.

Within each chapter, sections explain and give examples of how to build and use a certain part of speech – compound tenses of verbs, for example. Explanations are short and to the point. Portuguese examples are also short, but relevant and plentiful. They’re also easy to spot: Portuguese phrases are in bold, and the part of the phrase relevant to the topic at hand is in bold blue.

This guide is easy to compare to Prista’s Essential Portuguese Grammar in length, scope and intended audience. Harrap has produced a reference guide focused on formal grammar topics, while the Essential Portuguese Grammar leans a bit more towards function. Harrap’s Pocket Portuguese, for example, introduces the word que in verbal contexts where it’s used, while the other has a short section on que that distinguishes its basic functions in its own right. Honestly, in a reference grammar that I’ll search through on the go, I prefer Harrap’s focus.

This grammar is fairly complete if you’re a beginner or early intermediate student of Portuguese. It even has a handy seven page reference index. If you’re more advanced, you’ll find what’s lacking fairly quickly. The guide only lists certain irregular verbs it considers “common”, for instance.

I can’t argue with the setup, coloring and organization of this guide. Portuguese students trying to keep all the basics of grammar straight would do well the buy this pocket-sized guide and keep it nearby. If you’re a more experienced learner, you might try searching for a more comprehensive grammar, but you may still find enough coverage here to merit your consideration.

Sue Tyson-Ward’s Portuguese Verbs and Essentials of Grammar promises an in-depth look at the basics of verbs and other points of grammar to beginning and intermediate students.

The book is divided into two halves. One half covers “verbs”, while the other takes on the “essentials of grammar”. Chapters in each half touch on some grammatical topic, like “Perfect (Compound) Tenses” or “Adjectives and Adverbs”, for example. The sections within each chapter then divvy up specific points, like “The Future Perfect” or “Comparison of Adjectives”. There, you’ll find short, one-to-four sentence explanations of the point in consideration, followed by a number of Portuguese examples with English translations.

A few comments about this way of structuring a grammar course. The relation between the sections and chapters isn’t always clear, which it must be for learners. “Perfect (Compound) Tenses”, for instance, begins by teaching how past participles are formed, but doesn’t clearly teach, step by step, how past participles play into constructions with the verb ter to create perfects. The author only offers a quick line telling you this is so.

Another point where I take issue with the course: lack of practical application exercises. No exercises means you can’t hone your grammar skills with this book. You just get to read about grammar, not practice it.

All that leads me to think of the book as an at-hand reference guide rather than a lesson book. In that case, you’ll pull the book out when you need to refer to some Portuguese grammar topic. Well, we come to another problem. To use this as a reference guide, you’ll need a sturdy way to search for and find topics. But the table of contents is too skimpy and the index far too short to make this a powerful grammar reference. The “Verb Index” doesn’t even give page, section or even chapter numbers.

The main contents of this book do provide a decent overview of the major points of Portuguese grammar, particularly verbs. And for such a decent overview with abundant & clear examples, the price is right. Still, it’s lacking things that other reference guides I’ve reviewed here have in spades, such as Barron’s 501 Portuguese Verbs.

Portuguese: An Essential Grammar offers a more traditional approach to Portuguese grammar, complete with all the lists of noun and verb forms I’ve come to expect from such a resource. That said, it’s fairly light for such a grammatical approach – explanations are short and straightforward, and examples are ubiquitous and easily recognized by the bold text used to highlight Portuguese words.

This grammar reference handles European Portuguese grammar exclusively, so explanations will provide a smaller amount of help to Brazilian Portuguese learners not destined for Lisbon or Coimbra anytime soon.

The bulk of the chapters deal with the common categories of grammar, starting with a short intro to pronunciation, a chapter on nouns, one on articles, another on adjectives, then pronouns, a short chapter on numbers (“numerals”), a hefty verbs chapter, followed by adverbs, conjunctions and prepositions. The second part of the book details what it calls “language functions”, including many useful social and conversational words, expressions, phrases and how a Portuguese speaker uses them. A bibliography and index cap the book.

The approach works for a reference guide, and takes the language learner through the complexities of intermediate Portuguese grammar. Some learners, myself included, would like a bit more than one-line explanations of trickier grammatical features, but the ambient examples counterbalance that shortcoming.

Intermediate European Portuguese learners looking for an on-hand grammar reference will have something to gain from this text – if that describes you, this book may justify its price. Brazilian learners can still get a lot from this reference, but should remain cautious. No exercises and no learner-directed material will make this a no-sale for most casual students.

Prista’s Essential Portuguese Grammar (not to be confused with the more in-depth Portuguese: An Essential Grammar) is a small, thin book in the Essential Grammar series. This series has two signatures: (#1) quick but thorough coverage of the basics and (#2) the low price.

In about 100 pages, the book runs through all the basics of grammar – articles, nouns, prepositions, verbs, etc. It does learners a good service by keeping sentence formation in view throughout, which is an essential skill for any decent Portuguese conversation. A thorough table of contents and index help you find what you’re looking for at a glance.

The overview is great for beginners, and covers grammar as completely as could be asked of a cheap, slender introduction. Explanations just give a beginning or intermediate overview of each topic (although sometimes covering things coursebooks often miss), which means that you’ll need to make further investments to move beyond the basics. Portuguese verb use and sentence structure are particularly difficult grammar points for learners, and will require more understanding and practice than what’s offered in the Essential Portuguese Grammar.

Listening comprehension and conversation skills will, of course, fall in the domain of an actual lesson series. If you’re a beginning learner, and as long as you treat this as a grammar reference and not a primary conversational course, you’ll likely be very satisfied with this supplement.

Barron’s 501 Verbs books are certainly abundant and popular. They cover every conceivable verb a beginning language student might need to conjugate in any form (in Portuguese, this means all tenses and moods for all persons and numbers). Each page in the body of the book focuses on a single verb, with all forms listed in easy-to-read columns. Each tense-mood is easy to pick out at a glance (e.g. Present Indicative or Imperfect Subjunctive). At the bottom of a page, a handful of examples illustrate some of the most common and distinct uses of that particular verb.

The Portuguese entry in this series doesn’t disappoint. The introduction spotlights some of the trickier issues for learners tackling Portuguese verbs, including reflexive verbs, pronouns with verbs, the passive voice, compound verbs and verbs with irregular and multiple past participles. An English to Portuguese and Portuguese to English index lists all 501 verbs covered in the book.

The authors decided to put verb forms with open “e” and “o” in italics. While not part of the Portuguese spelling system, this decision helps students pronounce the tricky feature of open or closed stressed “e” and “o” consistently. The book explains this in more depth.

Learning Portuguese grammar requires mastering the verb above all else, and having this guide at hand will bring you quite a few steps closer. You’ll have some solid linguistic backup for your verbal woes. Still, don’t expect anything like language lessons from this book. You will need a fuller course to really master Portuguese, so this should stand by your side as a reference guide.